The East India Company Paperback – 19 January 2020

An in depth look at the East India Company with an unbiased review of their existence. The chronological order of historic events makes this book all the more engaging.

Good background on the formation of the east India company. Written in an easy to read format with timelines and how the company was able to grow so powerful. It also presents the politics of India, Britain and within the company.

This book is truly terrible. The quality of both the writing and the analysis is poor. It reads like a high-school essay written by a kid steeped in eurocentrism.

A good read. It flows well and reads like a narrative more than a history book. They cover a lot of ground in a limited number of pages. Any time you buy one of these concise histories you need to remember that's what it is-concise. If you like what you read and want to learn more there are many good books available but it stands on it's own if you want a solid overview of the subject. I find that if I read these in clusters of related subject I get a reasonable overview of history in a pleasurable read.The East India Company (EIC) has an amazing and infamous history. They basically owned and operated India as an asset of the business until they were taken over by the British government, who didn't do much more for the Indian peoples than the EIC. At times I felt like I was reading historical fiction of what the Medellin Cartel would have looked like in the past. The EIC had a standing army and navy, bought off/keep afloat the British government through bribes and taxes. Britain even went to war twice with China to force that country to buy opium, which was grown in India and exported around the world. Like a drug cartel (yes there were other products from India, textiles, spices, rice) they forced people to grow and supply the opium just survive at the cost of reduced food production. That, in turn, contributed to massive deaths in famine and disease. Amazing! I really didn't see any "silver lining" in their story.There is a lot of high level information in this book and well worth the read.

Great information on The East India Company. It shows how a company can lead most of the trading in certain areas of the world.

The intro read really strange with a hypothetical anecdote about people being multicultural. The line about “black girls wearing saris” and an “Indian girl laughing at them” just struck me wrong, but was trying to make a point that I guess works. But the first page of chapter 1 talks about the English being defeated by the Spanish Armada without citation. As far as I can tell this is a really bad mistake that you don’t want to get wrong. I think I need my money back.