Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and its Empire, 1600-1850

by Mark Knights

Overview

Trust and Distrust offers the first overview of Britain's history of corruption in office in the pre-modern era, 1600-1850, and as such will appeal not only to historians, but also to political and social scientists. Mark Knights paints a picture of the interaction of the domestic and imperial stories of corruption in office, showing how these stories were intertwined and related. Linking corruption in office to the domestic and imperial state has not been attempted before, and Knights does this by drawing on extensive interdisciplinary sources relating to the East India Company as well as other colonial officials in the Atlantic World and elsewhere in Britain's emerging empire.

Both 'corruption' and 'office' were concepts that were in evolution during the period 1600-1850 and underwent very significant but protracted change which this study charts and seeks to explain. The book makes innovative use of the concept of trust, which helped to shape office in ways that underlined principles of selflessness, disinterestedness, integrity, and accountability in officials.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198820505
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2025
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Mark Knights, Professor of History, University of Warwick

Mark Knights has published extensively on early modern Britain with a particular focus on its political culture. His first book was Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678-1681 (1994), and he has published two further books with OUP on later Stuart culture. He moved to the University of Warwick in 2007 and has directed its Early Modern and Eighteenth Century Centre. The research for Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and its Empire, 1600-1950 won two awards, the first 2014-16 an AHRC Leadership Fellowship and in 2020 a Leverhulme Fellowship.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. Indian Civil Servants3. Conceptualising Office4. Conceptualising Corruption5. Trust, Standards of Public Office, and Corruption6. Interest and Disinterestedness7. Public Money, Public Accounts, and Accountability8. Informal Accountability9. Freedom of the Press and Anti-Corruption10. The Politics of Anti-Corruption11. Sale of Office12. Gifts and Informal Profits of Office13. Conclusion14. Policy Implications

Editorial Reviews

"No historian of this long period can afford to ignore the book and it will certainly appeal to a large readership not only among historians of Britain and its empire but among political scientists more generally." — Paul Slack, Emeritus Professor of Early Modern Social History, Linacre College, University of Oxford

"The scholarship on display here is remarkable ... [a] superb study" — Ian Cawood, Times Literary Supplement

"Knights's achievement is to set the attack on 'Old Corruption' in a much longer timeframe and a more interesting framework than the conventional view" — Prof Jonathan Parry (Cambridge), London Review of Books 15 Jan 2022

"In Trust & Distrust, Knights has produced a work of significant importance and breadth, one which deserves to be read by historians and non-historians alike with an interest in the politics and culture of early modern Britain and its empire." — Ben Gilding, Culture and Social History

"Trust & Distrust is a magisterial piece of scholarship ... It will be the defining scholarly embarkation point for the study of corruption and anticorruption in early modern England and its empire for years to come." — Robert Bucholz, The American Historical Review

"... a remarkable scholarly achievement, and one that is especially impressive for its scope ..." — Paul Kosmetatos, Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies

"This is a timely and persuasive contribution to both contemporary debates about corruption and office as well as scholarship on early modern Britain and one that will, indubitably and deservedly, have a strong impact on future research." — Hannes Ziegler, Journal of British Studies

From the Publisher