Event Type: Branch

Takes Place: 10th January 2025

Time: 7.30pm

Venue: Reading School, Lecture Theatre

Description: What was daily life like for an average employee of the English East India Company in its early days? Much of what we know and what circulates in the media focuses on the exceptional and ‘great’ parts of the Company story: the tentative first steps of ambassadors like Sir Thomas Roe, but also the ambitious and calculating manoeuvres of ‘great men’ like Robert Clive. But were these sorts of lives ‘typical’? In this talk, Dr Williams explores more ‘everyday’ questions about life in an EIC factory. For instance, when, how, and with whom did they socialise? What might they have read and done for entertainment? How did they learn languages? How (if at all) did they maintain a religious life? What did they eat and drink? These are crucial questions to answer if we are to understand how early trade and imperial ambitions unfolded in and around the Company in its early decades.

How to book: Booking not required. Pre-lecture supper bookings to r.a.houlbrooke@reading.ac.uk

Price: £3 - Free to HA members, Associates.and Students.

Email: sexton44@gmail.com

Organiser: HA Reading Branch

Lecturer: Dr Mark Williams (University of Cardiff)

Region: South-East England

Branch: Reading