The Archive of Empire

“This provocative and wide-ranging study shows how the early British Empire used its archives to control its diverse populations and how the gaps and tensions this practice raised ultimately ruptured the empire and spawned an alternative, modern logic of political power.”—Nicholas Popper, author of The Specter of the Archive: Political Practice and the Information State in Early Modern Britain “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. 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.”—Jacob Soll, author of Free Market: The History of an Idea “Equally intricate and erudite, Siddique’s must-read account reveals the colonial archive to be far from merely a repository of historical sources and to have its own complex and contested history, one which is at the foundations of the modern British Empire, not to mention the modern information state.”—Philip J. Stern, author of Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism