The vastness of Britain’s nineteenth-century empire and the gap between imperial policy and colonial practice demanded an institutional culture that encouraged British administrators to identify the interests of imperial service as their own. In Corporate Character, Eddy Kent examines novels, short stories, poems, essays, memoirs, private correspondence, and parliamentary speeches related to the East India Company and its effective successor, the Indian Civil Service, to explain the origins of this imperial ethos of “virtuous service.”

Exploring the appointment, training, and management of Britain’s overseas agents alongside the writing of public intellectuals such as Edmund Burke, Thomas Malthus, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and J.S. Mill, Kent explains the origins of the discourse of “virtuous empire” as an example of corporate culture and explores its culmination in Anglo-Indian literature like Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. Challenging narratives of British imperialism that focus exclusively on race or nation, Kent’s book is the first to study how corporate ways of thinking and feeling influenced British imperial life.

Eddy Kent is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.

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‘A thought-provoking and well-researched study… This is an important and innovative revisionist contribution to the scholarship on British imperial rule in India.’

Canadian Journal of History vol 51:03:2016

‘This book’s most significant contribution is its blurring of often-strict lines drawn between approaches of Company and Crown; the relatively smooth shift from the ideal of corporation as a body sharing fellowship, custom, and interest to the institutions, formal laws, and contracts of the mid-to-late nineteenth century.’

Canadian Literature 223 / winter 2014

‘The range of material that Kent unpacks to show how corporate culture solidified imperial power through practices, policies, and administrative structures makes Corporate Character an invaluable addition to the corpus of critical work on the British Empire.’

English Studies in Canada vol 41:03:2015

‘Kent’s work raises intriguing questions about the motives and personalities that shaped British imperialism… It offers a fresh perspective on imperial history.’

H-Net/H-War September 2016