An ‘Oriental Museum’ at the India House

In view of the high profile it would later enjoy, the genesis of the India Museum was remarkably tentative. It was perhaps inevitable that a body of traders with an impressive fleet of merchantmen sailing regularly to the East Indies (which is to say not only to India but also to the countries of Southeast Asia and China) should have accumulated randomly from time to time what were termed curiosities of art and nature. We know indeed from the account of a visitor in 1669 that in the East India Company’s old headquarters in Leadenhall Street in central London there