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Our research is about the trade in material goods from Asia to Europe over this period, and its impact on Europe's consumer and industrial cultures. It entails a comparative study of Europe's East India Companies and the private trade from Asia over the period. The commodities trade was heavily dependent on private trade. The historiography to date has left a blind spot in this area, concentrating instead on corruption and malfeasance. Taking a global history approach we investigate the trade in specific consumer goods in many qualities and varieties that linked merchant communities and stimulated information flows. We set out how private trade functioned alongside and in connection with the various European East India companies; we investigate how this changed over time, how it drew on the Company infrastructure, and how it took the risks and developed new and niche markets for specific Asian commodities that the Companies could not sustain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at botanist and surgeon James Anderson's silk projects along India's Coromandel coast. Anderson set up an extensive network of correspondents, learning which species of silkworm and mulberry tree were the best options for plantations in Southern India. Ultimately the venture failed, but according to the author it shows how many of English trading company, the East India Company's ventures in India were economically inviable.