India is presented in Poor Things less through its geography than through competing accounts of imperial power: Harry Astley treats religion as an instrument of governance, Dr. Hooker casts conquest as a moral duty, and Astley’s history of Indian textiles exposes the economic harm beneath that rhetoric.

Religion and Imperial Governance

In conversation with Dr. Hooker, Astley describes supporting the established religion of whichever territory Britain governs: the Church of England in England, the Church of Scotland in Scotland, and local religions in India and elsewhere. He frames this not as personal faith but as a practical means of keeping populations governable. His example makes religious policy part of the machinery of empire, valued for the stability it might secure rather than for its truth.

The Civilizing Mission

Dr. Hooker offers a more overt justification for British rule. He claims that Anglo-Saxons are uniquely suited to govern and teach other peoples, depicting those outside that category through racist stereotypes. His argument presents violence as a preliminary step toward improvement: Britain’s military power, he says, enables it to defeat rulers who resist its authority. India enters this speech as one of the territories subsumed into a sweeping imperial claim, not as a place whose people are allowed to speak for themselves. The contrast with Astley is pointed: Astley is cynical about the use of religion to preserve rule, while Hooker dresses domination in the language of moral responsibility.

Textiles and the Costs of Free Trade

Astley gives a more specific account of British power through the history of Indian cloth. He says Indian weavers once produced cotton cloth and muslin admired as the finest in the world. British merchants first excluded French competitors from the Indian market; later, once British factories could make cheaper cloth by machine, British policy shifted toward obtaining Indian raw materials and preventing others from buying Indian cloth. Astley invokes a report by a British-appointed governor that the plains of Dacca were strewn with weavers’ bones. The image turns an abstract defense of free trade into a record of human consequences: commercial policy helped displace the makers whose skills had made Indian textiles valuable.

Narrative Significance

India’s appearances expose the gap between imperial self-description and imperial practice. Hooker’s language of benevolent instruction presents conquest as protection, while Astley’s examples connect governance and trade to the maintenance of British power and the ruin of Indian workers. The novel thus makes India a crucial point in its debate over empire: the same rule that claims to bring order can also impose cultural hierarchy and reorganize production for the benefit of the ruling power.