The East India Company
The History of the British Empire's Most Famous Mercantile Company
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Narrated by:
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William Crockett
About this listen
The British East India Company served as one of the key players in the formation of the British Empire. From its origins as a trading company struggling to keep up with its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish competitors to its tenure as the ruling authority of the Indian subcontinent to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company serves as a lens through which to explore the much larger economic and social forces that shaped the formation of a global British Empire. As a private company that became a non-state global power in its own right, the East India Company also serves as a cautionary tale all too relevant to the modern world’s current political and economic situation.On its most basic level, the East India Company played an essential part in the development of long-distance trade between Britain and Asia. The trade in textiles, ceramics, tea, and other goods brought a huge influx of capital into the British economy. This not only fueled the Industrial Revolution, but also created a demand for luxury items amongst the middle classes. The economic growth provided by the East India Company was one factor in Britain’s ascendancy from a middling regional power to the most powerful nation on the planet. The profits generated by the East India Company also created incentive for other European powers to follow its lead, which led to three centuries of competition for colonies around the world. This process went well beyond Asia to affect most of the planet, including Africa and the Middle East.
Beyond its obvious influence in areas like trade and commerce, the East India Company also served as a point of cultural contact between Western Europeans, South Asians, and East Asians. Quintessentially British practices such as tea drinking were made possible by East India Company trade. The products and cultural practices traveling back and forth on East India Company ships from one continent to another also reconfigured the way societies around the globe viewed sexuality, gender, class, and labor. On a much darker level, the East India Company fueled white supremacy and European concepts of Orientalism (See Said, Orientalism).
In the same vein, as a joint stock company, the East India Company left behind meticulous documentation of its economic exchanges and policies. Descriptions of military endeavors, encounters with indigenous peoples, and codes of conduct for employees also give contemporary researchers insight into the cultural perspectives of those who governed the company. Moreover, the East India Company’s policies and personnel were the subject of frequent commentaries in newspapers, parliamentary debates, and other publicly available sources. Historians have used these detailed records to reconstruct both the day-to-day operations and the larger historical arc of the company. In addition, the sources created by the East India Company provide insight into the far less well-documented histories of the people the East India Company encountered, traded with, and ultimately conquered.
One of the major reasons that the East India Company remains the subject of intense interest is that the consequences of its influence remain visible in India, Britain, and other parts of the world to this day. While the British Crown eventually replaced the East India Company as the governing authority of India, the systems of production they had established remained intact. More than half a century after India declared independence from the British Empire, the economic and cultural effects of this colonial system of production remained apparent. The disparities in wealth and power between the global North and the global South may not stem from the East India Company alone, but the company played an indisputable role in imperial process.
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In Unfinished Empire, he marshals his gifts to deliver a monumental one-volume history of Britain's imperium - a work that is sure to stand as the most authoritative, most compelling treatment of the subject for a generation.
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Perfect
- By gogojimmy on 01-27-15
By: John Darwin
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A People’s History of the World
- From the Stone Age to the New Millennium
- By: Chris Harman
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 29 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Chris Harman describes the shape and course of human history as a narrative of ordinary people forming and re-forming complex societies in pursuit of common human goals. Interacting with the forces of technological change as well as the impact of powerful individuals and revolutionary ideas, these societies have engendered events familiar to every schoolchild-from the empires of antiquity to the world wars of the 20th century. In a bravura conclusion, Chris Harman exposes the reductive complacency of contemporary capitalism.
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Oh God avoid
- By Robert on 03-28-18
By: Chris Harman
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Scottish History: A Captivating Guide to the History of Scotland
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: David Patton
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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This captivating history audiobook takes you on a remarkable journey from the earliest extensive historical record of Scotland through the long struggle toward nationhood, all the way to postwar Scotland.
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Written for a male audience
- By Anonymous User on 12-11-19
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A Short History of the World
- By: Christopher Lascelles
- Narrated by: Guy Bethell
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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While this book explores world history from the big bang to the present day, it principally covers key people, events, and empires since the dawn of the first civilizations in and around 3500 BC. Epic in scope but refreshingly concise, A Short History of the World is an excellent place to start to bring your historical knowledge up to scratch.
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Apt introduction to World's History
- By rpluss on 12-22-16
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Sicily: Three Thousand Years of Human History
- By: Sandra Benjamin
- Narrated by: Fred Filbrich
- Length: 16 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Emigration of people from Sicily often overshadows the importance of the people who immigrated to the island through the centuries. These have included several who became Sicily's rulers, along with Jews, Ligurians, and Albanians. Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Hohenstaufens, Spaniards, Bourbons, the Savoy Kingdom of Italy and the modern era have all held sway, and left lasting influences on the island's culture and architecture.
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Surprisingly compelling!
- By P. Strayer on 08-25-12
By: Sandra Benjamin
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Brazil: A Biography
- By: Lilia M. Schwarcz, Heloisa M. Starling
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 28 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For many Americans, Brazil is a land of contradictions: vast natural resources and entrenched corruption; extraordinary wealth and grinding poverty; beautiful beaches and violence-torn favelas. Brazil occupies a vivid place in the American imagination, and yet it remains largely unknown. In an extraordinary journey that spans 500 years, from European colonization to the 2016 Summer Olympics, Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling's Brazil offers a rich, dramatic history of this complex country.
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Not great; not many English alternatives
- By Seth House on 07-02-19
By: Lilia M. Schwarcz, and others
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A Brief History of Ukraine
- A Singular People Within the Crucible of Empires
- By: Dominic Haynes
- Narrated by: Jordan Vogt
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Ukraine is a geographically diverse country with the unfortunate fate of being sandwiched between empires. Though this is frequently explored no further than the global conflicts of the 20th century, in reality, Ukraine’s struggle for self-determination has far deeper roots than most people realize. See the splendor of the Kyivan Rus, gallop with the Golden Horde across the Ukrainian steppe, encounter the legendary Cossacks, and witness the terror of the tsars. From the Romans to the Mongols to the Russians, Ukraine has seen it all and remained uniquely Ukrainian through it all.
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Excellent quick listen
- By Thomas J Anderson on 12-14-23
By: Dominic Haynes
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World History
- Ancient History, United States History, European, Native American, Russian, Chinese, Asian, Indian and Australian History, Wars Including World War 1 and 2
- By: Adam Brown
- Narrated by: Sarah Moore
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Have you ever wondered how the world got to where it is today? Get ready to discover the rich history of our planet. You will be astonished to learn about some of the events that have occurred! Subjects include: Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, The Roman Empire, Constantine and Christianity, India, Ancient Korea, Chinese Dynasties, Napoleonic Europe, Foundation of USA, The 1812 War, Australia and Wars, World War I, World War II, The Ottoman Empire, Greece and North Africa, The Diem Regime, Pearl Harbor, and much more!
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Truly a fine book
- By Zlady Neri on 09-08-19
By: Adam Brown
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The Transatlantic Slave Trade: The History and Legacy of the System that Brought Slaves to the New World
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: David Otey
- Length: 1 hr and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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"The deck, that is the floor of their rooms, was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the flux, that it resembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture a situation more dreadful or disgusting. Numbers of the slaves having fainted, they were carried upon deck where several of them died and the rest with great difficulty were restored. It had nearly proved fatal to me also." - Dr. Alexander Falconbridge, an 18th century British surgeon
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Good initial overview.
- By wayne kurtz on 11-28-24
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A Concise History of Italy
- By: Christopher Duggan
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Since its formation in 1861, Italy has struggled to develop an effective political system and a secure sense of national identity. Christopher Duggan's acclaimed introduction charts the country's history from the fall of the Roman Empire in the West to the present day, and surveys the difficulties Italy has faced during the last two centuries in creating a unified country. Duggan successfully weaves together political, economic, social and cultural history, and stresses the alternation between materialist and idealist programs for forging a nation-state.
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Concise indeed
- By nikex on 03-22-21
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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
- By: Walter Rodney, Angela Y. Davis - foreword
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the West and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the repercussions of European colonialism in Africa remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.
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A Superb must read for everyone
- By Joy on 04-16-19
By: Walter Rodney, and others
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The Dutch East India Company: A History from Beginning to End
- By: Hourly History
- Narrated by: Bridger Conklin
- Length: 1 hr
- Unabridged
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Once valued at close to seven trillion dollars by today’s standards, the Dutch East India Company, formed in 1602, became the world’s first multinational corporation. In the nearly 200-year reign of their empire at sea, the Dutch East India Company amassed unfathomable fortunes, laid the foundation of the modern globalized world, and built monopolies that controlled the economy of the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and the East Indies.
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Absolutely awesome book.
- By Aleks on 10-18-18
By: Hourly History
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1619
- Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy
- By: James Horn
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle of summer 1619, two events occurred within a few weeks of each other that would profoundly shape the course of history. In the newly built church at Jamestown, the General Assembly - the first gathering of a representative governing body in America - came together. A few weeks later, a battered privateer entered the Chesapeake Bay carrying the first African slaves to land on mainland English America.
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Brilliant!
- By HonestOpin on 05-06-19
By: James Horn
What listeners say about The East India Company
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- J. C. Ryan
- 04-08-17
Mechanical Rendition
I was seeking a basic understanding of the history of the East India Company. Unfortunately the narration sounded like it was computer generated. On the plus side, the book is short and I got the base information I was looking for without the narrator putting me to sleep.
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- Ellen H. Story
- 08-04-18
Don't bother
This was so general that it was a waste of time. The narration has so many mispronunciations that it was really annoying.
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2 people found this helpful
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- JesiB
- 04-29-23
Cliff notes version
This is a very general overview of a dynasty. I would recommend it for a young reader or a road trip to a neighboring town.
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- Scrushy
- 08-28-17
Good but too short
Would you listen to The East India Company again? Why?
No, but it whetted my appetite to learn more about the British Empire in general, and the East India Company specifically.
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- Richard Selby
- 12-25-16
I want more than this!
What disappointed you about The East India Company?
How can you possibly sum up the history of the greatest trading company the world has ever known in 90 minutes.
Very thin on detail, and a rather lacklustre narrator
Would you ever listen to anything by Charles River Editors again?
Not knowlingly
What didn’t you like about William Crockett’s performance?
Stumbling narration with American mispronounciation of British English
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The East India Company?
I would never offer this version
Any additional comments?
Can I get a refund?
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- Jessica
- 07-24-18
Awful, truly awful
Don’t waste your time. The reader is dreadful and somehow the story of a fascinating company and era was reduce to a few hours of mind numbing boredom
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1 person found this helpful