Empire of Labor

"Empire of Labor integrates histories of indigenous and European hired labor in East India Company Bengal to completely alter our understanding of the character of work and flight. Refocusing our attention on law, policing, and violence, it shows how the Company created new hierarchies of discipline to control the mobility of men, women, and children, override their customary practices, and standardize wages and contracts. In this way, waged work forged new social relations and created new forms of servility that crushed precolonial freedoms and destroyed lifeworlds."--Clare Anderson, author of Convicts: A Global History "This book combines methodological boldness with archival riches to make a compelling case about waged work in the early modern peninsula. In the process, it reenergizes labor history for all readers and gives them both novel and exciting directions in which to pursue its leads."--Indrani Chatterjee, John L. Nau III Distinguished Professor in the History and Principles of Democracy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville "A completely novel and original contribution to the history of work in Bengal and India in the period of 1670-1820. Titas Chakraborty demonstrates convincingly how, especially in the decades around 1800, the rules of the game were changed by the British, putting heavy constraints on the freedom of wage workers--constraints with long-lasting impacts on the development of India to this very day."--Jan Lucassen, author of The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind