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Timeline for the Age of
Heroic Commerce
1587 Jan Pieterszoon Coen is born.
1588 Spanish Armada fails to conquer England.
1600 The English East India Company is founded.
1602 The Dutch East India Company is founded; the Amsterdam stock exchange is established to deal in the company’s stock and bonds.
1609 Henry Hudson sails up the Hudson River for the Dutch East India Company.
1612 Pieter Stuyvesant is born.
1618 Coen is promoted to head of the Dutch East India Company’s eastern operations.
1621 The Dutch West India Company is founded to trade with North America and to plunder Spanish shipping in the Caribbean.
1623 Dutch East India Company employees kill English East India Company employees during the massacre at Ambon.
1629 Coen dies in Batavia.
1647 Stuyvesant arrives in New Amsterdam as the new governor of the Dutch West India Company.
1652 States General orders the Dutch West India Company to establish a responsible municipal government.
1657 Oliver Cromwell gives a new charter to the English East India Company, whose activities are focused on India.
1664 Stuyvesant surrenders New Amsterdam to English forces without a shot being fired. La Compagnie des Indes Orientales is founded in France to operate in India.
1670 The Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson’s Bay is founded in London to exploit the fur trade in northern North America.
1672 Stuyvesant dies in New York.
1705 The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb dies and central authority begins to decline in India.
1725 Robert Clive is born.
1741 Vitus Bering captains a voyage of discovery from Kamchatka to Alaska, beginning Russian exploration and trade in the region 1747 Aleksandr Baranov is bor
n.
1748 The siege of Arcot establishes Clive as a formidable military leader in the struggle between the English and French companies in India.
1757 At the Battle of Plassey, Clive leads troops of the English East India Company to victory over the French in India; English company rule in India begins.
1763 The Seven Years’ War between France and England ends.
1764 The original Dutch West India Company collapses under its debt load.
1768–71 Lieutenant James Cook leads his first voyage of discovery in the Pacific.
1774 Robert Clive dies by suicide.
1775–83 The War of American Independence is fought.
1776 Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations.
1782–84 Fourth Anglo-Dutch War 1784 Pitt’s India Bill introduces controls on the English East India Company’s powers.
1790 Baranov arrives in Alaska.
1792 George Simpson is born.
1799 Czar Paul I founds the Russian American Company monopoly and places Baranov in charge of its operations. The Dutch East India Company is officially dissolved after bankruptcy.
1807 Slave trading is outlawed within British territories.
1815 Napoleon is defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.
1818 Baranov is deposed from his position as head of the Russian American Company.
1819 Baranov dies at sea.
1820 Simpson arrives in North America as acting governor-in-chief of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
1826 Simpson becomes governor of both the northern and southern departments of the Hudson’s Bay Compay, the virtual dictator of northern North America.
1831–36 The Beagle departs England and explores South America and the Galapagos with Charles Darwin as naturalist.
1846 The Oregon Boundary Dispute is resolved as the 49th parallel becomes the border between Canada and the United States. Simpson is knighted by Queen Victoria.
1852–53 Britain recognizes the independence of the Boer republics in South Africa (Orange Free State and the Transvaal).
1853 Cecil Rhodes is born.
1858 British troops crush an Indian uprising.
1860 Simpson dies near Montreal.
1867 The United States purchases Russian America. Alfred Nobel invents dynamite, revolutionizing mining and construction. Canada becomes an independent nation.
1870 Cecil Rhodes arrives in Cape Colony. Canada assumes the territories of the Hudson’s Bay Company, ending their monopoly.
1874 The East India Stock Redemption Act ends the existence of the English East India Company.
1876 Queen Victoria assumes the title Empress of India.
1880 Rhodes forms the De Beers Company and is elected to the Cape Parliament.
1889 Rhodes secures a royal charter from the British government for the British South Africa Company to colonize and exploit south-central Africa.
1894 Britain acknowledges the authority of the British South Africa Company over the territory of Rhodesia.
1901 The first series of Nobel Prizes is awarded.
1902 Cecil Rhodes dies, leaving a legacy to establish the Rhodes Scholarships.
1918 The First World War ends.
1923 The British government revokes the British South Africa Company’s charter and grants self-governing colony status to Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and protectorate status to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia).
Acknowledgements
TURNING A MANUSCRIPT INTO A BEAUTIFUL BOOK IS not a simple or easy endeavour. It involves the talents and creative efforts of a great number of people. I would like to thank Scott McIntyre and Scott Steedman for their enthusiasm for this project and for reminding me to keep my mind open to the full spectrum of the merchant kings’ personalities; these “kings” were each far too complex to be dismissed as mere robber barons.
I was particularly fortunate to again have the insightful and diplomatic John Eerkes-Medrano as my editor. Michael Mundhenk provided a thorough and informed copy edit that saved me from several inconsistencies and smoothed the rough edges of my prose, while Ruth Wilson’s eagle eye caught remaining inconsistencies. Designer Naomi MacDougall designed the beautiful cover and matched it so beautifully to the interior. The production, editorial and publicity team at Douglas &McIntyre continue to be a pleasure to work with. Thanks also to Frances and Bill Hanna. Thanks to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for the support and to the staff at the Canmore Public Library for fulfilling my requests for unusual books and for returning mountains of them even when I had lost the slips.
Last but never least, I would like to acknowledge the incredible support of my wife, Nicky Brink, for putting up with my absent-minded distraction and odd, out-of-context dinner-table conversation about long-dead people, and for her perceptive reading of my first draft.
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