‘251 years after the Battle’ Conference on the English East India Company

Sunday 22 June 08, 11am-5pm, Lab 4 & 5, Idea Store Whitechapel, 321 Whitechapel Rd, London E1 1BU

23 June 2008 will be the 251 years anniversary of the Battle of Plassey, a decisive day when the British conquered Bengal under the leadership of Robert Clive. It was also the beginning of the British Indian Empire, under the banner of the English East India Company. Brick Lane Circle is currently running a highly unique project which will engage a group of young people (18-25) from diverse backgrounds to explore East London's historical links with Bengal through researching and writing about the East India Company sites in East London. The conference is designed to help generate wider interest and encourage the diverse local communities to learn more about East London’s heritage, the East India Company and Bengal.

MORNING SESSION 11.00am - 1.30pm

Chair: Sorwar Ahmed, Chartered Town Planner and former Chair of the Royal Town Planning Institute's London Branch. He is currently at development consultancy Colin Buchanan & Partners as the head of regeneration.

Ambassador Thomas Roe and Emperor Jahangir: the early East India  Company’s relationship with India by Arifa Hafiz

Arifa studied at Dhaka University and then at Queen Mary's College. She has taught at both Chittagong and Dhaka universities, in the English Department. Currently, she lives and works in London.

The East India Company in London by Dr Margaret Makepeace

Margaret is a Senior Archivist in the India Office Records at the British Library, with special responsibility for the records of the East India Company period. Publications include an analysis of sources for studying the East India Company in London, as well as works on the Company's presence on the coast of West Africa 1657-1668, and on Armenian merchants trading with the Company in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Recently awarded a PhD by the University of Leicester for a thesis entitled Business and benevolence: the East India Company's management of its London warehouse labourers, 1800-1858.

LUNCH 1.30 - 2.30pm

AFTERNOON SESSION 2.30 - 5.00pm

Chair, Dr Shabela Begum, General Practitioner (GP) in Newham and co-presenter at a weekly women’s talk show on Bangla TV called ‘Voices’. Studied ‘A’ Levels at Tower Hamlets College and then Medicine at Cambridge University. She is also a member of Muslim Women’s Association of Professionals.

Globalisation 18th century-style: the East India Company's trading network by Nick Robins

Nick works in Canary Wharf to promote sustainable and responsible investment and is a columnist for The Ecologist Magazine. He is the author of The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational (Pluto, 2006).

The Free Market legacies of the East India Company and its relevance to contemporary Bangladesh by Professor Mushtaq Khan

Professor of economics at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Professor Khan completed his undergraduate studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford and then won a scholarship for his PhD studies in Economics at Cambridge. Previously he taught at the universities of both Oxford and Cambridge. Information on his research interests are available on: https://mercury.soas.ac.uk/users/mk17/.

CLOSE 5.00pm

ALL WELCOME! FREE ADMISSION! ADVANCE BOOKING ONLY!

bricklanecircle@yahoo.co.uk