The Memsahibs and the East India Company

Jenny Mallin


Region:
Anywhere
Notice Period:
Emergency (maybe less than one week's notice)
Type:
Probus, U3A, Rotary, WI, Family History, Horticultural Groups, Women in Business,
Fee:
Paid: £95 plus mileage at 45p per mile
Category:
History
Updated:
9th January 2024
Tagged:

Tea would never have taken off were it not for the exploits of the East India Company. Queen Elizabeth has granted the right for 200 English merchants to trade in the East Indies. We discover how four ships left Torbay in April 1601 and by the time the fleet had rounded the Cape of Good Hope more than 100 out of 480 men had died on board. Two years later Command James Lancaster has returned to England with a cargo of pepper weighing almost 500 tons! We find out how The Company’s operations were underpinned by the ‘factory’ system: when the ships returned to Europe, agents known as ‘factors’ were left behind at trading posts to negotiate with local merchants for the sale of current stocks of goods and the procurement of return cargoes for the next year’s voyage. Tea Trade to England would became a lucrative monopoly for the EIC thanks to Catherine Braganza, the young Portuguese wife of Charles II who served it to her aristocratic friends and soon tea would became the fashionable drink of the day. We often think that memsahibs are linked only to the British Raj, in fact the very first memsahibs were to land in India as early as 1608, they came with one thing on their mind: how to make money in running a business on their own. They were able to start their new life in India with a clean slate. Later as wives, courtesans and she-merchants, these tough, adventuring women were every bit as intrepid as their men, the buccaneering sea captains and traders in whose wake they followed; their voyages to India were extraordinarily daring leaps into the unknown.

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About Jenny Mallin

Winner of "Best in World Cookbook" by the Gourmand World Cookbook Society for 2017, Jenny is a regular speaker to a broad variety of groups looking for an interesting and unique talk on her British Raj family. She has given over 500 talks across the world, on cruise ships as well as prestigious locations such as the Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata built to commemorate Queen Victoria as Empress of India to hundreds of WI, U3a and Family History groups.

Jenny’s career has been the culmination of several instinctive paths in her life which have led her to enjoying being an author and now a public speaker. With almost thirty trips to India over the past thirty years, she has explored and uncovered the history of her ancestors and their interesting path.

The re-uniting for Jenny of a family heirloom of a book which her great x 4 grandmother started in 1844, Madras which she remembers seeing in her mother’s pantry, is a time capsule in itself. This cherished book holds not only the handwritten manuscripts of recipes which were passed down from mother to daughter for the next five generations, but also hints at the technological changes ushered in by the industrial revolution which had a positive effect of intertwining the economies of India and Great Britain.

With her passions for cooking, India, research and writing, Jenny’s award-winning cookbook “A Grandmother’s Legacy” has been a labour of love – a memoir that mingles the history of her family when they lived in India, with her grandmothers’ recipes that were prudently passed down through the generations.

Recently interviewed by Jenni Murray on BBC’s Woman’s Hour, Jenny has also been featured in “The Lady” magazine, “Who do you think you are?” magazine as well as “Waitrose Magazine” and “Sainsbury’s Magazine”. Jenny has been able to impart knowledge of her family’s cuisine through her teaching at notable cookery schools, including the renowned WI headquarters, Denman College in Oxford.

Jenny’s past career has also influenced her with her continuing interest in both research and travel from her early days in television production at the BBC where she picked up skills in how to present but also carved out a career there in researching. The following decade of the 1980s found her working in high tech as a Corporate Travel Buyer for twenty years and with her engaging personality and knowledge was able to easily connect with her market and secure global airline contracts to the benefit of her company.


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