Indirect rule is widely considered as a defining feature of the nineteenth and twentieth century British Empire but its divisive earlier history remains largely unexplored. Empire of Influence traces the contentious process whereby the East India Company established a system of indirect rule in India in the first decades of the nineteenth century. In a series of thematic chapters covering intelligence gathering, violence, gift giving and the co-optation of the scribal and courtly elite, Callie Wilkinson foregrounds the disagreement surrounding the tactics of the political representatives of the Company and recaptures the experimental nature of early attempts to secure Company control. She demonstrates how these endeavours were reshaped, exploited and resisted by Indians as well as disputed within the Company itself. This important new account exposes the contested origins of these ambiguous relationships of 'protection' and coercion, while identifying the factors that enabled them to take hold and endure.

Short-listed, 2024 The British in India Book Prize, The British in India Historical Trust

‘Based on extensive research in British and Indian archives, Callie Wilkinson's Empire of Influence adds vital new dimensions to our understanding of the development, under the East India Company's aegis, of concepts and practices of British paramount power on the subcontinent. Her analysis of how the balance of power within the subsidiary alliance system shifted decisively toward the British in the early nineteenth century recognises the agency and strategic nous of both Indian and Company agents, powerfully revealing the political and diplomatic processes by which both aspirations to rule and claims to legitimacy were contested, negotiated, won and lost. A must-read title for historians of the Company, the Uprising of 1857–58 and Crown rule in India.’

Margot C. Finn - FBA FRHistS, Professor of Modern British History, University College London

'A valuable contribution to our understanding of British rule.'

Tunku Varadarajan Source: Wall Street Journal

‘Callie Wilkinson’s elegant prose and forensic research help to expose layers of information and uncover new levels of detail about the Residency system.’

John Mcaleer Source: H-Soz-Kult