Tracing the beginnings of the British colonial enterprise in South Asia and the Middle East, From the Company to the Canal brings together key texts from the era of the privately owned British East India Company through the crises that led to the company’s takeover by the Crown in 1858. It ends with the momentous opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Archives of Empire provides a powerfully revealing documentary history of nineteenth-century British imperialism from the Indian subcontinent to the Suez Canal. Barbara Harlow and Mia Carter have selected a diverse range of texts that track the debates over imperialism in the ranks of the military, the corridors of political power, the halls of royal geographic and missionary societies, the boardrooms of trading companies, the editorial offices of major newspapers, and far-flung parts of the empire itself.
Documents including mercantile company charters, parliamentary records, explorers’ accounts, and political cartoons are complemented by timelines, maps, and bibliographies. Unique resources for teachers and students, these books reveal the complexities of nineteenth-century colonialism and emphasize its enduring relevance to the ‘global markets’ and imperialist conflicts of the twenty-first century.