The East India Company played a major part in the growth of Britain's empire. Its functions went beyond those of a trading concern and merged military force, government and colonization with economic expansion. This six-volume work covers the history of the Company from its origins in 1599-1600 to its abolition in the wake of the Indian Mutiny of 1857. This comprehensive collection contains reprinted first-hand sources, scholarly surveys, and thematically arranged collections of recent journal articles, offering scholarly coverage of the Company's history, and presenting recent interpretations of its development.

Contents:
Volumes 1-5. The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading with China, 1635-1834 H.B. Morse
Volume 6. The Crucial Years of Early Anglo-Chinese Relations, 1750-1800 E.H. Pritchard
Volume 7. Instructions of the East India Company to Lord Macartney on his Embassy to China and his reports to the Company, 1792-2 E.H. Pritchard from the Journal of the Asiatic Society 1938, and Lord Macartney's Embassy to China from the Original Chinese Documents J.L. Cranmer-Byng from the Journal of Oriental Studies 1957-8
Volume 8. An Embassy to China J.L. Cranmer-Byng from Lord Macartney's Journal 1793-4
Volume 9. British Trade and the Opening of China 1800-1842 Michael Greenberg, reprinted with the supplemental article Opium Smoking in China J. Spence from Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (c.1970) from Wakeman and Grant
Volume 10. Notes of Proceedings and Occurences during the British Embassy to Peking in 1816 by Sir George Staunton