MUGHALS AND MERCENARIES: GLOBALIZATION AS DELIBERATIVE RHETORICS OF RISK AND PRECARITY IN THE ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY

Rhetorics of globalization are best understood through the concept of risk. This dissertation traces the history of contemporary globalization back to the encounters of the English East India Company (EIC) from the seventeenth through eighteenth centuries with foreign trading cultures through primary journals, records, and guidebooks. I also contrast the EIC approach with the sulh-i-kull approach of the Mughal Empire. I conclude that the EIC cultivated risk to override ethical considerations of the Other, invent the private sphere, and lay the bedrock of contemporary capitalism.