Corporate Character: Representing Imperial Power in British India, 1786–1901 by Eddy Kent (review)

The transformation of British rule in India, from the heyday of the East India Company to direct crown rule in the late nineteenth century, is the subject of this thought-provoking and well-researched book. Eddy Kent analyzes the dynamics of imperialism “through the problematic of institutions and agency rather than the more conventional lenses of race or nation” (7). The self-image of Britons in imperial service was often shaped by their prosaic and thankless daily routines, the esteem of their peers, and the never-ending expectation of self-sacrifice as much as any larger considerations of imperial mission or racial difference.

Kent describes the corporate culture of British India as it evolved from the merchant-adventurer days of the eighteenth century into the full-fledged bureaucracy and legal regime of the British Raj. The first chapter traces British fixation on rooting out corruption in the East India Company as reflected in Edmund Burke’s famous prosecution of Warren Hastings in the latter’s impeachment trial. Burke argued in favour of selecting men of character and superior moral bearing to govern ethically and in the interest of India’s welfare. Civic virtue in the Roman tradition was to be the model for rule over Britain’s expanding empire. Kent rightly points to the conceit that caused the landowning, rather than commercial, classes to be seen as more naturally bred for the type of disinterested but dedicated stewardship that the Indian people needed from imperial Britain.

The second chapter describes the formation of the Indian Civil Service. Competitive examinations replaced patronage appointments and students at Haileybury College — the school for indoctrinating recruits before they even set foot in India — were trained to see themselves not as “public citizens but rather as instruments in a regulated system” (66). In this sense, Haileybury came to resemble a modern service academy rather than one of Britain’s great public schools or ancient universities. The corporate ethos of self-abnegation to a higher cause, which drew from utilitarian philosophy and Victorian liberalism more broadly, was thus instilled in these young men before they went on to face the hardships and temptations awaiting them in India.

The third chapter explores the working conditions and institutional culture of imperial service as represented in a selection of nineteenth-century Anglo-Indian literature, most notably the early stories of Rudyard Kipling, W.D. Arnold, and G.O. Trevelyan. Kent observes that the nascent literature of Anglo-India was often produced by writers drawing upon their own career experience in India for the consumption of readers in Britain. Many of these authors, especially the more obscure ones, may have been more concerned about their reception among their peers in the Anglo-Indian community than among a larger metropolitan readership.

The fourth chapter describes the continuation of this ethos in the decades following the demise of Company rule. The resigned stoicism of the colonial official toward the drudgery, unacknowledged sacrifice, and misery into which he has poured the best years of his life remained a well-worn trope in Anglo-Indian literature, and is perhaps best summed up in Kipling’s, “The White Man’s Burden.” In chapter five, Kent applies the lens of corporate culture to Kipling’s most famous novel, Kim. Kent’s revisionist analysis describes the protagonist in his travels as motivated less by notions of empire, nationality, or race and more by his schooling and professional sense of duty. Kim’s loyalty is institutional rather than cultural and his desperate loneliness and moments of self-doubt would be instantly familiar to the other company men of British India.

Kent builds a sophisticated and nuanced argument rooted in an impressive range of stories, novels, poems, essays and speeches, and a solid command of the relevant historical and literary scholarship. That said, there are some surprising omissions. Recent work by Robert Travers, Jon Wilson, and Huw Bowen on the political, philosophical...