Bits and bobs

First of all Liz Fenwick in the comments section awhile made a remark about Constance. Constance is by Patrica Clapp and is a young adult book about the Plymouth plantation. It is very good and I believe won several awards. I had not thought of it in years.

I am currently reading about the East India Company because my current hero had something to do with India. It is thoroughly fascinating but I had to laugh when the author of the book mentioned that he doubted the tax on tea fanned the republican sentiments in the American colonies. It was somehow a very British remark.

I had not realised that Cornwallis went on to serve as Governor- General in India and that his time there was considered a success. Cornwallis is of course the general who surrendered at Yorktown.

I will admit a great deal of ignorance about the East India Company and what it did/did not do. It was one of the first truly global companies and basically became a company which ran a country. The shareholder did not become as rich as some of its employees, particularly the employees from the Georgian period who were nicknamed the Nabobs. My current book is set during the early Victorian period when most of the excesses had ended but you still have this very strange situation where the East India Company has its own army and navy but the officers of the British crown are also out there. And I won't go into the opium trading...

A few years I surprised to discover that FDR's mother's family had made their money from opium trading.

I have finished doing a basic beat sheet for my wip and much has become clearer. The important thing now is to write. But the time has not been wasted. I am simply getting tired of going over the same chapters...It was more that I needed to clear up the back story and to understand what exactly was going on. I think I have it now.