The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India

by Philip J. Stern

Almost since the event itself in 1757, the English East India Company's victory over the forces of the nawab of Bengal and the territorial acquisitions that followed has been perceived as the moment when the British Empire in India was born. Examining the Company's political and intellectual history in the century prior to this supposed transformation, The Company-State rethinks this narrative and the nature of the early East India Company itself.

In this book, Philip J. Stern reveals the history of a corporation concerned not simply with the bottom line but also with the science of colonial governance. Stern demonstrates how Company leadership wrestled with typical early modern problems of political authority, such as the mutual obligations of subjects and rulers; the relationships among law, economy, and sound civil and colonial society; the constitution of civic institutions ranging from tax collection and religious practice to diplomacy and warmaking; and the nature of jurisdiction and sovereignty over people, territory, and the sea. Their ideas emerged from abstract ideological, historical, and philosophical principles and from the real-world entanglements of East India Company employees and governors with a host of allies, rivals, and polyglot populations in their overseas plantations. As the Company shaped this colonial polity, it also confronted shifting definitions of state and sovereignty across Eurasia that
ultimately laid the groundwork for the Company's incorporation into the British empire and state through the eighteenth century.

Challenging traditional distinctions between the commercial and imperial eras in British India, as well as a colonial Atlantic world and a trading world of Asia, The Company-State offers a unique perspective on the fragmented nature of state, sovereignty, and empire in the early modern world.

Genres: History, India, Nonfiction, Politics, World History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 2011

About the author

A specialist in the history of the British Empire, Philip J. Stern is Associate Professor of History at Duke University.

Reviews

[K. G. Whitehurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

This monograph is an excellent intellectual history of the consistent political philosophy pursued by the movers and shakes of the East India Company in late 17th and early 18th centuries. It is for specialists only. Stern presents a coherent thesis, consistently argued and supported with evidence. Every sentence contains important information, making this a difficult read--except toward the end when he's discussing the changes in the Mughal empire which actually help facilitate the achievement of the EIC's political goals. By the time the Company gets what it wants, Britain itself is on a different political tract--a rational, statutory path that allows Parliament to oversee everything. In the end the early modern EIC is overtaken by the modern British State.

[Cuauhtemoc Villamar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. The author proposes a history of the East India Company as an opportunity to understand the larger phenomena in the construction of the modern State in England and its expansion into the imperial realm. The book is based on thorough research in the archives of the Company; official documents, minutes, letters of the official employees, known as servants. The EIC was taken over by the Crown at the moment in which the British imperial project to dominate South Asia (and Asia) was ready in the mid 19th Century.

[Milpool · Rating 4 out of 5]

According to Stern, we need to think about the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century EIC as a sovereign entity, equipped with a fully functional military and political structure. At first blush, the claim is not particularly controversial—although a trading company, the EIC had to deploy military infrastructure early in its career to defend its interests in Bombay and Madras against rival companies and local hegemons. Not a book for the faint of heart, as the argument lies in the drudgery of archival details, but useful for students of mercantile political economy.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really learned lots about Indian history here. Early British policy was surprising tolerant and progressive in ways I did not expect, and the interplay between the corporate and the governmental is interesting.

[Liu · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very dry book. It described the first 150 years of the East India Company. The entire book is written with quotes intermingled in sentences. I estimate that 40 percent of the book is within quotes.
Although the chapters are written in terms of religion, sovereignty and law, within the chapter itself there is no clear demarcation of theme.
It is a very difficult book to read let alone enjoy.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

very interesting. he takes it too far, but it is fascinating to think that it was a chartered corporation that colonized india, divided sovereignty strengthens the state.