Joshua Ehrlich on the East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge The East India Company and modern tech giants like Google share a common thread: both have framed themselves as champions of knowledge. In the late 1990s, Google’s founders declared their mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Two centuries earlier, the East India Company used similar rhetoric to justify its colonial rule, positioning itself as a promoter of learning and enlightenment. Historian Joshua Ehrlich, associate professor at the University of Macau, explores this parallel in his book The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge, which examines how knowledge became a tool of political power during the Company’s rule in India. Ehrlich’s work reveals that colonial officials viewed scholarship as a means to secure their authority. By patronizing Indian scholars and British intellectuals, they sought to legitimize their governance. This strategy, known as “conciliation,” was central to the Company’s approach. Warren Hastings, the Company’s governor of Bengal, was a key architect of this policy. Despite his controversial reputation, Hastings leveraged Enlightenment ideals to argue that knowledge production was the Company’s responsibility. He employed Indian scholars, commissioned translations of legal texts, and established a madrassa in Calcutta. These actions not only strengthened the Company’s administrative control but also won him allies among Indian elites, some of whom later defended him during his impeachment trial in Britain. Hastings’ conciliation strategy drew on Indian traditions of tolerance, such as Akbar’s policy of sulh-i kull (“universal peace”).#joshua_ehrlich #university_of_macau #east_india_company #warren_hastings #william_jones
