East India Company An English trading company
granted a charter by Elizabeth I in 1600. Launched with
£30,000 capital and a monopoly of trade to the Far East,
the company dispatched its first fleet to the East in 1601,
commanded by Sir James Lancaster (died 1618) who in
1591–94 had pioneered the route and established the fea-
sibility of challenging the Portuguese trade monopoly.
Over the next two decades other fleets steadily followed,
both to India and to the Spice Islands; many of those who
sailed with those fleets left accounts of their voyages that
were published in Samuel Purchas’s sequel to HAKLUYT’s
collections of travel narratives (Purchas His Pilgrimes, 4
vols, 1625).
The company’s embassy in 1607 to the Great Mogul
led in 1612 to the establishment of its first “factory” (trad-
ing post) at Surat on India’s northwest coast, in the teeth
of Portuguese opposition. In 1615–19 the company cov-
ered the costs of Sir Thomas Roe (1581–1644) as first of-
ficial British ambassador to the Great Mogul. An attempt
to set up a factory in Japan was short-lived, though the
company established factories in Java and the Spice Is-
lands. After conflict with the Dutch (see DUTCH EAST INDIA
COMPANY) in the 1620s the company concentrated its
trading activities on India. The decline of the Mughal em-
pire and wars with France in the 17th and 18th centuries
enabled it to accumulate extensive and wealthy territories
in India, where it survived until 1873.
Many of the journals originally published in Purchas
His Pilgrimes have been republished by the Hakluyt Soci-
ety of London. Among its editions covering the early years
of the Company are: The Voyage of Thomas Best to the East
Indies, 1612–14, ed. William Foster (1934); Diary of
Richard Cocks, Cape-Merchant in the English Factory in
Japan 1615–22, with Correspondence, ed. Edward Maunde
Thompson (2 vols, 1883); The Voyages of Sir James Lan-
caster to Brazil and the East Indies, 1591–1603, ed. William
Foster (1877; 2nd ed. 1940); and The Voyage of Sir Henry
Middleton to the Moluccas 1604–1606, ed. William Foster
(1854; 2nd ed. 1943). Michael Strachan’s and Boies Pen-
rose’s edition of The East India Company Journals of Cap-
tain William Keeling and Master Thomas Bonner, 1615–
1617 was published by the University of Minnesota Press
in 1971.
Further reading: H.V. Bowen, Margarette Lincoln,
and Nigel Rigby (eds), The Worlds of the East India Com-
pany (Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell & Brewer, 2002);
Antony Wild, The East India Company: Trade and Conquest
from 1600 (London: HarperCollins, 1999; New York:
Lyons Press, 2000).
Eastland Company English trading company formed to
promote trade with the Baltic area, which had formerly
been a monopoly held by the HANSEATIC LEAGUE. Its hey-
day began with the grant of a charter from Elizabeth I in
- The Eastland merchants’ base on the Baltic was their
concession at Elbing (now in Poland), near the mouth of
the River Vistula, where they exchanged English cloth for
timber, hemp, and tar—raw materials vital for shipbuild-
ing. The venture encountered increasing competition
from the Dutch and the monopoly was revoked in 1673.
See also: MUSCOVY COMPANY
Ebreo, Leone See LEONE EBREO
Eccard, Johannes (1553–1611) German composer
Eccard received his earliest musical training in his native
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