Comments on: Christmas requests: British East India Company

By: Chris Williams

Chris Williams — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 12:44:26 +0000

If I was looking for more on this, I’d read Huw Bowen’s book on the EIC.

By: Simon

Simon — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:04:59 +0000

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.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:51:01 +0000

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.

By: sepoy

sepoy — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 01:32:20 +0000

Oh WOW. many Many thanks.