Books in the Worlds of the East India Company series

Biography and business history of wealthy British merchant in India reveals much about the nineteenth-century Empire.

Describes the voyages of East India Company's ships to India and China in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, discussing the nature of trade and the involvement of the Company's ships in maritime warfare.

An overview of the East India Company's policy towards religion throughout its period of rule in India.

Examines how and why the East India Company was transformed from a commercial trading company to an institution of government, and then abolished.

A study of how Napoleon's very real and very serious threat to British India was countered.

Demonstrates, through an investigation of material culture, the complexity of the relationship between rulers and ruled in early nineteenth-century British India.

This book examines the silk-processing activities of the English East India Company in Bengal.

Discusses how Britain replicated the "Singapore model" - the use of imported "industrious" Chinese labour - to other parts of its empire, with varying degrees of success.

Shows how Rainier skillfully coped with the immense difficulties of maintaining British naval power in a huge area fraught with difficult circumstances.When war broke out with France in 1793, there immediately arose the threat of a renewed French challenge to British supremacy in India. This security problem was compounded in 1795 when the French overran the Netherlands and the extremely valuable Dutch trade routes and Dutch colonies, including the Cape of Good Hope and what is now Indonesia, fell under French control. The task of securing British interests in the East was a formidable one: the distanceswere huge, communication with London could take years, there were problems marshalling resources, and fine diplomatic skills were needed to keep independent rulers on the British side and to ensure full co-operation from the EastIndia Company. The person charged with overseeing this formidable task was Admiral Peter Rainier (1741-1808), commander of the Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean and the East from 1794 to 1805. This book discusses the enormous difficulties Rainier faced. It outlines his career, explaining how he carried out his role with exceptional skill; how he succeeded in securing British interests in the East - whilst avoiding the need to fight a major battle; how he enhanced Britain's commanding position at sea; and how, additionally, in co-operation with the Governor-General, Richard Wellesley, he further advanced Britain's position in India itself. Peter Ward completed a PhD in naval history at the University of Exeter after a career in international personnel management, working for Californian high technology companies in the United States, Hong Kong and Europe.

Outlines the East India's Company's infiltration of India from its inception to the late eighteenth century.Empires have usually been founded by charismatic, egoistic warriors or power-hungry states and peoples, sometimes spurred on by a sense of religious mission. So how was it that the nineteenth-century British Indian Raj was so different? Arising, initially, from the militant policies and actions of a bunch of London merchants chartered as the English East India Company by Queen Elizabeth in 1600, for one hundred and fifty years they had generally pursued apeaceful and thereby profitable trade in the India, recognized by local Indian princes as mutually beneficial. Yet from the 1740s, Company men began to leave the counting house for the parade ground, fighting against the French and the Indian princes over the next forty years until they stood upon the threshold of succeeding the declining Mughul Empire as the next hegamon of India. This book roots its explanation of this phenomenon in the evidence ofthe words and thoughts of the major, and not-so major, players, as revealed in the rich archives of the early Raj. Public dispatches from the Company's servants in India to their masters in London contain elaborate justificationsand records of debates in its councils for the policies (grand strategies) adopted to deal with the challenges created by the unstable political developments of the time. Thousands of surviving private letters between Britons in India and the homeland reveal powerful underlying currents of ambition, cupidity and jealousy and how they impacted on political manoeuvring and the development of policy at both ends. This book shows why the Company became involved in the military and political penetration of India and provides a political and military narrative of the Company's involvement in the wars with France and with several Indian powers. G. J. Bryant, who has a Ph.D. fromKing's College London, has written extensively on the British military experience in eighteenth-century India.

Shows how it was not just the London elite and City merchants who had connections to British India.Over the long eighteenth century, thousands of men and women from the English provinces lived and worked in the East Indies. Yet the provincial commitment of human, financial and social capital to ventures in the East Indies has largely been disregarded. This book challenges the widely held view that British rule in India was driven primarily by the interests of London merchants and national political elites. Based on extensive original research, including the piecing together of biographical fragments of over 400 men and women from the Cumbrian counties, setting them in their family, social, financial and cultural networks, and outlining the details of their sojourns in the East,the book portrays a provincial world heavily implicated in the East Indies. It discusses how provincial people's encounter with the East Indies was driven by the desire of middling folk and gentry to promote, sustain, and, in some cases, revive fortunes, position and influence in their own provincial milieu, and thereby demonstrates how provincial preoccupations shaped the East Indies, and how East Indies experiences shaped provincial life. KaySaville-Smith is Director of the Centre for Research, Evaluation and Social Assessment in Wellington, New Zealand. She completed her doctorate at the University of Lancaster.