Company Politics
Journal Data
| Type | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, Incorporated |
| ISBN-13 | 9780197653753 |
| Open Library | OL34335105W |
| Total publications | 4 |
| Coverage period | 2023 - 2023 |
| Language | EN |
Abstract Company Politics offers a new interpretation of political economy, imperialism, and the history of the corporation in the age of the French Revolution. The book addresses the history of the Nouvelle Compagnie des Indes, the final iteration of the French East India Company, interweaving national and imperial scales through the frame of the transnational corporate body. Despite its reputation for financial corruption, the New Company emerged from the unique circumstances that France faced in India as a weakened imperial power, in the face of the rise of the sovereign British East India Company (EIC). As India remained integral to the broader French imperial economy, officials and intellectuals accordingly reimagined French power subsisting through an informal empire of trade, rather than a territorial empire of conquest, while simultaneously reimagining the trading company as a private, “purely commercial” actor, rather than a sovereign company-state. In tracing its trajectories through Europe and the Indian Ocean world, the book explores how these fraught boundaries between the Company’s public and private attributes played out in disparate geopolitical and diplomatic contexts, revealing the limitations of metropolitan imperial ideologies. As both state and private financial actors clashed over the Company’s prerogatives, they envisioned new alignments between state and market, challenged the legitimacy of the Old Regime’s economic and imperial policies, and sought to revolutionize the underlying corporation itself. As a result, Company Politics argues that, as dynamic sites of corporate and imperial experimentation, French trading companies are integral to the broader histories of both capitalism and empire.
Company Politics
The Company’s Two Bodies
This chapter discusses the turbulent histories of the Compagnies des Indes that existed between 1664 and 1769. The two early incarnations of the Company were wracked by war debt from abroad and speculative investment at home, and the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, in which France lost virtually all of its territorial claims in India, saw the final bankruptcy of the second, or “Law” Company. While the monarchy’s revocation of its monopoly in 1…
Between the Colossus and the Tiger
The agents of the New Company in India were confronted by challenges that derived from the French state’s fiscal precarity and unwillingness to commit to its fragile Indian empire on the ground. In Pondicherry, the Company’s lead agent was drawn into schemes to subsidize the expenses of the French Navy, while maintaining profiting from financial connections with the East India Company in Madras. In Bengal, the epicenter of British power in eighte…
The Revolution of India
Many French officials, especially those within the French Navy, continued to regard India as a realistic venue for military action against Britain after the Seven Years’ War. These actors sought a “revolution of India” that would overthrow British rule in collaboration with Indian powers such as the Maratha Confederacy or the kingdom of Mysore. Their projects were avowedly predicated on a rejection of territorial conquest and a desire to return t…
No prominent publications on this page.
Company Politics
The Company’s Two Bodies
This chapter discusses the turbulent histories of the Compagnies des Indes that existed between 1664 and 1769. The two early incarnations of the Company were wracked by war debt from abroad and speculative investment at home, and the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, in which France lost virtually all of its territorial claims in India, saw the final bankruptcy of the second, or “Law” Company. While the monarchy’s revocation of its monopoly in 1…
Between the Colossus and the Tiger
The agents of the New Company in India were confronted by challenges that derived from the French state’s fiscal precarity and unwillingness to commit to its fragile Indian empire on the ground. In Pondicherry, the Company’s lead agent was drawn into schemes to subsidize the expenses of the French Navy, while maintaining profiting from financial connections with the East India Company in Madras. In Bengal, the epicenter of British power in eighte…
The Revolution of India
Many French officials, especially those within the French Navy, continued to regard India as a realistic venue for military action against Britain after the Seven Years’ War. These actors sought a “revolution of India” that would overthrow British rule in collaboration with Indian powers such as the Maratha Confederacy or the kingdom of Mysore. Their projects were avowedly predicated on a rejection of territorial conquest and a desire to return t…