Mobilizing the “State Papers” of Empire: John Bruce, Early Modernity, and the Bureaucratic Archives of Britain

Abstract

Abstract This article examines John Bruce’s vision of the bureaucratic archives of the British state and empire at the end of the eighteenth century. As Historiographer to the East India Company and Keeper of State Papers in the 1790s and early 1800s, Bruce used the archives of corporate and state government as sources of bureaucratic knowledge to justify and plan imperial and domestic policy. In this way, Bruce deployed a strategy of governance by the authority of “state papers,” rooted in early modern political practice, across imperial and domestic government. The demise of Bruce’s influence signaled the waning of this role of the archive as a technology of governance in Britain during the nineteenth century.