Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600-1830

2017 Bentley Book Prize, World History Association

Linking four continents over three centuries, Selling Empire demonstrates the centrality of India — both as an idea and a place — to the making of a global British imperial system. In the seventeenth century, Britain was economically, politically, and militarily weaker than India, but Britons increasingly made use of India’s strengths to build their own empire in both America and Asia. Early English colonial promoters first envisioned Americ...