Thursday, October 26, 2017

2017 read #5: The Honourable Company by John Keay.

The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company by John Keay
460 pages
Published 1991
Read from October 16 to October 26
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

A competent and thorough history, albeit one plagued by a tendency (shared by many such wide-ranging overviews) to assume that particular persons and events are general knowledge. It also tells the story of the East India Company almost entirely from the British point of view -- understandable, perhaps, given its date of publication (and the paucity of written primary sources from Subcontinental sources), but frustrating to a modern reader.