Karolina Hutková, The English East India Company’s Silk Enterprise in Bengal, 1750–1850: Economy, Empire and Business

credit in providing necessary working capital. A fortunate few merchants were granted the office of receiver-general of the land tax in Devon and so could dip into public funds to stay afloat. Others had to rely on borrowing from customers, particularly the Dutch, or from the cloth-makers, cloth-finishers and woolmen who supplied them. In 1717, a merchant, Robert Burridge, died owing his creditors £16,425, nearly three times the value of his stock. The growing sophistication of financial markets, particularly in the Low Countries, is reflected in the use of bills of exchange as a means of paying for cloth. Such credit mechanisms were essential to business, but, if and when things went wrong, could spread the consequences of a merchant’s financial ruin to the wider cloth-making community. This reviewer does hold some reservations. The index is largely limited to places and people, so the reader will search in vain for references to kersey and serge. A few names are surprisingly absent from the bibliography, notably those of the eminent textile historians David Jenkins and John Munro. Maunder’s work would have possessed wider significance had he devoted more time to exploring why the cloth trade flourished in Tiverton to such an extent that the town grew from a small and relatively poor inland community, far from London, to become, by 1700, one of the biggest manufacturing centres in England, with a population of 8,000, 60 per cent of whom were engaged in the industry. Finally, it is tempting but misguided to include every detail that has been lovingly extracted from the archives. Had the author better resisted such temptation his book would have been more concise and engaging. Despite these caveats, this volume remains an inspiration for anyone embarking on a similar project in future. NICHOLAS R. AMOR University of East Anglia