Empires of Blood and Ruin: Doctoral Dissertation Restricted; Files Only
Weller, Adee (Spring 2026)
Abstract
How do executives monitor and constrain the actions of their agents, to whom they delegate governing power? This question is central to understanding how organizations in general, and states in particular, hold themselves together. Legislatures delegate authority to bureaucrats, voters to politicians, leaders to military and security forces, and corporations to local manufacturers. As soon as power and authority is loaned from a principal to a self-interested agent, divergence, shirking, and misalignment become risks, particularly when agents possess private information over their principals. While principals may expand monitoring or rely on selective sanctioning to keep agents in line, these tools are often insufficient. Managing this commitment problem is therefore a core challenge of governance.
This three-paper dissertation argues that executives manage delegated governance by exploiting the vulnerabilities of the agents to whom authority is delegated and reshaping governing coalitions conditional on the performative loyalties those agents demonstrate. Rather than relying on shared ideologies, stable institutional commitments, or uniform repression, executives deploy calibrated combinations of coercion, selective rewards, surveillance, and strategic control over information to constrain agent autonomy and expand control over far-flung governance activities.
I examine these dynamics in the case of the English East India Company between 1769 and 1773, the earliest years of territorial rule in Bengal before the first parliamentary intervention meant to constrain Company autonomy. During this period, the Company exercised sovereign authority with minimal oversight from Parliament while governing through layered forms of indirect rule and constructing a fragile governing coalition. Drawing on systematic archival materials preserved in Company correspondence, administrative records, and court proceedings, I analyze 10,592 pages of documents sent to or from Bengal between January 1, 1769 and December 31, 1773. These records provide a rare window into the internal governing process from the perspective of Company employees and administrators.
Across three papers, I show how these strategies operated in practice. The first demonstrates how the conditional provision of protection from violence allowed the Company to discipline local elites and coerce collaboration. The second shows how Mughal-era petitioning institutions were co-opted into mechanisms of surveillance, enabling administrators to monitor corruption and constrain their own officials and intermediaries. The third examines how the Company governed beyond its territorial boundaries by infiltrating allied courts, shaping what information leaders received and who influenced their decisions. This framework and empirical evidence reframe indirect rule as a multilayered system of delegated governance and contribute to broader debates on coalition maintenance, principal–agent problems, and the governance of intermediaries across historical and contemporary settings.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Delegated Governance
1.2 Overview of the Dissertation
1.2.1 Violence as Political Instrument
1.2.2 Accountability as Surveillance
1.2.3 Informational Infiltration and External Governance
1.3 Contributions
2 Empires of Blood and Ruin: Selective Protection and Control in Colonial Regimes
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Colonial Governance as a Protection Racket
2.3 Selective Repression as a Tool of Elite Consolidation
2.4 Armed Conflict in Bengal: 1769-1773
2.5 Internal Security Discussions and Responses
2.5.1 East India Company Records
2.5.2 Armed Activity in Bengal: Data
2.5.3 Personnel and Politics in Bengal: Data
2.5.4 Evidence of Information and Capacity Constraints
2.5.5 Local Agents, Criminal Violence, and Colonial Repression
2.5.6 Criminal Violence, Distrust, and Repression
2.5.7 Criminal Violence and Elite Distrust Covariance
2.5.8 Public Punishments as a Repression Tool
2.5.9 Troop Movements Across Bengal
2.5.10 Qualitative Evidence of Selective Repression
2.5.11 Alternative Explanations
2.6 Conclusion
3 Institutional Co-optation and Surveillance in Colonial Administration
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Institutions under Indirect Rule
3.3 How Accountability Expanded Colonial Power
3.4 Context and Data
3.4.1 Company Rule in Bengal
3.4.2 Archival Records of Daily Governance In Bengal (1769-1773)
3.4.3 Limitations in Historical Data
3.5 Co-opted Accountability and Colonial Expansion
3.5.1 Collaboration and Competition by Elites
3.5.2 Gendered Access to Power and Colonial Collaboration
3.5.3 Civilians Demands for Accountability
3.5.4 Colonial Capture and Co-optation of Institutions of Voice
3.6 Conclusion
4 Informal Empire: How to Coerce Your Allies and Manipulate Your Friends
4.1 Introduction
4.2 International Alliance Management
4.3 Infiltration and Manipulation of Allies
4.4 International Dynamics of the East India Company
4.5 Data
4.6 Empirical Approach
4.6.1 Agents in Allied Courts
4.6.2 Monitoring Capacity and Selective Intelligence Provision
4.6.3 Armed Conflicts between Polities
4.6.4 Mughal Court
4.6.5 Awadhi Court
4.6.6 Hostile Courts
4.7 Conclusion
5 Conclusion
6 References
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File download under embargo until 27 May 2028 | 2026-03-26 13:01:16 -0400 | File download under embargo until 27 May 2028 |
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