Human capital and empire is a comparative analysis of how Scotland, Ireland and Wales participated in the English East India Company between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries.

It explains the increasing involvement of individuals and networks from these societies in the London corporation that controlled contact between the British and Irish Isles and one entire hemisphere of world trade. Scottish, Irish and Welsh evidence is used to consider wider questions on the origins, nature and consequences of the early modern phase of globalisation, sometimes referred to as 'proto-globalisation.' It contributes to such debates by analysing how these supposedly 'poorer' regions of Europe relied on migration as an investment strategy to profit from empire in Asia. Using social network theory and concepts of human capital, it examines why the Scots, Irish and Welsh developed markedly different profiles in the Company's service. The analysis explores a previously underappreciated cycle of human capital that involved departure to Asia, the creation of colonial profits, and the return of people and their fortunes to Britain and Ireland.

By reconceptualising the origins and the consequences of involvement in the Company, the study will be of interest to historians of early modern Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Britain, the East India Company, and the early phases of British imperialism in Asia.