The rise and rise of East India Company

The most fascinating chapter of this book is the Company's response to the Amboyna massacre

A Business of State
Commerce, Politics, and the Birth of the East India Company
Rupali Mishra
Harvard University Press,
412 pages; Rs 799
 
On December 31, 1600, in the 43rd year of her reign, Queen Elizabeth I granted a royal “letter patent” for 15 years to the “Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies”, to “freely traffick and use the Trade of Merchandize, by Seas, in and by such Ways and Passages already found out and discovered, or which hereafter shall be found out and discovered… into and from the said East-Indies”.
 
This royal