The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
pickers and theeves
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
Almost immediately they trapped and overpowered an enormous Portuguese carrack. She was so laden with Indian piece goods, mostly white calicoes and the famous batiks or ‘pintadoes’ of southern India, that it took six days to unload her.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
the bare commercial realities are more pronounced.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
Their preoccupation had been with the Spice Islands and their pepper requirements had been more than met by the tangled vines of Kerala’s forests.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
In return for the promise of ‘a faire Portugal maiden’ Ala-uddin Shah connived at this move to the extent of detaining a Portuguese emissary who might have alerted his fellow countrymen.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
the Court of Committees when faced with such a juicy proposal allowed no reservations about the proposers’ nationality to cloud their judgement.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
‘The Amboina Massacre’.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
The captain of the Globe, Anthony Hippon, had died as soon as the ship reached Patani.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
It was thanks to the incorrigible pioneering of the Company’s servants that the British Empire acquired its peculiarly diffuse character.