Empires of the Monsoon (Text Only)
About this ebook
Until Vasco da Gama discovered the sea-route to the East in 1497-9 almost nothing was known in the West of the exotic cultures and wealth of the Indian Ocean and its peoples. It is this civilisation and its destruction at the hands of the West that Richard Hall recreates in this book. Hall’s history of the exploration and exploitation – by Chinese and Arab travellers, and by the Portuguese, Dutch and British alike – is one of brutality, betrayal and colonial ambition. It is history told with the true gift of a storyteller and a keen eye for the exotic. It is a compelling and instructive epic.
About the author
Richard Hall is a distinguished journalist and writer. He was born in 1925 and spent his childhood in Australia and England. During the Second World War he served as a rating in a destroyer before going to Oxford to read English. He spent ten years in Africa as a newspaper editor and foreign correspondent and was the last journalist out of Biafra at the end of the Nigerian Civil War. He is the author of many books including a biography of the explorer Henry Stanley and a history of Zambia. After returning from Africa he became editor of the Observer’s colour magazine and a columnist for the Financial Times. He owns and manages a company called Africa Analysis and lives in Oxfordshire.
