Connecting Lives: Elihu Yale and the British East India Company

Abstract

The October 2007 Yale University Alumni Newsletter featured an article on ‘Yale’s expanding engagement with India’. As part of the Incredible India@60 campaign organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Government of India, Yale convened two panels examining the ‘challenges that India will face in the coming decades and the rise of women leaders in all facets of India and its global diaspora’.1 Both panels were held at the exclusive Yale Club of New York City, a gesture that solidified Yale President Richard C. Levin’s statement that the study of India and South Asia had ‘blossomed’ at Yale, and that he expected ‘expanded exchanges and partnerships with India in the years to come’. At the end of the letter was a short column explicating the connections between Yale and India ‘at a glance’, and the first item noted Elihu Yale’s tenure as Governor of Madras, and his gift of ‘books, Indian textiles, and other goods’ that resulted in the vaunted institution of the university.