The Business of Empire

Abstract

The Business of Empire assesses the domestic impact of British imperial expansion by analysing what happened in Britain following the East India Company's acquisition of a vast territorial empire in South Asia. Drawing on a mass of hitherto unused material contained in the company's administrative and financial records, the book offers a reconstruction of the inner workings of the company as it made the remarkable transition from business to empire during the late-eighteenth century. H. V. Bowen profiles the company's stockholders and directors and examines how those in London adapted their methods, working practices, and policies to changing circumstances in India. He also explores the company's multifarious interactions with the domestic economy and society, and sheds important new light on its substantial contributions to the development of Britain's imperial state, public finances, military strength, trade and industry. This book will appeal to all those interested in imperial, economic and business history.

Bush/Harper? Canadian and American Evangelical Politics Compared

“…17 For example, a 2004 Maclean's magazine survey found that 31 percent of Canadians declared themselves "born-again Christians," 18 but sociologist Kurt Bowen uses Statistics Canada studies to suggest that the number of "conservative Protestants" in 2001 was only 5.5 percent. 19 Similar wide discrepancies are found in the United States, in which up to half the population can be classified as "born-again." Nevertheless, the trends seem to suggest that American evangelicals appear to be about double the proportion of Canadian evangelicals.…”

Reason of State: Whose Reason? Which Reason?

“…As one of the great money engines of state, the Company provided a nodal point connecting the City of London, the state, and the empire in a network of relationships based on mutual indebtedness. 71 But the Company's own activities reveal that the 18 th century overlap of commerce and war was far more than a metaphor. On its own initiative, it waged a series of wars across the Indian subcontinent.…”

“…77 But most politicians accepted the pragmatic argument that the Company offered the best way of securing profit and revenue from India. 78 The pragmatic argument in some ways grew stronger as the Company became more powerful. 'By contemporary standards it was a gigantic organization.'…”

“…This, in turn, led the Company to undertake very substantial legal and administrative restructuring of the territories under its control. 80 While the British government aimed to turn the Company into 'an administrative arm of the imperial state', 81 there was a real sense in the metropolis that the Company was becoming a 'rogue state', 82 exercising sweeping powers under the banner of sovereign authority, beyond the control of the British state.…”

The East India College Debate and the Fashioning of Imperial Officials, 1806–1858

“…In addition to the Company's growing political prominence in the subcontinent, a variety of factors, including the spectre of past corruption within its ranks, as well as evangelical influences and an emergent professional ethic within British society more broadly, combined to produce a consensus around the need for better trained imperial officials. 15 More generally, this unanimity reflected the belief that, whatever changes might ultimately take place within the Company, its success would to some extent always rely on the character and ability of its agents. Marquess Wellesley, Governor-General of the Company from 1797 to 1805 and founder of Fort William College in Calcutta, expressed this consensus when he claimed that 'the wisest system of government will but imperfectly answer its ends, unless means are at the same time taken for providing persons duly qualified for the conduct of the system'.…”