Home Institution: University College London
October 2016 - March 2017
Biography
Ellen Filor received her PhD in 2014 from University College London. Since submitting her thesis, she has held a Fulbright at the University of Michigan and a Junior Research Fellowship at University College London. Her research interests are broadly nineteenth-century British imperial history, specifically the East India Company and the economic, political and cultural impact of British engagement with the subcontinent.
Project - Corruption in a Time of Reform: Revisiting the East India Company and the Houses of Parliament, 1800-57
One of the most long-standing historical arguments in the history of Britain and the British empire is that the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century was accompanied by a reform of traditional aristocratic rule into a more modernised, moral, and rational form of governance. Central to this process was the purging of corrupt practices such as nepotism, torture, judicial bias, and promotion through patronage. By questioning the effectiveness of these reforms, my work will offer insight into how continued corruption fuelled the expansion of and resistance to British rule in India. While at Edinburgh, I am focusing on a number of East India Company men and Indian subjects who entered parliament post-1832, exploring how colonial conceptions of corruption travelled between and were intrinsically intermeshed into the workings of Indian and Britain government.