Creating the Arabian Gulf

Creating the Arabian Gulf
Author: Paul John Rich
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780739127056

Whether called 'Arabian' or 'Persian, ' the Gulf is one of the most politically important regions of the world, and its history is necessary in understanding the contemporary Middle East. Paul Rich draws on previously closed archives to document the actual heritage of the area and dispel the myths, showing that the influences of Britain and India are far deeper than commonly acknowledged, and that the sheikhs are actually the creation of the British Raj

The Indian Princes and their States

The Indian Princes and their States
Author: Barbara N. Ramusack
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2004-01-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139449087

Although the princes of India have been caricatured as oriental despots and British stooges, Barbara Ramusack's study argues that the British did not create the princes. On the contrary, many were consummate politicians who exercised considerable degrees of autonomy until the disintegration of the princely states after independence. Ramusack's synthesis has a broad temporal span, tracing the evolution of the Indian kings from their pre-colonial origins to their roles as clients in the British colonial system. The book breaks ground in its integration of political and economic developments in the major princely states with the shifting relationships between the princes and the British. It represents a major contribution, both to British imperial history in its analysis of the theory and practice of indirect rule, and to modern South Asian history, as a portrait of the princes as politicians and patrons of the arts.

Glittering Decades

Glittering Decades
Author: Nayantara Pothen
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2012-01-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 8184756011

New Delhi was purpose-built to trumpet the supremacy of the British Raj and inaugurated in 1931. Instead it came to represent a fading imperial dream in the two decades that followed. In the heyday of the British Raj, strict social and racial hierarchies governed the social life of the city’s ruling elites. And the frivolity of New Delhi’s high society was kept in check by a faithful adherence to etiquette and protocol in everyday life. For example, the sixteen-button glove at a formal viceregal dinner party was of great importance as a means of maintaining the authority of the Raj. But the 1930s and 1940s were a period of transition. The political shifts associated with India’s journey to self-government echoed in the social codes of conduct adopted by the Indian elites of New Delhi, and undermining the Raj’s pomp became a legitimate means of challenging its authority. Closely examining the role of social ritual, interaction and behaviour in the shaping of the city and its elite groups, Glittering Decades tells the story of New Delhi and its privileged inhabitants between 1931 and 1952.

The Mountbattens

The Mountbattens
Author: Andrew Lownie
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1643137921

The intimate story of a unique marriage spanning the heights of British glamour and power that descends into infidelity, manipulation, and disaster through the heart of the twentieth century. DICKIE MOUNTBATTEN: A major figure behind his nephew Philip's marriage to Queen Elizabeth II and instrumental in the royal family taking the Mountbatten name, he was Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia during World War II and the last Viceroy of India. EDWINA MOUNTBATTEN: Once the richest woman in Britain—and a playgirl who enjoyed numerous affairs—she emerged from World War II as a magnetic and talented humanitarian worker who was loved throughout the­ world. From British high society to the South of France, from the battlefields of Burma to the Viceroy's House, The Mountbattens is a rich and filmic story of a powerful partnership, revealing the truth behind a carefully curated legend. Was Mountbatten one of the outstanding leaders of his generation, or a man over-promoted because of his royal birth, high-level connections, film-star looks and ruthless self-promotion? What is the true story behind controversies such as the Dieppe Raid and Indian Partition, the love affair between Edwina and Nehru, and Mountbatten's assassination in 1979?

From Autocracy to Integration

From Autocracy to Integration
Author: Lucien D. Benichou
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2000
Genre: Hyderabad (India : Princely State)
ISBN: 9788125018476

This book tells of the events which led, in September 1949, to the integration of the Princely State of Hyderabad the largest and the richest of the Princely States into the Indian Union. The author questions the nature and popularity of the annexation of Hyderabad and attempts to answer sensitive questions through a detailed study of the crucial decade of 1938 48.

The Kashmir Conflict

The Kashmir Conflict
Author: Rakesh Ankit
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2016-06-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317225252

This book presents a study of the international dimensions of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan from before its outbreak in October 1947 until the Tashkent Summit in January 1966. By focusing on Kashmir’s under-researched transnational dimensions, it represents a different approach to this intractable territorial conflict. Concentrating on the global context(s) in which the dispute unfolded, it argues that the dispute’s evolution was determined by international concerns that existed from before and went beyond the Indian subcontinent. Based on new and diverse official and personal papers across four countries, the book foregrounds the Kashmir dispute in a twin setting of Decolonisation and the Cold War, and investigates the international understanding around it within the imperatives of these two processes. In doing so, it traces Kashmir’s journey from being a residual irritant of the British Indian Empire, to becoming a Commonwealth embarrassment and its eventual metamorphosis into a security concern in the Cold War climate(s). A princely state of exceptional geo-strategic location, complex religious composition and unique significance in the context of Indian and Pakistani notions of nation and statehood, Kashmir also complicated their relations with Britain, the United States, Soviet Union, China, the Commonwealth countries and the Afro-Arab-Asian world. This book is of interest to scholars in the field of Asian History, Cold War History, Decolonisation and South Asian Studies.

Colonial Cousins

Colonial Cousins
Author: Joyce P. Westrip
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 1862548412

An exploration of the historic relationship between Australia and India.

Conquering the maharajas

Conquering the maharajas
Author: Harrison Akins
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2023-06-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526167840

Conquering the maharajas demonstrates that the political and military clashes between the Indian and Pakistani governments and the princely states, a legacy of the layered sovereignty of British indirect rule in India, was a product of the competing ideas of state sovereignty leading up to and following the transfer of power in 1947.