Operations of the India Office: Architecture, Infrastructure, and Imperial Logistics in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract This article expands the historiography of nineteenth-century architecture by centering the logistics of information and money, people, and materials. Beginning with the 1857–58 uprising in India, it examines both buildings and infrastructure through previously unexplored archival material at the British Library and the British National Archives, alongside unpublished clerks’ memoirs and a range of gray literature. These sources and the methodological approach taken foreground previously unexplored aspects of the building’s interiors and equipment related to bureaucracy and political economy, addressing the India Office not as a singular object but as part of a system that enabled military, financial, and colonial operations. Through transregional analysis, the article situates the monumental India Office headquarters in London within a broader network of British imperialism that includes an off-site warehouse (the India Store Depot), a hostel for migrant workers (the Strangers’ Home), telegraph offices across India, and global financial markets.