New Books in British Studies

Joshua Ehrlich, "The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge" (Cambridge UP, 2023)


Listen Later

The East India Company is remembered as the world's most powerful, not to say notorious, corporation. But for many of its advocates from the 1770s to the 1850s it was also the world's most enlightened one. 

Joshua Ehrlich reveals that a commitment to knowledge was integral to the Company's ideology. In The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge (Cambridge UP, 2023), he shows how the Company cited this commitment in defense of its increasingly fraught union of commercial and political power. He moves beyond studies of orientalism, colonial knowledge, and information with a new approach: the history of ideas of knowledge. He recovers a world of debate among the Company's officials and interlocutors, Indian and European, on the political uses of knowledge. Not only were these historical actors highly articulate on the subject but their ideas continue to resonate in the present. Knowledge was a fixture in the politics of the Company – just as it seems to be becoming a fixture in today's politics.

Joshua Ehrlich is a historian of knowledge, political thought, the East India Company, the British Empire, and South and Southeast Asia. Currently Assistant Professor of History at the University of Macau, he received a PhD and MA from Harvard University and a BA from the University of Chicago.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

New Books in British StudiesBy Marshall Poe

  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4

4

3 ratings


More shows like New Books in British Studies

View all
In Our Time by BBC Radio 4

In Our Time

5,389 Listeners

History Extra podcast by Immediate Media

History Extra podcast

3,193 Listeners

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps by Peter Adamson

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

1,588 Listeners

Jacobin Radio by Jacobin

Jacobin Radio

1,424 Listeners

Best of the Spectator by The Spectator

Best of the Spectator

184 Listeners

The Dig by Daniel Denvir

The Dig

1,543 Listeners

CrowdScience by BBC World Service

CrowdScience

480 Listeners

This Day by Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

This Day

989 Listeners

The Ancients by History Hit

The Ancients

3,039 Listeners

The Rest Is History by Goalhanger

The Rest Is History

13,053 Listeners

Gone Medieval by History Hit

Gone Medieval

1,758 Listeners

Not Just the Tudors by History Hit

Not Just the Tudors

1,982 Listeners

The Rest Is Politics by Goalhanger

The Rest Is Politics

3,286 Listeners

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society by History Hit

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

1,210 Listeners

Past Present Future by David Runciman

Past Present Future

321 Listeners