Asheesh Kapur Siddique, an assistant professor of history at UMass Amherst and author of "The Archive of Empire," dives into how the British Empire utilized archives to govern its vast territories. He discusses the crucial interplay between knowledge management and colonial expansion, revealing how written records shaped political orders. Siddique highlights the evolution of archival practices, the complexity of integrating diverse legal systems, and the transition of archives from secrets to public records, emphasizing their modern implications.
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insights INSIGHT
Changing Meanings of Terms
Words like "office," "subject," "record," and "politics" had different meanings in the early modern British Empire.
Be careful not to impose modern interpretations on these terms when studying historical documents.
insights INSIGHT
The Concept of "Office"
The term "office" in the early modern period referred to a position in a hierarchy, not just a physical space.
Officials were tasked with specific duties, and their superiors tracked their work through documents.
insights INSIGHT
Paper and Record Keeping
Paper was a relatively new technology in the early modern period, replacing parchment.
Different cultures had different methods for recording information, such as cloth, palm leaves, oral traditions, wampum, and pictographs.
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The Archive of Empire, Knowledge, Conquest and the Making of the Early Modern British World
The Archive of Empire, Knowledge, Conquest and the Making of the Early Modern British World
Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World
Asheesh Kapur Siddique
Dr. Asheesh Kapur Siddique's "The Archive of Empire" explores the pivotal role of information and record-keeping in the British Empire's expansion and governance. The book delves into the evolution of information technologies, from parchment to paper, and their impact on imperial administration. It examines how different groups, including Native Americans and enslaved people, were represented in these records, reflecting their status within the imperial structure. The work also analyzes the use of archival documents in political debates and the eventual opening of archives to the public. Ultimately, the book sheds light on the historical roots of our contemporary data-driven world.
Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two oceanic worlds. The British ruled this empire by correlating incoming information about the conduct of subjects and aliens in imperial spaces with norms of good governance developed in London. Officials derived these norms by studying the histories of government contained in the official records of both the state and corporations and located in repositories known as archives.
As the empire expanded in both the Americas and India, however, this system of political knowledge came to be regarded as inadequate in governing the non-English people who inhabited the lands over which the British asserted sovereignty. This posed a key problem for imperial officials: What kind of knowledge was required to govern an empire populated by a growing number of culturally different people? Using files, pens, and paper, the British defined the information order of the modern state as they debated answers to this question. In tracing the rise and deployment of archives in early modern British imperial rule, in The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World (Yale University Press, 2024) Dr. Asheesh Kapur Siddique uncovers the origins of our data-driven present.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
New Books in Intellectual History