The Scandal of Empire

Many have told of the East India Company's extraordinary excesses in eighteenth-century India, of the plunder that made its directors fabulously wealthy, but this is only a fraction of the story. When Warren Hastings was put on trial by Edmund Burke, it brought the Company's exploits to public atten [...]
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Many have told of the East India Company's extraordinary excesses in eighteenth-century India, of the plunder that made its directors fabulously wealthy, but this is only a fraction of the story. When Warren Hastings was put on trial by Edmund Burke, it brought the Company's exploits to public attention. Through the trial and after, the British government created an image of a vulnerable India that needed British assistance. Intrusive behavior was recast as a civilizing mission. In this fascinating, and devastating, account of the scandal that laid the foundation of the British Empire, Nicholas Dirks explains how this substitution of imperial authority for Company rule helped erase the dirty origins of empire and justify the British presence in India.