Summary of Alex Von Tunzelmann's Indian Summer

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Sample Book Insights:

#1 In 1577, the Mughal Empire was in the process of uniting India. The English population was starving and miserable. The country was politically and religiously divided, and had spent much of the sixteenth century at war with itself.

#2 In the 1570s, the English began to feel confident and expansive. In 1577, the philosopher John Dee conjured up the first image of a Brytish Impire, a empire that would include India.

#3 The history of empire was not always so cosy between the British and the Indians. After the English republic fell and the monarchy was restored, King Charles II gave the East India Company a series of rights without responsibilities. This was pure capitalism, unleashed for the first time in history.

#4 The East India Company, a private corporation, ruled India from the mid-1700s until the 1850s, when regulation began to creep in. The British government eventually decided that an empire based on trade was in poor taste, and drew up a new charter that restricted the Company’s trade activities.