The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain

The Scandal of Empire reveals that the conquests and exploitations of the East India Company were critical to England's development in the eighteenth century and beyond. In this powerfully written critique, Nicholas Dirks shows how the empire projected its own scandalous behavior onto India itself. By returning to the moment when the scandal of empire became acceptable, we gain a new understanding of the modern culture of the colonizer and the colonized and the manifold implications for Britain, India, and the world.