(From sepoy, who was especially interested in the foundation of the company, aka the ‘John Company’. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be too much detailed material about the early years out there…so I’ve listed what I can find along with more general sites and ones that go into the 18th and 19th centuries for the rest of you.)
General outlines/overviews
Wikipedia entry
Outline
The East India Company
English East India Company
400 years of the East India Company
Timeline
More detail
The British presence in India in the 18th century
Trading Places: the East India company and Asia 1600-1834 (there is a page on the foundation of the company.
Whitewashing the past (criticises the BL exhibition)
Trading Places an online course accompanying the BL exhibition (Beginnings)
The trading world of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760 (book review)
Transformation from a pre-colonial to a colonial order
John Company and Tea’s arrival in England
Beginning eastward from London: establishment of the British East India Company 1599-1660
Svadesh Videsh: home from home (late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries)
Further reading
Bibliography on East India Company and India Office records
Harriet Martineau and the India Question bibliography
East India trade bibliography
Useful comparisons
The East India Companies
The Dutch East India Company
Dutch East India Company (wikipedia)
Dutch East India Company archives
The Danish East India company
The digital archive of the Swedish East India Company 1731-1813
4 comments on “Christmas requests: British East India Company”
Oh WOW. many Many thanks.
I’m pleased you’re pleased.
I was a wee bit disappointed actually; it seems to be one of those subjects online that gets lots of short encyclopaedia type overviews of the entire history of the company, but it’s very hard to find more detail (certainly before the 19th century), which is a bit surprising: it’s an important subject and colonial history generally is a pretty big theme on the web. I thought the 4000th (!! that’ll be 400th…) anniversary (especially as it coincided with the millennium!) might have generated more than it did. And I was very disappointed on looking at the Collect Britain site that the BL decided to put online only later materials (lovely though they are; I presume it does have earlier stuff in its holdings? At least I couldn’t find anything earlier). Boo.
And folks, if I missed anything important, let me know.
John Keay’s The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company provides a full account, even of the time before the 19th century. He was engaged by the Company to write it, and had unlimited access to its archives.
I found it heavy going, but well worth the effort.
If I was looking for more on this, I’d read Huw Bowen’s book on the EIC.