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Historian Asheesh Kapur Siddique Publishes Book on 'The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World'

September 9, 2024 Academics

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Historian and Assistant Professor Asheesh Kapur Siddique’s first book, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World, was recently published with Yale University Press. The book examines how modern data-driven government originated in the creation and use of administrative archives in the British Empire. 

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the British relied upon networks of information to govern, expand and reconstruct their Empire. These years of data collection created expansive archives and established norms but how could British government archives be effective in understanding cultures and languages other than their own? By examining the British Empire’s data collection in the Americas and South Asia, the relationship between power and information comes into clearer view.

Siddique's book allows us to understand the origins of data collection, a phenomenon that might seem very recent but actually extends back to the 1600s. The Archive of Empire shows that we can turn to history for examples closely related to our lives, concerns, and challenges today.

“This brilliant, erudite, and pathbreaking study of imperial information management shows that the Enlightenment of knowledge was a powerful force that worked to free the mind, but was also a potent tool of repression,” notes Jacob Soll, author of Free Market: The History of an Idea. “Siddique has emerged as one of the most brilliant scholars of his generation, and this book is essential to understanding our own challenges with information, public discourse, and the state and their origins in the colonial enterprise. Anyone interested in the history of economics, politics, and the often bewildering modern age must read Siddique’s masterwork.”

The Archive of Empire is available directly from Yale University Press and from booksellers everywhere. 

To celebrate Siddique and the book's recent release, there will be a book party at Amherst Books on Tuesday, Oct. 8, from 6-7 p.m. Learn more about the book party. 

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