Featured Project: Sellers & Sailors: The East India Companies

Do you have any ancestors who set sail in the service of the East India Company during the 17th to 19th centuries? Or do you have an interest in the people involved in these trade routes? You may want to check out this week’s highlighted project, Sellers & Sailors: The East India Companies project.

This project aims to bring together profiles of the financial backers, captains, officers, rank-and-file sailors, and others affiliated with the major East India Companies.

The East India Company traded mostly cotton, silk, tea, opium and indigo die with the Indian subcontinent and China and remained a powerful force in the area for over 250 years. If you’d like to help add more people who participated in the East India Companies’ voyages, come join this project as a collaborator! And take a look at a few notable profiles included:

Elihu Yale – He was governor of the British East India Company and philanthropist.  As an early benefactor of Yale University, the school was named in his honor.

Jan van Riebeeck – He was a Dutch colonial administrator and joined the Dutch East India Company in 1639. He is known as the founder of Cape Town in South Africa.

Sir Thomas Smith – He was an English merchant and the first governor of the East India Company.

Admiral George Elphinstone, 1st Viscount Keith – He was a British admiral during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1767, he made a voyage to the East Indies under the service of the British East India Company.

Captain Francis Light – He was the founder of Penang, a British colony in Malaysia and it’s capital George Town.

View the Sellers & Sailors: The East India Companies Project