Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia
Anthony Farrington previews a new exhibition on Asia, Britain and the role of the East India Company.
Four hundred years ago this year, four English ships arrived in the Javanese port of Bantam. The following summer they sailed for home laden with a cargo of pepper. They left behind a small force to form a permanent trading post (or factory). This encounter, less than two years after Queen Elizabeth had granted a charter to the Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies, was the beginning of the British presence in the Indian Ocean and the Far East.
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