Access is available on and off campus to current McMaster University students, faculty and staff.
Coverage: 1600 to 1947
Includes primary source documents that trace the history of the East India Company which, at its peak, controlled over a quarter of the world's trade. Containing royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings and reports of expeditions, among other document types, this collection charts the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1599 to 1947.
Topics covered include:
- Administrative and ecclesiastical appointments
- Agriculture
- Charters and the Company’s relationship to the English/British Crown
- Courts and legal affairs, including legislation
- Diplomacy, treaties and ambassadorial expeditions
- Finance and debt
- The machinery of government
- Pay and pensions for Company servants and their families
- Railways
- Trade
- Early voyages to Japan and the Spice Islands (Indonesia)
- Warfare and military matters
This collection is a key resource for scholarship of British imperial history, maritime trade, global commerce, and the history of the first great multinational corporation.