The word 'occupation' has two meanings. A job. And what happens when an uninvited power takes hold of a place and does not leave. No one planned for the first to become the second. It happened anyway.
In 1591, a bankrupt merchant returns to London from the Mughal Empire carrying gemstones and a dangerous idea. Over the next fifty years, a small trading company chartered to buy pepper slowly becomes an entity that builds forts, governs thousands, and answers to no one.
This is the story of the people who built it, resisted it, and were consumed by it. William Hawkins, who spoke Turkish to the Emperor and survived an assassination attempt at the Mughal court.
Nur Jahan, who played two European empires against each other. And the Tamil masons whose knowledge held the very walls of Fort St. George together.
Book One of a saga spanning 356 years, this is the history of the British in India told from both sides, a historical epic where rational decisions become irreversible, and a warehouse becomes a government.