Rupali Mishra's A Business of State offers a detailed description of the political history of the East India Company (EIC) during the early decades of the seventeenth century. The book rests on an array of interesting material—drawn predominantly from the court minutes of the EIC held in the British Library's India Office Records—and the reader is presented with a considerable depth of material to get their teeth into. Through this material, Mishra argues that the state, “be it king, Privy Council, or occasionally parliament,” had very close connections to the EIC, a symbiotic relationship that also reveals “the extensive involvement that the Company had in the life and functioning of the state” (p. 4). We are shown, for example, how the state could influence elections of EIC officials and the ways “useful men” were brought into the company as a means of obtaining influence in court. Heavily inspired by the work of historians of the state, including Michael Braddick, Mark Goldie, and Steve Hindle, and by Phil Stern, Mishra offers valuable insight into the functioning of this powerful, corporate organization during a period of considerable political flux and constitutional debate.

Yet, in spite of the considerable archival work presented in A Business of State, some of the book's key arguments rest on some shaky foundations. As Mishra puts it, “at the heart of this book is the very complicated relationship between the East India Company and the state,” a core theme that is so thoroughly absorbing that other relationships and other facets of the company's early history are not given the space to emerge (p. 3). This is troubling, as some of these—such as the EIC's deeply interconnected relationships with other corporate bodies or its relationship with non-European states and merchants—not only are vital for understanding how the company operated, but also raise important questions about quite what the early modern state was. Mishra often seems to suggest that the EIC was uniquely connected to the state, but there is little attempt to offer a comparative perspective, in spite of excellent records surviving from a number of contemporaneous corporations. Similarly, while we are informed in great detail about the machinations of a small, governing minority within the company, the generality and employees of the corporation—let alone its customers, suppliers, partners, and competitors—receive far less attention. By attempting to understand the political history of the company in relation to broader social and cultural conditions of its function, Mishra would have been able to engage more with some of the most recent work on corporations—for example, work undertaken by William Pettigrew and Catia Antunes. In doing so, the company and the state could be more effectively examined as complex, multifaceted entities, rather than the seemingly homogenous entities they are often portrayed as here.

For readers interested in business or economic history, A Business of State leaves many questions unanswered. Mishra does, very helpfully, describe the mechanics of government in this early modern corporation in great detail. For example, we are told how the corporation was managed through a series of distinct committees, how martial pursuits were understood by early modern businessmen, and how the corporation turned to the public for support in times of distress. However, many aspects of the early modern business are left unexplored—even when there seem to be important links between business activity and politics. For example, the developments of a major dockyard at Blackwall in London and an EIC colony at Dundaniel in Ireland are both overlooked, even though each episode reveals an engagement with state-like activity on behalf of the company that seems highly relevant. Similarly, even though the book opens with an analysis of a manuscript detailing the company's ability to benefit the state, little time is spent trying to understand quite how the company fits within the wider commercial and imperial history of early modern England. More could be done to understand how the EIC contributed to activities as diverse as collaborative efforts to stop pirates, the establishment of plantations in America and the Caribbean, the militarization of fishing in the North Atlantic, and the way business was conducted with non-Europeans. Without these sorts of links, comparisons, and assessments (many of which had a strong political component), we are left with a fairly shallow understanding of the EIC as a business, how it related to the wider English economy, and what we can apply from this research to develop a deeper understanding of early modern trade and empire.

Overall, then, in A Business of State we find a vibrant, engaging book that describes the EIC's early political history in great detail by drawing on some really interesting archival material. We are also left with many questions, hoping for further insight into some fascinating fields that Mishra's work touches upon but never fully engages with.