MARCH 2022 - AudioFile
For listeners who relish history on a grand scale, this audiobook indictment of the great European trading kings will be riveting, and eye-opening. Dictatorial and insatiable, these weren’t capitalists but monopolists—Clive in India, Simpson in Canada, Rhodes in South Africa, figures forgotten today who nevertheless shaped national boundaries and plundered whole subcontinents. Narrator Malcolm Hillgartner, a favorite of those who listen to serious nonfiction, is especially effective in cutting these once-towering figures down to size. His steady, even, judicious tone makes history’s judgment of the Russian colonization of Alaska, and the Dutch East India Company’s ruthless behavior in the Spice Islands, all the more implicit. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Library Journal
From the tangled histories of the giant trading companies of the past, Bown (A Most Damnable Invention: Dynamite, Nitrates, and the Making of the Modern World) presents six of the most important figures: Jan Coen (Dutch East India Company), Peter Stuyvesant (Dutch West India Company), Robert Clive (British East India Company), Alexander Baranov (Russian-American Company), George Simpson (Hudson's Bay Company), and Cecil Rhodes (British South Africa Company). The monopolistic status of these companies, driven to maximize profits, meant that each became the sole power in its territory and an unofficial extension of its country's government, taking on duties of colonization and legal and martial powers. The leaders of these companies gained enormous influence to pursue their own goals, whether driven by personal avarice, nationalistic pride, or a need for control. Bown provides accurate summations of each man's life and motivations, but his focus is on how the ambitions of these men combined with the force of commerce to alter history as much as any legitimate monarch did. VERDICT Bown's treatment of each individual is succinct, so those wanting an in-depth study should look elsewhere. General readers interested in embarking on this subject will find this an excellent starting point.—Kathleen McCallister, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, Lib.
MARCH 2022 - AudioFile
For listeners who relish history on a grand scale, this audiobook indictment of the great European trading kings will be riveting, and eye-opening. Dictatorial and insatiable, these weren’t capitalists but monopolists—Clive in India, Simpson in Canada, Rhodes in South Africa, figures forgotten today who nevertheless shaped national boundaries and plundered whole subcontinents. Narrator Malcolm Hillgartner, a favorite of those who listen to serious nonfiction, is especially effective in cutting these once-towering figures down to size. His steady, even, judicious tone makes history’s judgment of the Russian colonization of Alaska, and the Dutch East India Company’s ruthless behavior in the Spice Islands, all the more implicit. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine