"When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis Trilogy, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium. Most surprising of all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history were swept up in...

The East India Company haunts the collective psyche of the modern world. Heady images of sailing ships laden with spices, tea, and porcelain on the high seas jostle with darker images of opium, oppression, and greed. In form, like a modern multinational; in action, like an expansionist nation state -- the East India Company was a uniquely British creation which took on the world. Established by Royal Charter in 1600, the East India Company through...

In Merchants & Empire Cathy Matson examines the attitudes and practices of New York's wholesale merchants, a group that operated beneath the gaze of imperial traders yet made up as much as 80 percent of the mercantile community. She finds them an interesting, if opportunistic, lot - quick to flout authority to their own advantage, but also willing to enjoy the benefits of British imperial protection when it suited them. These merchants succeeded in...