| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 173 words from this article are provided below; about 568 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Søren Mentz. The English Gentleman Merchant at Work: Madras and the City of London, 1660–1740. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. 2005. Pp. 304. $46.00.

Europeans in Madras, seeking to profit by conducting private trade, formed what Søren Mentz designates an English "gentleman's diaspora" (p. 68). Especially during the 1680–1710 period, when the English East India Company's directors tacitly tolerated their often illegal activities, these merchants used the Company as an umbrella under which they could invest funds, often coming from financiers in the City of London, to make quick personal fortunes. Through diligent and thoughtful use of the surviving private papers of these merchants, Mentz deliberately seeks to reverse what he (unconvincingly) calls the domination of "Indocentric" historiography that "Since the 1950s ... has frozen British merchants in an Asian context isolated from the mother country and disassociated with the general development of the British Empire" (p. 15–16). Instead, Mentz specifically locates his own work as recuperating the nineteenth-century "Eurocentric" traditions of James Mill and W. W. Hunter.

. . .

There are about 568 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.