Penelope Ismay

We learn about the preparation for and voyage to India, for example. There are interesting examples of Company servants’ struggles to maintain health on the way and in the subcontinent. Thomas Cust and his family offer insights here. Cust, a captain in the Bengal Native Infantry, had recently returned from extended sick leave in South Africa when he died at Barrackpore in 1795. Only three years later, his daughter Susan, who had probably contracted tuberculosis in England before returning to Calcutta, was advised to go on a sea voyage for the benefit of her health. Perhaps most significantly, Provincial Society and Empire underscores the value and importance of the complex networks of patronage, kinship and friendship that helped to produce appointments and facilitate Company success in Asia. Here, Cumbria and its communities provide an invaluable case study. For example, Andrew Fleming Hudleston was helped to prepare for his voyage by his second cousin, the retired Company servant and Company director, John Hudleston. A grateful Andrew told his aunt, Isabella, that John was ‘very kind in assisting me in getting all things necessary for my outfit to India’ (122). In the years to come, advances in digitization should – theoretically at least – make this kind of approach even more time-efficient and rewarding. As it stands, Provincial Society and Empire undoubtedly illuminates social conditions in India and in Cumbria, as well as the personal and economic connections between them. It is to be hoped that it will also stimulate further investigation and encourage a more comprehensive overview of the regional impact of the East India Company across the British Isles.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the internal migration of a growing population transformed Britain into a 'society of strangers'. The coming and going of so many people wreaked havoc on the institutions through which Britons had previously addressed questions of collective responsibility. Poor relief, charity briefs, box clubs, and the like relied on personal knowledge of reputations for their effectiveness and struggled to accommodate the increasing number of unknown migrants. Trust Among Strangers re-centers problems of trust in the making of modern Britain and examines the ways in which upper-class reformers and working-class laborers fashioned and refashioned the concept and practice of friendly society to make promises of collective responsibility effective - even among strangers. The result is a  new account of how Britons navigated their way into the modern world.