The Archive of Empire : Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Siddique, Asheesh Kapur.

Series:

The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Government publications--Great Britain--Colonies.

Government publications.

Imperialism.

Great Britain--Colonies--Administration.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (257 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, 2024.

Summary:

How modern data-driven government originated in the creation and use of administrative archives in the British Empire Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two oceanic worlds. The British ruled this empire by correlating incoming information about the conduct of subjects and aliens in imperial spaces with norms of good governance developed in London. Officials derived these norms by studying the histories of government contained in the official records of both the state and corporations and located in repositories known as archives. As the empire expanded in both the Americas and India, however, this system of political knowledge came to be regarded as inadequate in governing the non-English people who inhabited the lands over which the British asserted sovereignty. This posed a key problem for imperial officials: What kind of knowledge was required to govern an empire populated by a growing number of culturally different people? Using files, pens, and paper, the British defined the information order of the modern state as they debated answers to this question. In tracing the rise and deployment of archives in early modern British imperial rule, Asheesh Kapur Siddique uncovers the origins of our data-driven present.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on the Documents

Introduction

One: Animating Imperial Bodies

Two: Subjects of the Archive

Three: Contentious Politics

Four: Records of Conquest

Five: Dueling Systems

Six: From State Papers to Public Records

Epilogue

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Siddique, Asheesh Kapur The Archive of Empire

ISBN:

9780300280661

OCLC:

1446079959