HEИндивидуална стипендия2022–2024

WAR_WITNESS · Bearing Witness in Wartime: The East India Company’s Soldiers in the Public Domain, 1764-1857

„Хоризонт Европа“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2022-10-01 → 2024-09-30
Финансиране от ЕС: 173 847 €
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Схема: HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

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Накратко на български

Свидетелствата на войниците от Британската източноиндийска компания (1764-1857) разкриват реалността на войните в Индия, разминаваща се с официалните правителствени разкази. Анализът на тези исторически конфликти между прозрачност и национална сигурност помага да се разбере съвременният подход към разкриването на информация.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

Bearing Witness in Wartime: The East India Company’s Soldiers in the Public Domain, 1764-1857

One of the fundamental characteristics of modern democracies is the tension between transparency and national security. A 2019 EU Directive designed to augment whistle-blower protection, for example, emphasized the importance of reporting and disclosure to public welfare, but identified the security and defence sectors as exceptions to the rule. These kinds of national security exemptions have become increasingly contentious. Proponents argue that unauthorized disclosures undermine military discipline and put ongoing operations at risk, while critics contend that military personnel are entitled to the same rights and obligations as other citizens, including the responsibility to speak out to prevent harm. WAR_WITNESS applies a historical perspective to this issue, on the basis that understanding how this tension was negotiated in the past can inform our approach to this problem in future. In eighteenth-century Britain, modern ideals of open government were beginning to take shape, as growing calls for political accountability and parliamentary reform coincided with the expansion of the print industry and the development of the daily newspaper. At the same time, a trading corporation called the East India Company (EIC) was building an empire in India through a process of violent conquest. Because foreign correspondents did not yet exist, eyewitness testimony represented the primary alternative to official narratives disseminated in government gazettes. Since the EIC’s commercial monopoly restricted British access to the subcontinent, soldiers stationed in India became the most important sources of public information about the EIC’s wars of imperial expansion. The overall objective of WAR_WITNESS was to determine what soldiers disclosed and what impact this had on contemporary debates about the EIC’s military operations. In the process, WAR_WITNESS demonstrates that ideas and practices of military secrecy were once quite different. The important democratic functions performed by soldiers in the past indicate the potential value of making their voices heard in the future.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Former U.S. Army analyst Chelsea Manning became notorious after releasing classified information to WikiLeaks in 2010. Manning’s 35-year prison sentence, commuted in 2017, provoked acrimonious debate not just about American military operations overseas, but about the extent to which values of transparency and accountability apply in the defence sector. Manning is the famous face of a larger trend, as new social media have enabled soldiers to publicize their experiences of combat environments through blogs, video clips, and leaks to the press. Soldiers’ revelations have elicited public and academic debate, but their impact remains unclear. My research provides a historical perspective to this question by refocusing attention on a period of global war and imperial expansion when modern ideals of open government first took shape. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, against the backdrop of an expanding print industry and growing demands for government accountability, the East India Company (EIC) became the dominant imperial power in the Indian Ocean world. EIC soldiers acted as vital witnesses to these events, writing letters to newspapers, authoring books and pamphlets, and providing testimony in parliament. By comparing soldiers’ statements with official narratives, and by tracing how soldiers’ statements were received by parliament, the public, and the EIC, this research will determine what impact soldiers had on contemporary debates about imperial operations. Fulfilling this research objective will enhance our understanding of public attitudes to empire as well as illuminating the changing relationship between military, government, and the public. Through this research I will achieve technical competence in computational methods and narrative analysis techniques as well as training in grant-writing and team management, thereby positioning me to secure an ERC Starting Grant and become a leading voice in the field of British imperial history.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

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LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITAET MUENCHEN · PlaneggКоординаторГермания