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[MUSIC PLAYING] [What are the East India Company minute books?] The Court of Directors and the General Court of Proprietors were responsible for the management of the East India

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Company from its founding in 1600 through to its abolition in 1858, following the Indian uprising of 1857 to 1858. They are the central record, really,

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of the East India Company. They would record in great detail all the meetings of the General Court of Proprietors and the Court of Directors.

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And so anybody who wants to know about the East India Company really needs to look at these records. By 1785, the minutes had really started taking on a regular form, and in many ways, they were very similar to the sorts

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of minutes that we're familiar with today from modern organisations and businesses. So taking a look at this volume here for 1784 to 1785, you get at the top of the page--

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here on page 224, we have the Court of Directors held on Wednesday, the 21st of July, 1784. It lists the directors who were present, including the chairman, Nathaniel Smith, Esquire,

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and quite a sizable number of other people who were present. After that, the transactions of the last quarter of the 20th of July were read and approved. And then you get the draft minutes

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of the general court being read and approved as well. After that on these pages, you have lists of the letters that they'd received and the actions. So orders were given and they made resolutions as well as

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the actions that should be taken. You then get requests that were read. For instance, we have here the request of Major William Cook to return a Black servant to Fort Saint

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George on the Britannia. And that was read. And it was ordered that it be referred to the said committee to do therein, as they shall think fit.

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After the requests, you get the meetings of the individual committees, which were arranged in order of seniority of the committees. So the Committee of Correspondence,

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which was really the prime committee for the East India Company, always comes first. Whether recording the activities of the committees, again, you get the resolutions and the orders

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and you also get warrants for payment. So you really get a very detailed picture of what was going on in the East India Company. Sometimes at the end of the minutes for the General Court

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of Directors, you'll also get information about securities that were being paid for people travelling out to India or for East India Company employees. The minutes are an amazing source

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because you can get anything from high policy, matters of politics, international relations, but also individual cases like the one I mentioned earlier of the return of the Black servant

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to India. [MUSIC PLAYING]