The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III: The East India Company and the Crisis and Transformation of Britain’s Imperial State

319 Pages·2019·3.28 MB·English

by  James M. Vaughn

(cid:2)
he Politics of Empire at the
Accession of George III
(cid:2)HE LEWIS WALPOLE SERIES
IN EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY
CULTURE AND HISTORY
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the range of our geographical interests is as wide as
Horace Walpole’s.
The Politics
of Empire at the
Accession of
George III
the east india company and
the crisis and transformation of
britain s imperial state
’
James M. Vaughn
New Haven & London
Published with assistance from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund.
Copyright © 2019 by Yale University. All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018948868
ISBN 978- 0- 300- 20826-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
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This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso Z39.48-1 992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of Gregory Carpenter- Vaughn
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Contents
Acknowledgments, ix
Author’s Note, xii
Introduction, 1
Part One THE FIRST BRITISH EMPIRE AND ITS CRISIS
1 The First British Empire, the Whig Supremacy,
and the East India Company, 19
2 Bourgeois Radicalism and the “Empire of Liberty”
in the Age of Pitt, 50
3 The Plassey Revolution in Bengal and the Company’s
Civil War in Britain, 88
Part Two THE MAKING OF THE SECOND BRITISH EMPIRE
4 Clive’s Conquest of East India House and the
Company’s Conquest of Bengal, 131
5 The New Toryism and the Imperial Reaction at the
Accession of George III, 165
contents
viii
6 The Triumph of the New Toryism and the Spirit of the
Second British Empire, 201
Epilogue, 232
Notes, 249
Index, 295
Acknowledgments
This book owes most of its ideas and inspiration to innumerable discus-
sions and debates with advisors, colleagues, friends, and students over the past
decade. Any interesting conclusions and stimulating arguments it contains
are likely the result of the good company I’ve kept over the years; the rest is
no one’s fault but my own. I would like to take this opportunity to thank
many of the people who have discussed this book’s ideas and chapter drafts
with me.
This work began life as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Chi-
cago, where brilliant advisors and fellow students taught me most of what I
know about British and imperial history. I owe an intellectual debt too large
to ever repay to my supervisor, Steve Pincus, who taught me to ask big ques-
tions and to answer them as boldly and clearly as possible. Having spent the
past few years teaching and advising graduate students, I look back in awe at
the amount of time Steve devoted to discussing my ideas and arguments,
however silly and half-b aked they were. In addition to serving on my disserta-
tion committee and providing invaluable commentary on every chapter,
Ralph Austen pressed me to think beyond “little England” and to place my
historical work in a global context. I’m grateful that Ralph remains a mentor
to this day. I was fortunate to take a seminar on Jacobitism with a visiting
professor, Alan MacInnes. Alan provided crucial advice and suggestions at
every stage of this project, suffering my Whiggish inclinations with good
ix