Empire of Influence
Empire of Influence
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Indirect rule is widely considered as a defining feature of the nineteenth and twentieth century British Empire but its divisive earlier history remains largely unexplored. Empire of Influence traces the contentious process whereby the East India Company established a system of indirect rule in India in the first decades of the nineteenth century. In a series of thematic chapters covering intelligence gathering, violence, gift giving and the co-optation of the scribal and courtly elite, Callie Wilkinson foregrounds the disagreement surrounding the tactics of the political representatives of the Company and recaptures the experimental nature of early attempts to secure Company control. She demonstrates how these endeavours were reshaped, exploited and resisted by Indians as well as disputed within the Company itself. This important new account exposes the contested origins of these ambiguous relationships of 'protection' and coercion, while identifying the factors that enabled them to take hold and endure.
- Addresses a vital topic in the historiography of the British Empire in India which brings it back into dialogue with the most up-to-date literature on the history of empire
- Provides a strong archival base of British and Indian government records and private papers
- For students and academics interested in India, the British Empire, South Asia and European overseas empires
Awards
Short-listed, 2024 The British in India Book Prize, The British in India Historical Trust
Reviews & endorsements
‘Based on extensive research in British and Indian archives, Callie Wilkinson's Empire of Influence adds vital new dimensions to our understanding of the development, under the East India Company's aegis, of concepts and practices of British paramount power on the subcontinent. Her analysis of how the balance of power within the subsidiary alliance system shifted decisively toward the British in the early nineteenth century recognises the agency and strategic nous of both Indian and Company agents, powerfully revealing the political and diplomatic processes by which both aspirations to rule and claims to legitimacy were contested, negotiated, won and lost. A must-read title for historians of the Company, the Uprising of 1857–58 and Crown rule in India.’ Margot C. Finn, FBA FRHistS, Professor of Modern British History, University College London
'A valuable contribution to our understanding of British rule.' Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal
‘Callie Wilkinson’s elegant prose and forensic research help to expose layers of information and uncover new levels of detail about the Residency system.’ John Mcaleer, H-Soz-Kult
Product details
March 2023Hardback
9781009311731
262 pages
236 × 155 × 22 mm
0.611kg
Available
Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Translation and Transliteration
- Chronology
- List of Abbreviations
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1. A Time of Trouble
- 2. Negotiating the disinformation order
- 3. Warfare and 'wanton provocations'
- 4. The price of pageantry
- 5. Weak ties in a tangled web
- 6. Kinship, gender, and dynastic dramas
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index.
