Interview: East India Company to Big Tech – how corporations think about knowledge

In recent years, the East India Company – which conquered and ruled large parts of India over the 18th and 19th centuries – has been compared to companies like Google and Meta. Both today’s Big Tech firms as well as the East India Company were profit-hungry corporations, not sovereign entities, that nevertheless had immense influence at a global scale and often wielded their powers in deeply exploitative ways.

But the similarities don’t end there, according to Joshua Ehrlich, Associate Professor at the University of Macau. In The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Ehrlich argues that the way “technology giants…have committed themselves to the cause of knowledge…by encroaching on science, education and other spheres long deemed the preserve of states” raises questions that, in fact, are hardly new and were already being asked in the 18th century.

Ehrlich’s book takes a close look at how the East India Company thought about knowledge, both the amassing thereof as well as the manner in which it was subsequently spread. The book’s narrative captures consequential debates that took place within the company-state about how it ought to be using knowledge and examines the ways in which the East India Company’s stewardship of ideas, information,...

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