This repository stores the data used in Digital visualisation of the British East India Company's trading activities. The data is compiled from the historical sources which are available at Citations Page.
I am compiling the data from two major works of historians.
For the period between 1660 to 1760: I am relying more on the data collected by K. N. Chaudhari in his work The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760 published in 1976.
For the period between 1760 to 1834: I am relying on the data collected by H. V. Bowen in his book titled The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833 published in 2005.
In my knowledge, this is the first and only time someone has compiled the full dataset of the trading activities of the EIC.
Here is the link to the Bowen's dataset
I have cleaned the data for K. N. Chaudhari.
The Commodities listed in the Visualisation are:
Black Pepper
Chinaware
Coffee
Lead
New Draperies
Saltpetre
Tea
Broadcloth: Broadcloth is a dense, plain woollen cloth, woven wider than its intended finished width and then reduced in width by heavy milling, resulting in a dense cloth which is highly durable and weather-resistant.
Textiles: Company's commerce journals itemise the pieces of textile imported from India, and at times well over one hundred different types of cotton cloth were listed in the invoices during any one year. These lists are long and often inconsistent in terms of presentation and spelling, which make it very difficult to assemble a detailed and manageable breakdown of the cotton textile imports.
Treasure: Often Silver and Bronze, was used to pay for the Company's purchases. It was procured by the Company from the brokers and agents, who had procured it in Cadiz, Lisbon and Amsterdam
General Merchandise: Aggregate of the invoice value of the miscellaneous commodities. Often includes: spices, drugs, pepper, cotton, indigo, saltpeter. Depending on the source and years, these keep changing.
As I was dealing with these two different datasets. There were a few categories that were missing in either side. Or had some overalaps with other categories from the other dataset.
Hence, to merge both these datasets, I had to merge a few of the categories in the final visualisation available at the front end.
Here is the table pointing out the merging decisions.
This project would not have been possible without the help of Lester Carver, Dr. Antonio LoPiano, Ashlyn Stewart, David Thomas, Stephen Sturgeon, Melanie Hubbard, Dr. Eric Weiskott, Khalil Sawan, Debanuj Nayak, Adrish Dey, Dhairya Shah, Sarthak Jaiswal.