Book excerpt: Provides a comprehensive overview of the activities of the British navy in the Indian and Pacific Oceans from the earliest times to the present. This book outlines the early voyages of the English East India Company, its building of its own naval forces and its conflicts with Indian states. It examines the opening up of the Pacific Ocean, the wars with the French in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the activities of the British navy in the later nineteenth century, both off the coasts of China and Japan, and also in the many other places to which the navy's very great power extended. It goes on to consider the wars of the twentieth century, Britain's withdrawal from east of Suez, and Britain's continuing relative decline. Throughout, the book provides accounts of battles and other actions, and relates the activities of the British navy to the wider political situation and to the activities of other European and Asian navies.