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Article: The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- March 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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John Keay has written a history as fast-paced and gripping as any novel. Using language as rich and colorful as the merchants, seadogs, and soldiers who people his narrative, Keay recounts the near-mythic exploits of those who built a trading colossus and won the Jewel in the Crown - India.
Keay's account underscores the cliche that the British Empire was the product of absent-mindedness. He finds the origins of that world-state not in the North American settlements but with the Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies, a group chartered by Elizabeth I on the last day of the sixteenth century. The East India Company hoped to break the Portuguese ...