In 1756, sixteen-year-old Charlie Marryat boards a ship for Madras, orphaning himself into adventure to spare his widowed mother the burden of another mouth to feed. What he finds in India is nothing like the orderly trading post he imagines: the East India Company teeters on the edge of war, the French and British compete for influence among princely courts, and a young clerk named Robert Clive is about to transform a handful of factoriess into an empire. Charlie rises from office boy to soldier, from spectator to participant in the battles of Plassey and Buxar, watching as Britain seizes Bengal and the word 'master' replaces 'trader.' Henty renders the chaos of mid-century India with vivid dispatch: sieges, betrayals, monsoon rains, the glittering courts of nawabs who underestimate the men in red coats. This is empire as lived experience, not abstract history, told through a boy's bewildered eyes.
