The English East India Company's Silk Enterprise in Bengal evolved from the author's PhD dissertation submitted to the University of Warwick in 2015. In this monograph, Karolina Hutková makes an important contribution to the literature on the English East India Company (hereinafter, ‘the Company’) as well as the deindustrialisation debate in nineteenth-century India. The contribution also extends into business history. The key framework of this book is British political economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This period in Britain witnessed the shift from mercantilism to laissez-faire, and the author scrutinises its effects on the Company's business in Bengal.

This volume is composed of seven substantial chapters with the introduction and conclusion chapters. Chapter 1 offers a brief overview of the stages of silk production and outlines a global history of the silk industry until the nineteenth century, with special reference to its key technologies and India. Chapter 2 places the Company's raw silk trade from Bengal within a broader context of British imperial history. It shows that attempts to produce raw silk for the British market had already been made in other parts of the empire such as North America before the raw silk project in Bengal. Then, the chapter narrows the focus to the Company's interest in Bengal raw silk. In the second half of the eighteenth century, this item of trade became one of the important goods exported from Bengal to Britain to transfer revenues raised through the Diwani.

While the import of Bengal raw silk into Britain was supported by low duties, the quality of the raw silk was unfortunately inferior to that of other world producers such as China. Hence, in order to enlarge the market for this product, the Company invested in the improvement of raw silk in Bengal. Chapter 3 discusses the procurement systems of raw silk in Bengal around 1750, showing their institutional problems such as the Company's lack of enforcement, which did not result in the improvement of silk quality. Chapter 4 illustrates the transfer of the Piedmontese methods of silk reeling to Bengal. While this new technology led to the quantitative expansion of raw silk production in Bengal, the quality shortcomings of the silk were not resolved. Hutková applies the concept of principal–agent problem to analyse the insufficient improvement in silk quality, pointing out that the procurement system still failed to give incentives to raw silk producers and lacked penalties. In Chapter 5, the author directs our attention to the paradox that despite adverse challenges, the Company made profits from its raw silk production venture in Bengal. This was attributed to low labour costs and cheap cocoons.

The abolition of the Company's monopoly to trade with India (1813) opened Indian trade to British private firms. However, they had no interest in silk, and the raw silk trade from Bengal to Britain declined hugely in the nineteenth century. Chapter 6 attributes the decline of the Bengal silk trade to their limited capital and lack of knowledge about the global silk trade and mode of silk production. Such limitations reveal the large role played by the Company in Bengal silk manufacturing. This finding indicates that the decline in raw silk production in Bengal was an unexpected result of the shift in British political economy to the laissez-faire policy that worked against the Company. As Chapter 7 demonstrates, the laissez-faire policy also influenced the British silk industry. Competition with foreign silk textiles made large producers switch to lower-quality silk products leading to an expansion in the demand for raw silk of coarser variety. Bengal raw silk was a part of the British silk industry in the first half of the nineteenth century.

One strength of The English East India Company's Silk Enterprise is well documented. With the Company's correspondence available at the India Office Records and Private Papers of the British Library (in particular, IOR/E/1 and IOR/E/4), Hutková sheds light on the role of the Company as a manufacturer, rather than a trading company or a ruler of India. Likewise, considering that raw silk production in India and its linkage with the British silk industry has been under represented in the literature compared with studies on cotton, it is clear that Hutková's research advanced the frontiers of research of the textile history.

While Hutková deftly discusses the production side of the commodity chain of raw silk production, I would like to know about the end part of the chain as well: who consumed the final products in Britain and abroad? Examining consumption would enrich the story. In addition, raw silk production in Bengal is well discussed, reflecting the Company's interest. Yet silk weaving in India receives little attention in this book. This imbalance makes a reader wonder whether silk weaving in Bengal also declined in the first half of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, I would like the concluding chapter to be even bolder. The chapter could have included directions for future investigation and implications for research into the related fields of research.

Nonetheless, The English East India Company's Silk Enterprise is undoubtedly a welcome addition to our knowledge of early-modern global history. Furthermore, the cover image is breathtakingly beautiful!