How art brought down the East India Company

After years of ruling over the Indian subcontinent, the East India Company was nationalised by the British state in 1858. India and its people were to be governed by the newly created British Raj, with Queen Victoria at its helm. But how did this once-powerful organisation lose its grip on power? Dr Tom Young tells Jon Bauckham why he believes that the answer lies in the sketchbooks and scrapbooks of amateur artists in India, and explores how art reshaped ideas about colonial rule in the early 19th century.

Tom Young is the author of Unmaking the East India Company: British Art and Political Reform in Colonial India, c1813-1858 (Yale University Press, 2023)