United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Birth Anna Leonowens
Anna Harriett Emma Edwards (later AL ), educator and writer, was born in the East India Company barracks at Ahmednagar in India.
AL lied about her age, making herself three years younger.
Bristowe, William Syer. Louis and The King of Siam. Chatto and Windus, 1976.
26
Dow, Leslie Smith. Anna Leonowens: A Life Beyond The King and I. Pottersfield, 1991.
136
Dow, Leslie Smith. Anna Leonowens: A Life Beyond The King and I. Pottersfield, 1991.
1
Bristowe, William Syer. Louis and The King of Siam. Chatto and Windus, 1976.
26
Characters Mary Elizabeth Braddon
A dashing East India Company officer bilks the heir to a baronetcy of his fortune by kidnapping him and substituting the murderous son of a gamekeeper, who is in turn murdered by the family of...
Cultural formation Harriet Tytler
She was brought up in Anglo-Indian or British India in a Christian and probably white family. She had an itinerant childhood, her family following wherever her father was posted in his military service for the...
Employer John Stuart Mill
In May 1823, his father's influence won JSM a position as a clerk for the East India Company . He worked there until his retirement in 1858, when the Crown took control of the company...
Family and Intimate relationships Sarah Scott
Robert , baptised in 1717, became a sea captain employed by the East India Company .
Rizzo, Betty, and Sarah Scott. “Introduction”. The History of Sir George Ellison, University Press of Kentucky, 1996, p. ix - xlv.
ix, x
Family and Intimate relationships Jemima Kindersley
Her only son (who bore the same name as his father) became the first person to translate from Tamil into English. He worked for the East India Company , and inscribed to his mother a...
Family and Intimate relationships Frances Power Cobbe
FPC was brought up in frequent contact with the children of her uncle Thomas , a lieutenant in the Bengal army who had contracted marriage in a Muslim ceremony with an Indian woman. Such marriages...
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Lamb
Charles Lamb , brother of Mary , retired from the office of the East India Company on grounds of ill-health (no concept of retirement for any other reason was recognised).
Burton, Sarah. A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb. Viking, 2003.
333
Family and Intimate relationships Anna Steele
The apparently disastrous story of AS 's marriage remains untold. Her husband was a son of Sir Scudamore Steele, an army officer with the East India Company and said to have been a man of...
Family and Intimate relationships Hannah Cowley
HC 's husband left England for India, having been appointed a military captain with the East India Company .
Link, Frederick M., and Hannah Cowley. “Introduction”. The Plays of Hannah Cowley, Garland, 1979, p. v - xlxx.
v
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Lamb
From the age of fourteen Charles Lamb worked as a clerk, first in a merchant's counting-house, then for the South Sea Company and finally, for thirty-three years from April 1792 when he was seventeen, for...
Family and Intimate relationships Julia Strachey
JS 's father, Oliver Strachey , was the sixth son of Sir Richard and Jane Maria, Lady Strachey . He attended Eton , then Balliol College, Oxford ; the family home was in London...
Family and Intimate relationships William Makepeace Thackeray
His father, Richmond Thackeray , was a secretary to the board of revenue in the East India Company at Calcutta. He had another child outside his marriage, a daughter by an Indian woman. He died...
Family and Intimate relationships Anne Grant
One of AG 's sons, Duncan, received a commision in the service of the East India Company . This necessitated a trip to London in January 1805 for AG to arrange his affairs.
Paston, George, and George Paston. “Mrs. Grant of Laggan”. Little Memoirs of the Eighteenth Century, E. P. Dutton, 1901, pp. 237 - 96.
269
Family and Intimate relationships Charlotte Maria Tucker
CMT 's father, Henry St George Tucker , lived in India from the age of fourteen to that of thirty-nine. A prominent citizen of Bengal, with expertise in Indian affairs and finance, he eventually became...

Timeline

24 September 1600
A meeting of eighty London merchants was held as a consequence of which, in 1600, the East India Company received its charter as the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies
1668
The East India Company acquired Bombay, the present-day Mumbai (which had come to the British crown in 1662 as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza ).
June 1757
Robert Clive 's forces defeated the Nawab of Bengal at the battle of Plassey, consolidating UK power on the subcontinent.
12 August 1765
The East India Company took over the direct administration of revenues from Bengal. The young Mughal emperor, Shah Alam, dismissed his tax-collectors and gave their powers to officers of the company, in which...
After June 1773
Over protest from the House of Lords , the India Regulating Act enacted the first direct British government intervention in the administration of India.
28 November 1773
The first tea ship reached Boston, Massachusetts, since the passing of the Tea Act; this provoked violent resistance including the Boston tea-party of 16 December.
1780-1785
During these years, East India Company records show that more than one-third of British men who made a will in India bequeathed everything to their Indian wives or among their mixed-race families. In fifty years...
By January 1786
Charles Wilkins ' translation from Sanskrit of the Bhagvat Gita was published at the particular desire of Warren Hastings and by the authority of the court of directors of the East India Company .
1791
Anglo-Indians (that is males of mixed race) were precluded from employment as officers in the Civil, Military or Marine services of the [East India] Company .
1793
William Wilberforce led an unsuccessful attempt to get the East India Company 's statutes charter amended, to commit it to furthering the work of missionaries.
1801
Sarah Shade dictated and published her autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of Sarah Shade, which relates her life, marriages, and other experience in colonial India.
1805
The East India Company established a training college for civil servants.
1805-1830
During these years the proportion of British men who made their wills in India and left their property to Indian wives or mixed-race families dropped from one in four to one in six, according to...
By 19 October 1814
The Episcopal Church in India was founded, with Thomas Fanshaw Middleton installed as the subcontinent's first Anglican bishop.
1816
John Reeves , a tea inspector with the East India Company , sent the first wisteria plant from China to England.