Private Fortunes and Company Profits in the India Trade in the 18th Century

Book excerpt: This collection of essays, two of which appear in print for the first time, documents the late Holden Furber’s discovery that private ventures, most manifestly deployed in the ’country trade’ between Asian ports, played a major role in the European expansion in India before the age of empire. Furber vividly describes how individual entrepreneurs used their positions with East India Companies to build personal fortunes, and how these private endeavours, for which the English East India Company gave more latitude, ultimately worked to the benefit of British power in India. One of the continuing strengths of his work remains its use of archival sources, not only British, but also other archival records, in particular those of The Netherlands and Scandinavia. The essays also highlight important connections, between chartered and ’clandestine’ trade, and piracy; of multinational private investments in the increasingly dominant East India Company; and between the trade of the Indian Ocean and Pacific worlds.