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The Honourable Company: a History of the English East India Company

John Keay

3.71 · Rating details · 533 ratings · 62 reviews

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 ran ...more

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Paperback, 476 pages

Published October 11th 1993 by HarperCollins (first published January 1st 1991)

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Nov 30, 2016 Jan-Maat added it

Shelves: 20th-century, early-modern-history, india

A relaxed narrative history of the English East India Company from the beginnings until between 1800 and 1830ish, reading it I thought I was going to write that it takes a while to get going, but by the time I finished I realised that it never did, rather like a stately Eastindiaman at anchor at Greenhithe it just bobbed up and down in the Thames a little in the swells of the current.

Non-British people may be surprised, even indignant, that the British Empire doesn't really feature in UK educati A relaxed narrative history of the English East India Company from the beginnings until between 1800 and 1830ish, reading it I thought I was going to write that it takes a while to get going, but by the time I finished I realised that it never did, rather like a stately Eastindiaman at anchor at Greenhithe it just bobbed up and down in the Thames a little in the swells of the current.

Non-British people may be surprised, even indignant, that the British Empire doesn't really feature in UK education, I believe some children learn about the end of the slave trade (apparently because it is not controversial, a sentiment which would have surprised William Wilberforce) although certainly not it seems about its beginnings or how non-freedom in various forms - indentured labour forced migrations and so on lingered on and on, anyhow much here was unfamiliar to me. It was slightly curious how much the company struggled at first to get going, yet by the end of the seventeenth century it had managed to turn a number of corners and accounted for a substantial part of British customs revenues, perhaps that simply indicates quite how massive and exciting the profits from trade in Far eastern trade were. Early problems of the East India Company included: people dying because, the merchants were attracted to settling on malarial and occasionally tiger infested islands, extensive fighting and mutual torturing of Dutch merchants and locals, and not grasping the implications of supply and demand - the early voyages succeeded in crashing the price of pepper in London (the Dutch had the same problem - but they resorted to burning pepper on the docks to reduce their supply).

A more fundamental problem was that nobody in the East wanted to buy the products that the English brought out with them - various qualities of heavy woollen cloth excited no interest, which meant a heavy trade deficit as England had to export silver to buy the produce of the East, first spices, later cottons, then tea. One of the corners turned was moving into local trade in Asia - buying Indian cotton cloth to sell in Indonesia for spices, which could be sold in China. All this was revolutionised by the development of the opium trade. The flip side of the story was the development of English and European markets for Asian produce, eventually cotton cloth came to revolutionise the underwear of the later Stuarts - who abandoned the study woollens of their ancestors, and (green) tea became the must have fashionable commodity of the later eighteenth century. Naturally the presence of Europeans had a distorting effect on local economies - settlements of weavers and dyers grew up around the Company's forts and ports to provide the cotton cloth it needed for onward trade.

Keay's narrative moves forward and backwards through time as he moves from one trade depot to another, people dead in one chapter emerge alive in the next heading towards their doom - the effect is a little odd at times. This is a narrative history and other analytical stories don't get told here, only hinted at, those changing tastes, the financial and economic implications of the trade both in Britain and later India, the ecology - all this trade was essentially for plant products (Chinese porcelain was only taken on board as ballast for the tea).

This was a fearful trade - frequently the company maintained depots and trade links, not because they were profitable but out of the fear that if they pulled out the Dutch or the French would move in. Equally the Company's monopoly position had to be defended against 'interlopers' (English merchants who were not members of the East India Company) as these were themselves wealthy people, the government became involved in broadening membership and participation in the Company, government warships were also required to fight pirates and the French. Fearful also because the company Directors located up to a year's journey time away in Ledenhall street, London, from the activities of their merchants encouraged their employees to report at length on each others activities. Leading to both endless back biting and copious paperwork.

Curiously the Company was quite warlike from the start,curiously because much of the manpower tended to die of disease shortly after arriving in the East, although this aspect was revolutionised by the French who exported regular infantry units to India and whose devastating musket fire inspired a generation of ambitious schemers many Britons amongst them. In the early days raiding and piracy were seemingly as important as trade in muscling in on commercial opportunities, to the detriment of the Portuguese and Spanish.

Keay cites Chaudhari on the comic-opera (among many other elements) of Clive in India, I could have done with more of the comic-opera of Clive - perhaps in time somebody will produce a west-end musical on this theme. Warren Hastings emerges as an interesting figure although as usual I remained in the dark about on what grounds precisely Edmund Burke pressed charges against him, perhaps along with the role of the Bengal peasant in generating revenue not only for the company but also for the government of Pitt the younger - which required an annual lump sum from the company in addition to customs dues.

The book rather ebbs away with the development of the idea of free trade and the growth of Singapore, free trade of course was never free as such, but existed in a tight framework of British commercial and increasingly political dominance, backed up as China was to find out in the final resort by fleets and regiments of infantry, trade might be free, but terms of trade were highly unequal. The lack of a clear ending to the book, I suppose might be deliberate to underline how the East India Company petered out or perhaps the author lost the last of the winds in his sails much as earlier he imagined various historians dying of exhaustion in the archives of the old India office before completing anything. ...more

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Jan 19, 2014 Mansoor Azam rated it liked it

Shelves: just-bought

The book is about East India Company it's origins and the story of it's transaction into one of the most powerful business empires of it's times.
The initial history is lucidly explained in detail and is made interesting. The author has researched well and takes us step by step logically, historically explaining the rational behind every step and quoting historical documents n memoirs.
There were many things which I found new. Which are not part of our folklore and history here in the subcontine ...more

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Dec 29, 2016 Melissa McShane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, politics, history, india

This long and surprisingly readable book about the English East India Company took me several months to work my way through, mainly because I was reading it for research and kept stopping to take notes. Keay's research is thorough, and he manages to make this history about the personalities instead of just dates and major exports--remarkable in a book that's arguably all about dates and major exports. There's maybe too much glossing over of names, in fact; I found myself having to go back to rem ...more

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Sep 02, 2007 Vik rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed, india, history

I would disagree with some of the other reviewers on the matter of dryness, I have read much drier history books. I found it mostly a very good read thanks to the use of entertaining anecdotes but because it does try to encompass so much into a tiny space there are a lot of facts and background information introduced to cover a each chapter.

The author tries to mitigate this by breaking the chapters into different different time periods and regions. This can confuse as the times will necessarily ...more

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May 13, 2018 Patricia rated it really liked it

Shelves: asian-colonialism, south-asia, southeast-asia, european-history, oceanic-travel-shipwrecks, 15-18c-european-history, exploration, india

A dense book that will require slow and careful reading of those chapters that have the most relevance to you, but this is only because author Keay is not a glib author but one who chooses his phrasing carefully. One of my favorite paragraphs referring to the wealth of material available on the subject is an example: "But it seems that for every researcher who with light and expectant tread enters London's India Office Library and Records, another doyen of scholarship ends his days slumped behin A dense book that will require slow and careful reading of those chapters that have the most relevance to you, but this is only because author Keay is not a glib author but one who chooses his phrasing carefully. One of my favorite paragraphs referring to the wealth of material available on the subject is an example: "But it seems that for every researcher who with light and expectant tread enters London's India Office Library and Records, another doyen of scholarship ends his days slumped behind a lectern in mid-sentence. There are enough incomplete histories of the Company to justify a health warning" (p. 169)

The above requires my confession that I only read about 5/6 of the book and skipped over several of the detailed "back home in England" parts that covered the Company's internal politics. My interests lay more with the 'what' and 'how' of the Company's activities abroad, although this did mean I had to make several U-turns to understand the 'why's when curiosity got the better of me. (Folded in the pages of my copy was an article from the December 17, 2011 Economist entitled "The Company that ruled the wars: As state-backed firms once again become forces in global business, we ask what they can learn from the greatest of them all.")

But the content any reader will be searching for will clearly be found--this is a comprehensive, detail, name and date-rich account of the Company's history in Asia richly embellished with the lively and colorful stories of the various sojourners, captains, readers (junior members of the Company), governors and sundry others that represented the Company abroad.

The book is organized into four sections, each covering a set time period (1600-1640, 1640-1710, 1710-1760 and 1760-1820), each with its own Bibliography containing virtually all the major works of note for each topic. Seven clearly drawn maps are key and conveniently located in the front for easy reference if Bendjarmasin's location (southeast Borneo) doesn't immediately ring a bell.

The last few pages on Raffles and Singapore are especially relevant given 2019 is the 200th anniversary of Singapore's acquisition by Raffles as it includes the not-very-well-known tale of why Penang, at one time the front runner to be England's Southeast Asian coastal port, didn't make the final cut.

Not light reading, and not a quick read, but a well-researched, well-written history written for historians and others interested in a history of the region seen from the eyes of the English East India Company. A book that has earned permanent space on my shelves. ...more

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Jan 11, 2020 Sajith Kumar rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: colonialism, history

The English East India Company arrived in India as a trading concern and set up shop here to control its trade between India and Europe and to China and the Spice Islands. The Mughals kept them under a tight leash. However, the empire tottered after the death of Aurangzeb and a state of anarchy set in. As the provincial governors assumed sovereignty, the British saw their chance when the empire was tearing itself apart. They took sides with the contestants and extracted privileges when their pro The English East India Company arrived in India as a trading concern and set up shop here to control its trade between India and Europe and to China and the Spice Islands. The Mughals kept them under a tight leash. However, the empire tottered after the death of Aurangzeb and a state of anarchy set in. As the provincial governors assumed sovereignty, the British saw their chance when the empire was tearing itself apart. They took sides with the contestants and extracted privileges when their protégés were hauled to the throne. It was then only a matter of time when the Company assumed the onus of ruling large areas of the Indian subcontinent by itself. When the Company eventually overstepped the limits of Indian tolerance with its expansionist and ill-timed social reform policies, the Mutiny of 1857 broke out. The British prevailed in the bloodbath that ensued, but at a great cost in human lives. Piqued at the inept handling of a delicate situation the Crown took over the administration and the company itself was dissolved in 1873. This book tells the story of the East India Company, except for about the last few decades of its life. John Keay is a British historian, journalist, radio presenter and lecturer specializing in popular histories of India, the Far East and China. He is a prolific author with some twenty-five titles to his credit.

The book dispels the myth that the East India Company was formed solely to deal with Indian spices. The Company was established in 1600 as The Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies. In the seventeenth century, the words ‘India’ and ‘Indies’ had no precise geographical connotation. They were used indiscriminately to describe anywhere east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Azores. This is in effect the whole of the world except Europe, Africa and the Asian landmass. Except pepper, all major spices came from the archipelago now known as Indonesia. The Coromandel and Gujarat coasts were linked to Spice Islands for trade. They exchanged Indian cotton pieces for Indonesian spices. The Gujarati merchant marine then sailed annually to the Red Sea ports to sell the spices. It was to exploit these trade links, not to open up India’s internal trade or to gain a political toehold on the subcontinent that the Company first directed its ships to India. They had only British woolen clothes to sell, which did not find any takers in Asia. This necessitated export of bullion from England to pay for spices. This situation was not conducive to two-way commerce and not at all sustainable in the long run. Keay thus ensures the moral necessity of the British to devise some novel ways to stay in business.

The chapters on the development of the Company’s operations in India stresses on the hesitation of the Company’s officials to venture into anything not connected with trade. They were fearful of the cost, risks and delay, making them reluctant warriors. Each journey was separately financed, accounted and dividends paid. Instead of getting a market for English broadcloth which was used in India as horse blankets, India’s cotton caught on in England. In a way, the East India business generated the London money market just as it did the London docks. Money was converted to Spanish silver rials, which was the only designation accepted in India. This caused a huge drain on precious metals in England. By the 1680s, the Company exported 240,000 kilograms of silver and 7,000 kilograms of gold to the Mughals. As trade improved, the economies of the two regions became more intertwined. The manufacturing industries of Gujarat, the Tamil country and Bengal had come to depend on European trade of cotton and silk.

Another revelation of Keay’s work is the details of the hard working environment of the Company on the home front. Its monopoly was deeply resented by rivals who wanted to enter the trade. Some did it covertly, earning the sobriquet ‘interlopers’. The company also lost a substantial portion of its business to the private trade of its own employees. They could influence the crown only if they had had money to loan him or to extend other favours. Its monopoly was ended before a century of its beginning of operations. Another company competed with it for a while, but the two were amalgamated soon enough to create a united company. Around this time, the Mughal economy became dependent on the company’s bullion export. The Mughals did not employ a navy worth its name and the English presence remained the Mughals’ only guarantee of a safe passage to its shipping in the Arabian Sea which was infested with European pirates, some of whom had been in the employ of the European companies.

The book describes the chaotic political climate of Northern India with the weakening of Mughal authority. The company was forced to ensure the defence of its establishments with a private militia. Slowly, this transformed into regular troops. The company’s journey to the position of power in India began with a ‘farman’ (decree) issued by the Mughal Emperor Farrukhsiyar in 1717. This waived the customs dues in favour of an annual lump sum payment of Rs. 3,000. Villages adjacent to the British Presidency settlements were handed over to them. The company was allowed to mint coins out of its bullion imported to India. An extradition treaty was signed to apprehend and hand over criminals escaping to Company territory. The most outrageous concession was that all goods carried under a pass (dastak) issued by the company’s officials could be transported freely in the empire without interference from royal officials or attracting taxes. The British company officials also had to contend with rival European companies whose battles at home spilled over to Indian soil. However, so long as Mughal authority lasted, it acted as an effective brake on the rivalries of the European companies. But once it crumbled, there would be nothing to stop every European quarrel from spreading to the trading settlements and then to the hinterland. Keay also explains why Indian troops appeared to stand no chance in a frontal battle with the Europeans. The ideas of drill, arms and tactics had scarcely progressed in India after Akbar while in Europe they had undergone steady refinement and development in a host of campaigns. Warfare in India was still a sport and in Europe it was a science. The pathetic state of Indian military tactics was seen in 1746 at the Siege of Madras. The Nawab of Carnatic’s soldiers were scattered by the numerically smaller French forces. It seemed that every French gun had the firepower of thirty Indian guns and every French trooper could comfortably account for ten ill-armed Mughal mercenaries.

It was in the eighteenth century that the company began its brutal exploitation of India. The Mughal emperor’s farman enabled them to collect revenues from territories ceded to them. This source of income helped stop the import of gold and silver to cover the heavily unbalanced payments. China stood firm a little longer, but the company found opium to be much in demand if it could be clandestinely transported there. The opium producers in India thus became the unwitting pawns in a cruel trade game. Proceeds from the sale of opium were used to buy tea which took England by storm, but it wasn’t contained in a tea cup. The company fought two actual wars with China for ‘establishing’ its right to sell the narcotic to Chinese people against the wishes of its emperor. The company was also oblivious to the fate of the people living in their territories in India. A famine raged in Bengal in 1770 in which up to a third of the total population perished. The company utilized this unsettling time to enhance the land revenue to ten per cent. Any relief measures were unheard of.

While it is true that the company was indifferent to the well-being of Indians living under their protection, readers are not to be deluded with the thought that the Mughals, their governors and vassals were any better. The author comments on the miserable existence of the Tamil people under the Nawab of Arcot – “The Tamil-speaking Hindus were already in a state of abject subjugation. No ruler, from the Nawab down to the pettiest poligar (feudal chief) seems to have been of Tamil birth. Nor were any of his troops. While the Tamil peasant took cover amongst the palmyras, the armies, including those of the English and French, which trampled his paddy and commandeered his buffalo, were composed of Punjabis, Afghans, Rajputs, Pathans and Marathas. All were outsiders, adventurers, mercenaries who when not fighting one another were employed in exacting tribute in the guise of revenue. Government was simply a euphemism for oppression under the imperial sanction of Mughal authority” (p.292)

The book’s readability is rather mediocre, as the text is peppered with extensive quotes from contemporary sources with strange spellings and arcane constructs. The final chapters of the book lack a clear sense of direction as if the author is at a loss on how to finish the story. Narratives of a large part of far-eastern trade carried out by the company are crammed into a few pages. The book is interesting only in those areas where it deals with India. At all other places, it pours out travels and fighting in search of trade with disconcerting precision. Almost half of the text is devoted to the company officials’ sea voyages in search of material for trade. It is adorned with an excellent and comprehensive bibliography. Typically Indian comparisons are also seen like this one – “the Mughal Empire crumbled like a crushed pappadam”.

The book is recommended only to serious readers of history.
...more

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Oct 06, 2015 Julie Bozza rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Julie by: Don Jansen

Shelves: from-bruce, india, britain, history, research-india

Necessarily epic, this is not a book to be started lightly! However, the lovely writing style makes this history feel more like a story, and the occasional chuckle over an absurdity would do Elizabeth Bennet proud.

♦

Awesome Christmas present from Mr B.

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Jun 10, 2012 Lauren Albert rated it really liked it

Shelves: history-asia, history-british

How did a profit-making company become in essence a huge government bureaucracy? That's the story that Keay tells, and tells engagingly with a sense of humor. The one flaw, for me, was his chronological jumps when he moved to a new place of trade or settlement. It could get confusing--he would start the chapter and then later talk about something that showed he was narrating something earlier in time than events he'd already covered in other chapters. Then I wasn't sure what time period he was d ...more

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Oct 29, 2011 Dilip rated it it was ok

Shelves: history, indian-non-fiction

What starts off as an exciting early history of British trade in Asia quickly peters into an overdrawn blow-by-blow account of the history of the company's many struggles. Every small character is given pages of description while major characters like Clive, Hastings and Tipu are given short shrift. Finally, the author seems to have just run out of patience. What else could explain the opium wars of china being consigned to the epilogue. There is somewhere a wonderful book to be written and read ...more

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Jan 16, 2015 Christine Barth rated it liked it

I am so proud I finished this book. It was much longer and smarter and more detailed than what I normally read. Started it a loooong time ago.
Anyway, although there are a lot of names and dates in it, there are also many intriguing tales of personalities and powers and intrigue.
Basically, I was amazed at how bungling the company was and how it lasted so long and is credited with conquering India. Seems like all of the events very much could have gone the other way.
Fascinating subject!

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Feb 06, 2008 Jason Hough rated it really liked it

Fascinating history of the British East India Company. Almost every page is a novel waiting to be written!

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Feb 09, 2021 Nathan Albright rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: challenge-2021

This book is an interesting case of an author seeking to be fair and just to a company that has received a great deal of blame. If one reads anything about Indian history, especially told from the point of view of an Indian, the East India Company is viewed with undisguised horror, as a group of pushy Europeans who came from a country that was despised and looked down by the cultured Mogul elites and then ultimately made itself indispensable to them, and then usurped their authority and ended up This book is an interesting case of an author seeking to be fair and just to a company that has received a great deal of blame. If one reads anything about Indian history, especially told from the point of view of an Indian, the East India Company is viewed with undisguised horror, as a group of pushy Europeans who came from a country that was despised and looked down by the cultured Mogul elites and then ultimately made itself indispensable to them, and then usurped their authority and ended up taking over the whole joint, much to the horror of Indians then and since then. In telling that story, the author seeks to do justice to the bravery and sacrifice of the British merchants themselves who struggled to establish a foothold in India and in other places around the Indian Ocean and even as far from India as St. Helena. This story is admittedly a bit of a slow burn, in that the reader has some idea where the author is going to end up, but he does not skip over the "boring" parts or think of the East India Company's transformation as inevitable or forget the complexity of its holdings and its behavior from the outset.

This book is about 450 pages long, and has four parts and twenty chapters. The book begins with a list of illustrations and maps, maps, acknowledgments, an author's note, and a preface, all of which give praise to those who have studied the East India Company before. After that the first part of the book looks at the quiet beginnings of the East India Company from 1600-1640 (I), looking at the Spice Island voyages of James Lancaster (1), the Spice Race with the Netherlands (2), the battle over the Arabian Sea (3), and English efforts in the Cape, Surat, and Persia (4). After that comes a section discussing the fluctuating fortunes of the company between 1640 and 1710 (II), with a look at recession, famine, and war (5), Bombay and Surat as seats of power and trade (6), the fierce engagements in Calcutta and Bengal (8), dealing with interlopers and rivals (9), and the eastern approaches at Madras, Siam, and China (10). This is followed by a discussion of how the East India Company became a territorial power (III), gaining the farman for Bengal (11), setting up lesser outposts (12) of effrontery, dealing with competition in Bombay (13), developing armies in Madras (14), and discussing the famous 200 days in Bengal including Plessy (15). The fourth and final part discussed the parting of the ways of the East India Company between 1760 and 1820 (IV), including the look towards Southeast Asia and the China trade (16), the transfer of power with London (17), Hasting's loyalty in India (18), the tea trade as opposed to free trade (19), and an epilogue dealing with Singapore (20), after which there is a bibliography and an index.

The English/British East India Company has a sprawling and massive history that the author admits would take life times to read, much less write about. And this book is about as thorough a one-volume history that one is likely to see. That isn't to say that this book covers all of the aspects of the history of the company that interest me, but it does do a reasonably good job at looking at the connection between the East India Company, trade, imperialism, and competition from the beginning. The author also gives a fair look at the many failures of the company to establish various trade ports as well as the lack of success that many of the British efforts of increasing their power in India, and there is definitely some fascinating discussion here about the way that Britain increased its naval and military power in gradual ways that did not immediately bear fruit before England's economic strength in the eighteenth century in the collapse of Mogul and Maratha authority led to the triumph of the people on the spot in India like Clive through suborning authorities, at great expense to the company and decreasing profitability. And the book even manages to end on a satisfactory note, demonstrating that the importance of trade in at least some parts carried on after the East India Company became rentiers in India. ...more

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Feb 07, 2021 Greg Schroeder rated it really liked it

In The Honourable Company, John Keay takes a long hard look at the "Company of Adventurers Trading in the East Indies". His account is frank and direct, taking to task many of his predecessors and many of the myths of the mighty East India Company. He pulls into his narrative both the personalities of the Company in the "field", i.e. outside of London, from scattered attempts at settlement in South Africa, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, to the much better known adventures on the Indian subco ...more

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May 19, 2018 Subramaniam Avinash rated it liked it

I love history and I found the subject matter extremely fascinating. The writing, though, is a little dense. Fortunately, every time things started to get a little too dry for my liking, the book came up with something thrilling to renew my interest in it. Read this book only if you are deeply, and I mean really deeply, interested in the history of the world's first multinational corporation. Stick with it, and it'll take you on a voyage from England to America to Netherlands to Belgium to Austr ...more

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Oct 01, 2017 Gokul Gr rated it liked it

I think 3 stars will be a bit too low, 3.5 will be the right rating. The book does not follow correct chronological order but relies on anecdotes to tell the story. The story of the transition of a mercantile company to one of the largest empire in the world should have focussed more on the political and administrative factors that underpinned the change, which is sorely missing. The author instead focussed on individual stories. Besides, I found the prose to be very boring. Really struggled to ...more

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Jun 14, 2019 Tom rated it it was ok

This book tries to cover a lot of ground, not entirely successfully. In the interest of detail, we sacrifice narrative flow; apparently in the interests of accessibility we sacrifice much depth of financial analysis. A bit rambling and discursive for me. I think it might have benefited hugely from a lot of the material being relegated to footnotes or endnotes; keeping track of every player from major to minor, along with a dozen or more locations (frequently changing hands and/or names) is very ...more

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Jun 27, 2019 Chumps rated it liked it · review of another edition

An interesting read but a lot of detail (places, people,alliances etc) which made for a difficult read! Probably better suited to a book rather than on a kindle.

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Aug 21, 2017 Christine Kenney rated it it was ok

I could see this being a riveting documentary documentary and the Keay does manage to sneak in some amusing quips.

This felt like skiing down a black diamond when I was looking for more of a green circle run. My comprehension was around 30% and found this worked better than Tylenol PM for bedtime reading. The main issues for me were a lack of foundation of European/Mughal history and a command for regional geography so it was difficult to keep track of all of the actors and military-mercantile v ...more

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Jul 23, 2014 Ilinca rated it liked it

I guess I only have myself to blame for feeling disappointed at the end of it. While this was a thoroughly researched and well written book, it was not the book I thought it would be.
This is basically an account of what the East India Company did in order to gain a foothold in India and a few more places. What this account sadly lacks is the other side of the story: what the Company's trade meant to the Western world, and England in particular. Cotton, spices, tea, coffee, opium, there are all t ...more

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Jan 05, 2020 Bill Tress rated it really liked it

Shelves: history

After finishing, “A history of the World’s Most Liberal City” and “Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600 – 1900”, this book was the obvious addition to the trilogy. The theme in all these books is rich merchants of so-called civilized Countries sending out ships and men to exploit the wealth and natural resources of the so-called uncivilized Countries therefore “The honorable Company” was the perfect extension of this study. It is the story of the English East India Company, a com After finishing, “A history of the World’s Most Liberal City” and “Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600 – 1900”, this book was the obvious addition to the trilogy. The theme in all these books is rich merchants of so-called civilized Countries sending out ships and men to exploit the wealth and natural resources of the so-called uncivilized Countries therefore “The honorable Company” was the perfect extension of this study. It is the story of the English East India Company, a company that became the greatest trading company of all time. 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 is no British Empire.
John Keay delivers a very thorough look at the English East India Company (the Company) from its origins to its demise and assimilation as a Department of the British government. The thoroughness of the research performed by Keay is why this book was such a tedious and difficult reading experience. Keavy did not chronically build his history of The Company; he moves forward and backward with his tale and this causes confusion for his readers. He also uses Indian names and phrases to describe people and places and this technique confuses the reader even further. These things make for a slow plodding experience for the reader, yet, the reader gets what he bargained for, namely, a history based on primary sources describing The Company and its two-hundred-year history.
Many interesting things emanate from these pages, among them was the fact that the Far East had more developed societies than Western Europe and in 1613 much bigger cities than London. Spices were the original sought out products, yet, many other products were discovered during the trade, for instance coffee, and tea and tea become the largest import from China. During this time of conquest and trade, many worldwide events impacted The Company. The Seven-year War and the American Revolution influenced the Company’s activities in India, by syphoning off resources and even soldiers. Keay did a great job of describing the events leading to and the tragedy of the fall of Calcutta and the story of “the Black Hole” of Calcutta. Keay spent substantial portions of his text describing the history of trade and conquest of India, maybe too much, yet, it is China that becomes the biggest trading partner of The Company. Great cities like Singapore and Hong Kong are built by the Company and these great Cities impact world trade today. Names like Lord Robert Clive, Warren Hastings and Thomas Raffles are not well known, yet, their courage and vision built the Company.
As stated previously this was at times a difficult study, Keay packs this volume with names, dates and events that sometimes read like a text book, yet, it delivers so much history that the reader will come away with a better understanding of World history during the period of 1600 to 1800, and, how this trading Company built the British Empire.
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Dec 08, 2019 David Hill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

The book covers the period of roughly 1600 to 1813, or the start of British involvement in India to the founding of Singapore and the end of the company's monopoly status. I found the book interesting on two fronts: it gives me some Indian history (from the particular viewpoint of the British) and a view of unbridled capitalism.

I had already learned that India before the Raj wasn't a single nation under a single government, but a collection of sometimes related, sometimes not related, often warr ...more

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Jul 05, 2019 Caro rated it liked it

Shelves: india

Four stars for the author's style: he's witty and knows how to tell a good story. For example, because it could take up to a year for letters to go back and forth between the Company in London and the employees in India, Burma, and beyond, wars continued until well after peace was declared back home (once the news was received, everyone just laid down their arms as far as I can tell). Similarly, letters with strict instructions arrived long after the situation had changed, many of the principals ...more

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Jul 15, 2018 Nate Rabe rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, india, pakistan, asia

An excellent book. I came to it because I'm doing some research for a book on modern South Asia and wanted information on the East India Company's involvement in the opium/tea trade. I didn't get much about that but that doesn't mean this isn't good history. Keay is an excellent popular historian (his book on Mughal India is recommended) and I did come away with a deep and new appreciation for just how long and difficult the Company's history was. And that it was not only about India but rather ...more

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Mar 23, 2019 Emilie rated it liked it

The charm of this history is that so much of it is told in the words of its protagonists, capturing a real flavour of their time. It's extensively researched and, I think, fair - there's no presumption of English superiority, which was a relief, and Keay is quick to skewer the legends of his Great Men. For all that, though, it is mostly a history of Great (and lesser) Men - women barely feature in the narrative, and never in their own words; nor, although they are treated with respect by the aut ...more

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Oct 08, 2018 Terry Quirke rated it really liked it

Keay tells the story of how a merchants company seeking trade ending up 2 centuries later to be the birth of the British Raj in India. Keay only touches upon the start of the Raj, as this story is all about the East India Company and how it grew from several trading enclaves into a governing administration. Keay tells the early story in great detail but seems to rush the last few chapters as the tale draws to its end; this is also the time when all the politicking, double dealing, wars and finan ...more

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Oct 12, 2018 A.C. Cobble rated it it was amazing

Well-researched, well-told, interesting history of one of the most influential companies on the planet. I'm reading this as research on a fiction novel, and the truth is stranger... I'm not sure the hefty profits would be worth the inevitable death ;) Keay does an excellent job teasing out the most interesting bits of the company's record and shares it with a flourish. If you want to know about the East India Company, early European sea trade, England's involvement in India / China, then this is ...more

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Feb 10, 2021 Ballerina rated it it was amazing

Excellent book on a complicated company history. Started from the beginnings and went right up to the company being dissolved with all the battles and internal disputes that surrounded it. I read this book twice just to really understand it all, but I found it just as interesting the 2nd time round. Worth buying for anyone interested in this famous old company.

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Jun 26, 2017 John Kaye rated it really liked it

A good read, but sometimes the chronology gets a bit difficult to follow. And the book is heavily weighted to the earlier years. Some more coverage of the issues of the later eighteenth century would have been welcome.

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Aug 12, 2020 Austen Mance rated it liked it

Good book, but perhaps too much detail - 200 pages would cover everything (instead of 450). The description of the process by which the East India Company went from a commercial to an imperial venture was fascinating though.

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Jun 05, 2017 Yishen Kuik rated it liked it

Somewhat tedious in its detail

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About John Keay

John Keay

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John Stanley Melville Keay FRGS is an English journalist and author specialising in writing popular histories about India and the Far East, often with a particular focus on their colonisation and exploration by Europeans.

John Keay is the author of about 20 books, all factual, mostly historical, and largely to do with Asia, exploration or Scotland. His first book stayed in print for thirty years; m ...more