William Dalrymple

How a humiliating defeat secured Britain its empire

After the Amboyna massacre of 1623, the newly-fledged East India Company conceded the spice trade to the Dutch – to focus instead on the riches of India

Sir Thomas Smythe – perhaps the greatest businessman in Elizabethan England. [Alamy]
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  • Adventurers: The Improbable Rise of the East India Company, 1550-1650

    David Howarth

    Yale, pp. 400, £25

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