by Disha Karnad Jani
In this latest episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Asheesh Kapur Siddique, assistant professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, about his recent book, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World (Yale University Press, 2024).
Siddique examines how early modern British administrators ushered in a new kind of information state and draws together how successive early modern rulers in Britain transformed the collection, preservation, and use of information as they expanded their influence and rule over South Asia and the Americas. Through an analysis of the forms of knowledge encountered by British travelers and administrators and powerful ideas about the role of information in the governance of native populations and Europeans alike, Siddique offers a new history of how mastery over territory, peoples, and information came to be seen as related endeavors.
Asheesh Kapur Siddique is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the author of The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World (Yale University Press, 2024).
Disha Karnad Jani is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Research Training Group (RTG) “World Politics” at Universität Bielefeld. Her current book project is an intellectual history of the League Against Imperialism, 1927–1937. She is the co-host of In Theory, the podcast of the JHI Blog.
Featured image: Cover of The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World, courtesy of Yale University Press.
