K.N.Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760 (Cambridge University Press, 1978)

Extract

This scholarly and wide-ranging history of the East India Company's trade covers a scope not frequently found in studies in the area. In contrast to those who focus on the activities of a few Europeans amongst the teeming population of Asia, Dr. Chaudhuri has brought into meaningful relationship relevant movements and events of both continents. Such an approach enables him to illuminate the views and actions of contemporaries. Those of us accustomed to the description of the arbitrary extortions of despotic oriental governments may well take he.ed of the observation that ‘a trading organization that voluntarily offered 10,000 P.Sterling to its sovereign equated a payment of 500 P.Sterling to .an Asian prince with political extortion’ (p. 461).