Empire of Labor

How the East India Company Colonized Hired Work

Titas Chakraborty

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9780520399662
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: History

Empire of Labor tells the story of how hired workers experienced and responded to the rise to power over the long eighteenth century of the English East India Company (EIC), which perennially hired thousands of people in and around its settlements in Bengal. Focusing on boatmen and silk reelers as well as sailors and soldiers—a remarkable look at both indigenous and European workers—the story begins with the earliest accounts of the EIC's dealings with hired labor in the region, from 1651. Prior to EIC dominance, hired workers drove hard bargains with their employers, making demands that drew upon their own notions of wages, work rhythms, and time. When their demands were not met, they ran away, often to rival indigenous or European employers. Empire of Labor explores these demands and how they conflicted with the EIC's notions of discipline. Analyzing Bengali literary sources and Dutch and English archival materials, the book rethinks the ascendancy of the company state as a violent process involving removing competing employers, imposing army and police power, introducing new production technologies, and instituting draconian regulations which eliminated indigenous cultures of work. Most importantly, it depicts the lifeworlds of these recalcitrant workers, showing how they lived and resisted. A major intervention in histories of colonialism, labor, migration, and law, Empire of Labor ultimately recasts colonial rule as a novel form of state-labor relationship.

Table of contents

• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Beruniẏās of Bengal: Mobile Hired Work and the State in Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century Bengal
• 2. “Quarrelsome Workers”: Boatmen in the Early Eighteenth-Century Company State
• 3. “I Would Rather Be the Foremost Prince of Any Lower Court”: European Sailors and Soldiers in the Early Eighteenth-Century Company State
• 4. “Less Than the Lowest Class of Laborers”: Silk Reelers and the Company State, 1650–1779
• 5. “Prisoner” of the Magistrate: Boatmen, European Sailors, and the Colonial Police, 1790–1817
• Conclusion: A Colonial Rule over Labor
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography of Primary Sources
• Index