The Honourable Company

A history of the English East India company.During 200 years the East India Company grew from a loose association of Elizabethan tradesmen into «the grandest society of merchants in the universe». As a commercial enterprise it came to control half the world's trade and as a political entity it administered an embryonic empire. Without it there would have been no British India and no British Empire. In a tapestry ranging from Southern Africa to north-west America, and from the reign of Elizabeth I to that of Victoria, bizarre locations and roguish personality abound. From Bombay to Singapore and Hong Kong the political geography of today is, in some respects, the result of…