摘要：Since the dawn of sea based empires long distance trade, and the protection of that trade from pirates, commercial and national rivals has obliged maritime powers to acquire and maintain strategic bases, way stations and simple refreshment stops. Their nature has changed across time, depending on technology, key trade routes and the nature of the threat. That said, human physiology and techniques of food preservation forced naval and commercial shipping to stop for food, water, fuel and rest. At the very least oceanic enterprise demanded a series of freeway service stations, preferably under friendly control. Queen's University Belfast geographer Stephen Royle has focussed on the isolated South Atlantic rendezvous of St. Helena, best known as Napoleon's final prison. He is concerned with the initial occupation, settlement and administration of the Island by the British East India Company (EIC) between 1658 and 1720. The voyage from England to India took sailing ship crews to the limit of endurance, the voyage back took longer, and combined the age old threat of scurvy with piracy, and even full scale war between England and Holland, wars waged by the heavily armed ships of the competing East India Companies. In stark contrast to the strategic bases of nineteenth and twentieth century Great Powers, which were retained despite their cost, because they provided irreplaceable added value the EIC, as a commercial company, was anxious to make the Island self-sufficient, or even profitable, as well as acting as a vital refreshment stop and the assembly point for valuable convoys. London seemed more interested in balancing the books that serving the imperative needs of scorbutic ships. The resulting culture clash between the policy aims of company administrators in London and the planters, settlers and slaves who lived and worked on St Helena provides a large part of Royle's story. The Company's rule was documented in considerable detail, and the records of the EIC remain a key resource for historians of British imperial power
