Over the course of 200 years, the East India Company developed from a loose association of Elizabethan traders into "the most grandiose society of merchants in the entire world." As a trading venture, it came to control half of the world's trade and, as a political entity, governed an early empire. Without it, there would be no British India and no British Empire. On a canvas that stretches from South Africa to the northwest of America and from the era of Elizabeth I to that of Victoria, filled with strange locations and unruly personalities. From Bombay to Singapore and Hong Kong, today's political geography is, in some cases, a result of the Company. This book examines the history of the East India Company.