The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company

As the sixteenth century progressed, Britain gained mastery over naval design, building fast and maneuverable galleons that could threaten Spain’s warships. The decisive showdown came in 1588, when the Spanish monarch decided to invade Britain to put down the upstart nation. The effort failed disastrously, with Britain’s defeat of the Spanish armad

With so much at stake there were inevitably those who would attempt to steal a march on their competitors. ‘If you engage in trade, and your letters arrive together with others,’ wrote Paolo da Certaldo in a merchants’ handbook of the mid-fourteenth century, always keep in mind to read yours first before passing on the others. And if your letters a

and led to the unpopular and deeply resented annexations of Satara in 1848, Jhansi in 1853 and Nagpur in 1854; but Avadh was an acquisition on a far different scale from anything yet attempted, and was practiced on “a faithful and unresisting ally” without even the nominal justification of the absence of a recognised heir, and with only the “fictit

Before he set off to Hyderabad, Shore had briefed William Kirkpatrick to stick to the existing Triple Alliance, signed four years earlier in 1790, which bound the Marathas,