History and Historiography of the English East India Company: Past, Present, and Future!

Abstract

This article explores recent developments in the historiography of the English East India Company. It proposes that there has been an efflorescence of late in scholarship on the Company that is directly tied both to the resurgence of imperial studies in British history as well as to contemporary concerns such as globalization, border‐crossings, and transnationalism. These transformations have in turn begun to change some of the most basic narratives and assumptions about the Company's history. At the same time, they have also significantly widened the number and types of scholars interested in the Company, broadening its appeal beyond ‘Company studies’ to have relevance for a range of historical concerns, in British domestic history, Atlantic history, global history, as well as amongst literary scholars, geographers, sociologists, economists, and others.

Revisiting the expansion thesis: international society and the role of the Dutch East India company as a merchant empire

“…The VOC was also the first multinational actor to conduct activities on multiple continents (Rei, 2018: 2). For some, the European merchant powers should be seen merely as the forerunner of modern multinational corporations (Stern, 2009: 1151); for others, they represent a ‘quasi sovereign’ (Clulow, 2009: 72), or ‘hybrid’ form of polity which combines the functions of governance with the profit-seeking motivations of a private corporation (Philips, 2017: 40). While some historians have even argued that these merchant companies should be seen as a distinct form of polity in their own right as a ‘company state’ (Stern, 2008; Weststeijn, 2014).…”

Comment écrire l'histoire des relations internationales aujourd'hui ? Quelques réflexions à partir de l'Empire britannique

“…L'« Anglo-India » était, selon Curzon, le « pivot et le centre de l'Empire britannique ». Certes, l'historiographie récente de la Compagnie des Indes orientales invite à nuancer la transition de la seconde moitié du XVIII e siècle entre un impérialisme maritime et commercial « Atlantique » et un impérialisme territorial et militariste aux Indes 95 , et il y eut aussi une dimension développementaliste dans la projection de puissance anglo-indienne (en Irak, par exemple, après 1916 96 ), mais Disraeli disait bien craindre l'« asianisation » de l'impérialisme britannique. Aujourd'hui, cette dimension « nonmoderne », voire « non-occidentale » du Raj est mise en avant : préservation des traditions, continuité avec l'Empire Moghol, ponctions fiscales pour entretenir une importante armée (dont les monopoles sur le sel et l'opium)… 97 Si une partie des troupes de l'armée des Indes servait de « gendarmerie » pour assurer l'ordre intérieur, une autre fut spécialisée dans la guerre des frontières (en particulier, après l'échec de la campagne du Waziristan en 1919-1920) et une troisième intervint dans tout l'Empire, de l'Afrique à l'Extrême-Orient et, notamment, durant les guerres mondiales en Europe et au Moyen-Orient.…”

Learning to use the past: the development of a rhetorical history strategy by the London headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company

“…In 1769, when the EIC was under intense criticism in Britain (Ogborn 2008), it appointed an official Historiographer, the world's first in-house corporate historian. The EIC's successive Historiographers produced useful historical works designed to celebrate the firm's accomplishments in India (Delgoda 1992;Stern 2009). To facilitate the creation of useful knowledge about its past, the EIC also paid the salary of a Registrar and Keeper of Records from 1771.…”