East Indies Trade
EAST INDIES TRADE
EAST INDIES TRADE. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, East Indies commerce spanned the Atlantic and Indian oceans, including such points of trade as Salem, Massachsuetts; the Cape of Good Hope; Mauritius; Madras; Bombay; Calcutta; and Canton. Ships traveling between these ports carried provisions such as wine, tea, cotton, iron, ginseng, furs, naval supplies, and specie. The end of the East India Company's monopoly in 1813 and the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1814 increased competition until it was sometimes cheaper to buy Indian goods in London. By 1840 American merchants were importing Calcutta goods from Manchester, England, and shipping cloth from Lowell, Massachusetts, to India.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Keay, John. The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company. New York: MacMillan, 1994.
Kenneth WigginsPorter/s. b.
See alsoColonial Commerce ; Dutch West India Company ; East India Company, English ; Trade, Foreign ; Trading Companies .