Description
What did it mean to govern globally? How did British politicians in London grapple with the increasingly global expanse of the British Empire? This chapter tracks the institutionalization of global imperial governance by considering a new agency established by Parliament in 1784: the Board of Control for India Affairs. The Board of Control allowed British ministers resident in London to involve themselves in the minutiae of governing India and moreover, to govern India as part of a larger global imperial whole. Indeed, the formation of the Board linked together imperial administration across India, Ireland, Canada, the Caribbean and incipient settlements in Australia. The concentration of imperial authority in ministerial hands also set the stage for closely coordinated decision-making about the slave trade, sugar production in both the East and West Indies as well as the China trade.
About the Speaker
Tiraana Bains is an Assistant Professor of History at Brown University. Her research is focused on political economy, state-formation, and imperialism across Britain, South Asia, and the wider Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century. She is currently completing a book project titled Rage of Empire: The Origins of British India, which is under contract at Yale University Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Journal of British Studies, The English Historical Review, and History Australia. Prior to joining Brown, she was the Modern Intellectual History Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College.
About the British Studies Seminar Series
The British Studies Seminar brings together scholars to discuss work that addresses the history of Britain and the British Empire from the early modern period to present day. The seminar is co-sponsored by the Graduate Cluster in British Studies at Northwestern, Northwestern History, and the Nicholson Center for British Studies at the University of Chicago.
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This event is free, but all participants must register in advance. Space is limited, so please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend.
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