The University of Macau (UM) said in a statement yesterday that “The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge”, a book by UM Department of History Assistant Professor Joshua Ehrlich, was recently published by the Cambridge University Press.
The result of a decade of research in over 30 archives spanning three continents, the book shows how the British East India Company “used knowledge to consolidate its commercial and political power”, according to the statement.
The statement noted that Ehrlich has pointed out that the company is remembered as the world’s most powerful yet notorious corporation and his book shows how it cited its commitment to knowledge, and generations of its advocates have stressed that the company’s commitment to knowledge was integral to its ideology, “in defence of its increasingly fraught union of commercial and political power”.
Leading scholars have described the book in advance reviews as “important” and “as ambitious as it is meticulous”, among others, while a professor emerita from the University of Pennsylvania, Rosane Rocher, added that the book “will be required reading for historians of the East India Company, South Asia, and the British Empire”, the statement said.
Those interested can visit https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009367967
The statement said that Ehrlich joined the public university in 2018 and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Chicago, and a Master of Arts and a doctorate degree in history from Harvard University.
This image provided by the University of Macau (UM) yesterday shows the front cover of “The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge”.
