The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company

By the sixteenth century it was clear enough that Europe’s comparative advantage over other Eurasian civilizations lay in its precocious development of marine activity. The simultaneous growth of long-distance trade with the Americas and India was one sign of this. Another was the rise of the huge cod fishery in the North Atlantic,

In the South China Sea or near Japan, the Portuguese were much more cautious. Here they found a niche as long-distance traders, convenient middlemen for a Ming Empire that disliked overseas activity by its own subjects and refused direct commercial relations with Japan.

Two important consequences flowed from the limited degree of political integration that the main ancien régime states had achieved. Firstly, they usually lacked the means to exert real control over the activities of their subjects and citizens in the extra-European world. Their colonial policies were a battleground where mercantile lobbies, aristoc

But though the ‘sea states’ coped most successfully with the economic conditions of the period, their strength and importance should not be exaggerated by hindsight. Much of their overseas commercial activity was risky and unprofitable,27 as the misfortunes of the Royal Africa Company, the South Seas Company and the Dutch West India and East India