East India Adventure, by Wilson MacArthur, illustrated by Reginals Perrott, © 1945, Lollins, London & Glascow. Presumed First Edition, no other years listed.

Handsome book with bright blue boards, gold, color plate frontispiece. Illlustrated with line drawings.

"This is a tale of the very early days of the East India Company. Kit Hawkins is such a boy as may well have lived in these stirring times; but apart from him, the characters in the story are historical."

For those not familiar with the British East India Company, here's a bit of background...

The Company was founded as The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies & was popularly known as John Company.  It was founded by a Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I.  Over the next 250 years, it became one of the most powerful commercial enterprises of its time. Its business was centred on India, where it also acquired auxiliary governmental and military functions which came to overshadow its commercial activities.

Based in Leadenhall Street, London, the company influenced all continents: it presided over the creation of British India, founded Hong Kong and Singapore, employed Captain Kidd to combat pirates, established the cultivation of tea in India, held Napoleon and more.  Its products were the subject of the Boston Tea Party.

Its shipyards provided the model for St. Petersburg, elements of its administration survive in Indian bureaucracy, and its corporate structure was the most successful early example of a joint stock company.  There are many accomplishements, but most it is noted for its true status as a monopoly.

Deprived of its trade monopoly in 1813, the company wound up as a trading enterprise.  In 1858 the Company lost its administrative functions to the British government following the Sepoy Mutiny of the preceding year.  When the Company was finally dissolved in 1874, The Times reported, "it accomplished a work such as in the whole history of the human race no other company ever attempted and as such is ever likely to attempt in the years to come."

Measures approx 7.5 x 5 inches, 352 pages.

Condition