The Royal Asiatic Society was founded in London in 1823, following the establishment of its predecessor in India, the Asiatic Society of Calcutta. At this time the British Empire in India was dominated by the English East India Company (EIC), which had been established in 1600 and functioned as a de facto colonial state until 1858. This talk explores the cultural worlds of both indigenous and European workers of the EIC during the period that led up to the establishment of academic societies such as the RAS.

While the religious and cultural worlds of monks, rulers, and merchants of the eighteenth century are relatively well known, the cultural and religious life worlds of ordinary workers remain much less researched even though they provide key insights into the transition to colonial rule in the region. Often at odds with interests of the EIC, workers' cultural and religious practices constantly undermined the EIC's efforts to streamline the labor market in India. For example, European soldiers converted to Islam, to escape the EIC and work for local rulers who paid better wages. The spiritual and mystical practices of Indian boatmen, as another example, often evaded British colonial classifications as either "Hindu" or "Muslim." Such practices left their documentary trail not only in the archives of the EIC and other European companies but also in indigenous literature, religious texts, art and architecture.

By the early nineteenth-century the EIC reined in this pluricultural world of work by creating a judicial and law enforcement mechanism that simultaneously fostered racial and religious divisions amongst and between European and indigenous workers as well as subjected all workers to iron-handed labor discipline. The workers thus transitioned into being subjects of the new colonial state, severed from a pre-colonial culture of work, through an experience of great violence.