UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Economies, Moralities, and State Formations in British Colonial India Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0h23p0rv Author Wilson, Nicholas Hoover Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Economies, Moralities, and State Formations in British Colonial India By Nicholas Hoover Wilson A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Ann Swidler, Chair Professor Neil Fligstein Professor James Vernon Professor Dylan Riley Fall 2012 Abstract Economies, Moralities, and State Formations in British Colonial India by Nicholas Hoover Wilson Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Berkeley Professor Ann Swidler, Chair How is modern power organized? My dissertation explores this question by probing how state, society, and economy became ethically autonomous spheres for colonial administrators. In other words, I ask how officials shifted justifications for their behavior from referring to their immedi- ate peers to the abstract imperatives of markets, the social, and sovereignty. Corruption scandals were a key cause of this shift. Endemic to the English East India Trading Company's administration in India since its foundation, these scandals generally involved admin- istrative squabbles escalating into appeals to authorities in London. However, while the scandals had a consistent form, the Seven Years War decisively changed their content. The war eroded the insulation protecting the Company's London authorities from Parliament and put a host of new actors who had little knowledge of Indian affairs in a position to influence the Company's behav- ior.
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