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The emergence of a colonial form of political power in India between 1760 and 1810 can be considered as a gradual dispossession, in favor of the British Crown, of the commercial, legal and political privileges granted by the London Parliament to a powerful private merchant company, the East India Company. This process was the outcome of several developments: the internal crisis triggered by the Company’s Indian policy, the rise of economic interest groups promoting the values of free trade, and the emergence of protestant missionary movements. All these actors demanded the free circulation of capital, men as well as cultural and religious goods between England and India. They contributed to the emergence of a specific social universe, the field of colonial power, divided between the metropole and its colony, subjected to a form of domination made legitimate by principles reflecting exclusively the interests and the values of the British elites.