Today we're going to be talking about the very early years of the English in India.

In the late 16th century a group of London merchants petitioned Elizabeth I to let them

create a company to support English trade in Asia and in 1600 Elizabeth granted a charter

to the English East India Company for 15 years which James I turned into rights and perpetuity.

Now often in our telling of this story we then fast forward to the 18th century and the victory

of the by then British East India Company over the Bengali is in 1757 at the Battle of Plassy

or the so-called Indian Mutiny a century later and we don't dwell on the early beginnings.

But there's a very different story to tell here.

One that makes clear how the success of the English presence in India in the 17th century

was a very near-run thing and that the company then operated in a very different way.

And my guest today will help me explore it.

I'm delighted to introduce Dr David Vivas, Levy Hume, early career fellow at Queen Mary University

of London.

He is the author of the Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600 to 1750 which was

published in 2020.

So he's the perfect person to speak to about the early years of the British in India and

where so much of the time we've been focused on a later story and we've got things kind

of wrong about that early period.

Because it's too, David, isn't it?

The historians have often worked with a model that's explained the British Empire's success

kind of looking at it from the end by emphasising its power.

So talking about strong naval force and aggressive trading policies and robust fortifications,

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