"Empire of Labor tells the story of how hired workers experienced and responded to the rise to power over the long eighteenth century of the English East India Company (EIC), which perennially hired thousand of people in and around its settlements in Bengal. Focusing on boatmen and silk reelers...

"A history of the East India Company told through experiences of everyday life on the ocean: maritime travel, shipboard conditions, foreign encounters, islands and ports of call, the waters of the Atlantic itself. McAleer portrays these as essential to the understanding of the Company as an...