review of Huw Bowen et al. 'Monsoon Traders' for AHAM

RECENSÕES 39 H. V. Bowen, John McAleer and Robert Blyth, Monsoon Traders. The maritime world of the East India Company, London, Scala Publishers, 2011, 192 pp. ISBN: 9781857596755. As befits a Scala publication, this is a sumptuously illustrated book... More

RECENSÕES 39 H. V. Bowen, John McAleer and Robert Blyth, Monsoon Traders. The maritime world of the East India Company, London, Scala Publishers, 2011, 192 pp. ISBN: 9781857596755. As befits a Scala publication, this is a sumptuously illustrated book that reads almost as if it were a museum catalogue. Given that the chief contributor to this volume, John McAleer, was at the time curator at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, this choice of format becomes easier to understand. Textually, the book is an amalgam of narratives focusing on the development of the East India Company from its beginnings right through to its “demise and its legacies, c. 1830-70” and transversal thematic essays on topics like encounters, diplomacy, conflict and conquest. Referencing is relatively light and in the form of endnotes, and there is a lightness and fleetingness to the text which, along with the relatively short nature of this book (under 200 pages), makes it more appealing to the genera Less