Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables
- Figures
- Maps
- Abbreviations
- Notes on dates, contemporaneous spellings, currency, and weights
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The international economy and the East India trade
- 2 A formal theoretical model of the East India Company's trade
- 3 The structure of early trade and the pattern of commercial settlements in Asia
- 4 The evolution of the Company's trading system: operation and policy 1660–1760
- 5 Long-term trends and fluctuations 1660–1760
- 6 Politics of trade
- 7 Markets, merchants, and the Company
- 8 The export of treasure and the monetary system
- 9 The structure of country trade in Asia
- 10 Export of European commodities
- 11 The Company and the Indian textile industry
- 12 The Company's trade in textiles
- 13 Pepper
- 14 Import of bulk goods
- 15 Raw silk
- 16 Coffee
- 17 Imports from China
- 18 Financial results
- 19 Conclusion
- APPENDICES
- General glossary
- Bibliography
- Short titles cited in the reference notes
- Notes
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables
- Figures
- Maps
- Abbreviations
- Notes on dates, contemporaneous spellings, currency, and weights
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The international economy and the East India trade
- 2 A formal theoretical model of the East India Company's trade
- 3 The structure of early trade and the pattern of commercial settlements in Asia
- 4 The evolution of the Company's trading system: operation and policy 1660–1760
- 5 Long-term trends and fluctuations 1660–1760
- 6 Politics of trade
- 7 Markets, merchants, and the Company
- 8 The export of treasure and the monetary system
- 9 The structure of country trade in Asia
- 10 Export of European commodities
- 11 The Company and the Indian textile industry
- 12 The Company's trade in textiles
- 13 Pepper
- 14 Import of bulk goods
- 15 Raw silk
- 16 Coffee
- 17 Imports from China
- 18 Financial results
- 19 Conclusion
- APPENDICES
- General glossary
- Bibliography
- Short titles cited in the reference notes
- Notes
- Index
Summary
For the economic historian the archives of the English East India Company provide one of the most comprehensive sources of information for the reconstruction of the commercial history of Europe and Asia in the pre-modern age. The Company's officials, both in London and in the East Indies, were prolific writers of letters, memoranda, and diaries. These qualitative records contain almost all the secret deliberations of the decision-makers, and their inner considerations on commercial and other matters illuminate the entire economic and political environment in which the Company operated at home and in Asian countries. When the English historical sources are supplemented by the comparable material in the archives of the Dutch organisation, the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, the result is the creation of a gigantic repository of knowledge on the European expansion in Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The survival of the East India Company's account books also enables us to undertake a complete quantitative analysis of its activities and to build up long time-series on the total volume and value of trade, prices of goods, fluctuations in currency values, prices of gold and silver, transport costs, and many other economic variables. But in a way the vast scale of the Company's operations and the weight of documentation have so far been a deterrent rather than a positive gift to the historians in analysing its pre-territorial activities. In spite of the obvious importance of the subject, there is no single work that deals with the whole history of the Company during the period from 1660 to 1760.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company1660-1760, pp. xv - xviiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1978