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The English East India Company was the greatest trading power of all time, and was the most famous - and infamous - of the companies established by the great European powers. The Company's offices stretched from the streets of London to as far away as China, Australia, India, and the American colonies. For more than two centuries the Company dominated trade, raised armies, demolished nations, and established one of the most far-flung empires the world has ever known. Without it there would have been no British Empire.
The Honourable Company is the history of that great first multinational, filled with pirates, charlatans, brigands, mercenaries, kings, queens, sultans, shahs, and thousands of shrewd traders. Growing from a loose association of Elizabethan tradesmen into the "Grandest Society of Merchants in the Universe," it controlled half the world's trade as a commercial enterprise. A tenth of the British exchequer's total revenue derived from customs receipts from the Company's imports; its armed force exceeded those of most sovereign states.
With novelistic sweep and vigor, John Keay reconstructs this epic of expansionist endeavor from the journals and records of the Company's employees. In a panorama ranging from southern Africa to northwest America and from the reign of Elizabeth I to that of Victoria, exotic locations and roguish personalities abound. Empire builders like Robert Clive prove no more principled than interlopers like Thomas Pitt or pirates like Captain Kidd. For every successful foundation like Madras or Calcutta there are a host of forgotten fiascoes in the South China Sea and the Indonesian archipelago.
From Bombay to Singapore to Hong Kong, today's political geography is undeniably the creation of the Company.
John Keay's The Honourable Company is wonderfully written and filled with exciting stories one after another. This is history as lived.
