world in an earlier age, the shuttle plays the same vital role today. And while we have learned much from our early voyages of exploration, even reaching a new world in the Apollo program, it is a space station in low Earth orbit, our Indies, which calls to us, with its immediately realizable opportunities and potential for expansion. Though on some future date we will return to our new world, as did the English in their time, in search of raw materials, and to colonize, with a space station as the stepping stone. Elizabeth 1 granted many favors to the East India Company so that they might provide “. . . as well for the honor of this Realm of England, as for the advancement of trade and merchandise . . .” (5). President Reagan's address seems to hold many of the same precepts; he wishes to encourage private enterprise and also maintain America's lead in space technology. Private participation on space station will do a great deal for the goals, just as the East India Company did so for the English. It is for this reason that the Soviets most vitriolic response to the State of the Union address was reserved for Reagan's plan for a space station. They know that they cannot compete technologically in space with us, and the thought of American private enterprise applying itself to space industrialization must be frightening indeed to those men in the Kremlin. In the beginning of two great eras of expansion, ours just beginning, we see a great number of similarities and parallels. These signs point to a future of dramatic changes, expansion and prosperity. Who could have imagined the far-reaching consequences of that first East Indies voyage, for which, in the end, only a modest capital of £72,000 was raised (6). Who could have thought that out of British commerce and later colonial expansion would rise the great continent-nation of America, or that this small northern European country would come to dominate much of the world. Thus the actions of the present are pregnant with historical events of the greatest magnitude for all mankind. We can learn much, and place ourselves and our times in perspective, by looking back to the only model we have of a great explosion of commercial growth and colonization. It is only when we know where we are that we can begin to divine where we are going. REFERENCES AND NOTES I. Note: All spelling in original documents has been normalized to modem standard. The Court Records of the East India Company 1599-1603: The Dawn of British Trade to the East Indies, 22 September, 1599, pp. 1-4, edited by Henry Stevens & Son, Chiswick Press, London, 1886. 2. Ibid. 28 September, 1599, p. 8. 3. Charter granted by Queen Elizabeth founding the company, 31 December, 1600, Register of Letters and Correspondence of the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into The East Indies 1600-1619, p. 184, edited by Sir George Birdwood MD, KCIE, Reprinted by Bernard Quartich Ltd. as First Letters Book of The East India Company, 1600-1619, London, 1965. 4. Letters Received by the East India Company from Its Servants in the East, Transcribed from the ‘Original Correspondence' Series of the India Office Records, Vol. I, 1601-1613, pp. xxvi-xxvii, reprint of London 1886 edition, Amsterdam, 1968. 5. Ibid. Commission from Queen Elizabeth to Captain John Lancaster for the First Voyage, 24 January, 1601, p. 2. 6. The Early Charted Companies (A.D. 1296-1858), by George Cawston and A.H. Keane, p. 89, first published London 1896, reprinted 1968, Burt Franklin, New York.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==