This is the story of the English East India Company's factory, or trading post, in Japan during the early years of the Edo period. Although the factory survived for only 10 years, it left an unrivalled archive documenting British struggles to establish a viable international trade.

The English factory in Japan, 1613-1623

Farrington, Anthony

British Library

The British merchants who began trading with Asia in the late 1500s found a sophisticated and thriving trading community. Goods were manufactured and traded on a scale never seen in Europe, and Britain discovered a wealth of products imported from these lands including silks, porcelain, tea, herbs and spices, wallpaper, and furniture. The East India Company was founded in 1600 to consolidate and exploit these markets, and over its history grew from a loose association of Elizabethan tradesmen into 'the grandest society of merchants in the universe.' As a commercial enterprise it came to control half the world's trade and as a political entity it administered an embryonic empire. Without it there would have been no British India and no British Empire.
This highly illustrated new book examines the history of trading with Asia, drawing on the extensive collections of The British Library, the prime holder of the documentary legacy of the East India Company. The book shows the human cost of creating this early 'global market' and how the British trading companies' activities displayed some of the worst aspects of colonialism. On the positive side, the book presents the importance of Asia in the making of Europe, celebrates the cultural exchange which took place through trade in Asia, and examines the continuing influence of Asian culture on British life today.

Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia

Business & Money

Economics

The British Library

Seventeenth-century Siam was a remarkably open society, where at the great port city of Ayutthaya the English found themselves interacting and competing not only with their hosts but also with Persians, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesians, Portuguese, French and Dutch. The English Factory in Siam 1612-1685 contains more than 700 documents from the archives of the English East India Company, making it an important new source for the history of Southeast Asia.
The surviving documents range from business correspondence, commodity accounts and ships' journals to more intimate letters home, bitter denunciations of rivals and vicious pamphleteering. The cast of characters includes Siamese kings and high officials, East India Company servants, renegade Englishmen, and the amazing Constantine Phaulkon, a former Company employee of Greek origin who became a Siamese minister, invited a French army into Siam, and was executed in a palace coup in 1688. This two-volume text is sure to become an invaluable reference tool for historical research.

The English Factory in Siam, 1612-1685

History

Pombejra, Dhiravat Na

Asia

Indian General Service Medal 1895: Casualty Roll

Engineering & Transportation

Engineering

The London Stamp Exchange Ltd.

Great new literary short fiction collection for readers and writers.

Glimmer Train Stories, #45

Literature & Fiction

Nissen, Thisbe

O'Malley, Thomas

Tran, Vu

Dowd, Siobhan

McCafferty, Jane

Muñoz, Manuel

Cates, David

Swanson-Davies, Linda

Yang, June Unjoo

Trevor, Doug

Bullock, Susanna

Carlsen, Ioanna

Nyaira, Sandra

Burmeister-Brown, editors Susan

Short Stories & Anthologies

Glimmer Train Pr Inc

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Books by Farrington, Anthony