The British in India

The British in India
Author: David Gilmour
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2018-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374713243

An immersive portrait of the lives of the British in India, from the seventeenth century to Independence Who of the British went to India, and why? We know about Kipling and Forster, Orwell and Scott, but what of the youthful forestry official, the enterprising boxwallah, the fervid missionary? What motivated them to travel halfway around the globe, what lives did they lead when they got there, and what did they think about it all? Full of spirited, illuminating anecdotes drawn from long-forgotten memoirs, correspondence, and government documents, The British in India weaves a rich tapestry of the everyday experiences of the Britons who found themselves in “the jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. David Gilmour captures the substance and texture of their work, home, and social lives, and illustrates how these transformed across the several centuries of British presence and rule in the subcontinent, from the East India Company’s first trading station in 1615 to the twilight of the Raj and Partition and Independence in 1947. He takes us through remote hill stations, bustling coastal ports, opulent palaces, regimented cantonments, and dense jungles, revealing the country as seen through British eyes, and wittily reveling in all the particular concerns and contradictions that were a consequence of that limited perspective. The British in India is a breathtaking accomplishment, a vivid and balanced history written with brio, elegance, and erudition.

Inglorious Empire

Inglorious Empire
Author: Shashi Tharoor
Publisher: Penguin Group
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780141987149

Inglorious Empire' tells the real story of the British in India from the arrival of the East India Company to the end of the Raj, revealing how Britain's rise was built upon its plunder of India. In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die from starvation. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial "gift" - from the railways to the rule of law -was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India's deindustrialisation, and the destruction of its textile industry.

History of British Rule in India

History of British Rule in India
Author: Edward Thompson
Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Dist
Total Pages: 1092
Release: 1999
Genre: India
ISBN: 9788171568031

The Book Is Comprehensive, Analytical And Critical Account Of Modern Indian History Beginning With The Foundation Of The East India Company And Going Upto The Publication Of The White Paper Of 1933. The Indian Readers May Not Agree With All The Views Expressed In The Book But Would Still Find It Highly Interesting And Useful.The Book Would Be Found Of Immense Use By Students, Teachers And Researchers Of Indian History.

British Rule in India

British Rule in India
Author: Pandit Sunderlal
Publisher: SAGE Publications Pvt. Limited
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-01-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789352808021

A freedom fighter’s telling account of the exploitation of India by the East India Company. In 1929, Pandit Sunderlal’s original work in four volumes, Bharat Mein Angrezi Raj, was banned by the British because of its fearless criticism of their rule in India. In sharp contrast to narratives by British historians, who stressed that India was in a state of arrested development before the British arrived, Pandit Sunderlal’s books celebrated India’s past. In 1960, the Government of India brought out this history in two volumes: How India Lost Her Freedom and British Rule in India. The first volume How India Lost Her Freedom was published by SAGE earlier this year. It details how British traders penetrated the sub-continent and established the foundation of their rule. This second volume British Rule in India covers the period from 1805 (Second Maratha War), a turning point for the East India Company, to 1858, when the East India Company had to cede control to the British Crown. It details how the British acquired territories by sly and dishonourable treaties and how their rule led to extremely large-scale economic exploitation. It painstakingly traces the history of the deliberate destruction of Indian industry and the plundering that went on under the guise of development. Pandit Sunderlal was an eminent Gandhian and freedom fighter. 18th March 1929 First published 1,700 copies sold in 4 days 22nd March 1929 Banned by British Government 13th November 1937 Ban lifted; 2nd edition published 10,000 copies sold 1960 3rd edition published by Publications Division, Government of India, in two volumes 1963 4th edition published 1970 & 1972 The two books published by Popular Prakashan January 2018 How India Lost Her Freedom published by SAGE July 2018 British Rule in India hits the stores once again Note: Now this ISBN-9780856550676 has a new identity.

The British Raj in India

The British Raj in India
Author: S. M. Burke
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 699
Release: 1997
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195777345

This scholarly study is different from earlier books on the Raj in that it is neither hero-oriented nor self justifying. The emphasis instead is on world events and developments inside the subcontinent which influenced the conduct of the leaders, and affected the course of events. It is the crucial transfer of power process resulting in the partition of Britain's Indian Empire into two independent states that is appraised. The authors have made good use of the massive documentation made available by the British Government since 1983, as well as the unique archives kept in the British Museum. These have enabled the authors to throw some new light on the partition process, in particular on the workings of the Radcliff Boundary Awards Commission.

The Scandal of Empire

The Scandal of Empire
Author: Nicholas B. Dirks
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674034260

Many have told of the East India Company’s extraordinary excesses in eighteenth-century India, of the plunder that made its directors fabulously wealthy and able to buy British land and titles, but this is only a fraction of the story. When one of these men—Warren Hastings—was put on trial by Edmund Burke, it brought the Company’s exploits to the attention of the public. Through the trial and after, the British government transformed public understanding of the Company’s corrupt actions by creating an image of a vulnerable India that needed British assistance. Intrusive behavior was recast as a civilizing mission. In this fascinating, and devastating, account of the scandal that laid the foundation of the British Empire, Nicholas Dirks explains how this substitution of imperial authority for Company rule helped erase the dirty origins of empire and justify the British presence in India. The Scandal of Empire reveals that the conquests and exploitations of the East India Company were critical to England’s development in the eighteenth century and beyond. We see how mercantile trade was inextricably linked with imperial venture and scandalous excess and how these three things provided the ideological basis for far-flung British expansion. In this powerfully written and trenchant critique, Dirks shows how the empire projected its own scandalous behavior onto India itself. By returning to the moment when the scandal of empire became acceptable we gain a new understanding of the modern culture of the colonizer and the colonized and the manifold implications for Britain, India, and the world.

Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India

Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India
Author: Robert Travers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 16
Release: 2007-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139464167

Robert Travers' analysis of British conquests in late eighteenth-century India shows how new ideas were formulated about the construction of empire. After the British East India Company conquered the vast province of Bengal, Britons confronted the apparent anomaly of a European trading company acting as an Indian ruler. Responding to a prolonged crisis of imperial legitimacy, British officials in Bengal tried to build their authority on the basis of an 'ancient constitution', supposedly discovered among the remnants of the declining Mughal Empire. In the search for an indigenous constitution, British political concepts were redeployed and redefined on the Indian frontier of empire, while stereotypes about 'oriental despotism' were challenged by the encounter with sophisticated Indian state forms. This highly original book uncovers a forgotten style of imperial state-building based on constitutional restoration, and in the process opens up new points of connection between British, imperial and South Asian history.

The Chaos of Empire

The Chaos of Empire
Author: Jon Wilson
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 586
Release: 2016-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610392949

The popular image of the British Raj-an era of efficient but officious governors, sycophantic local functionaries, doting amahs, blisteringly hot days and torrid nights-chronicled by Forster and Kipling is a glamorous, nostalgic, but entirely fictitious. In this dramatic revisionist history, Jon Wilson upends the carefully sanitized image of unity, order, and success to reveal an empire rooted far more in violence than in virtue, far more in chaos than in control. Through the lives of administrators, soldiers, and subjects-both British and Indian-The Chaos of Empire traces Britain's imperial rule from the East India Company's first transactions in the 1600s to Indian Independence in 1947. The Raj was the most public demonstration of a state's ability to project power far from home, and its perceived success was used to justify interventions around the world in the years that followed. But the Raj's institutions-from law courts to railway lines-were designed to protect British power without benefiting the people they ruled. This self-serving and careless governance resulted in an impoverished people and a stifled society, not a glorious Indian empire. Jon Wilson's new portrait of a much-mythologized era finally and convincingly proves that the story of benign British triumph was a carefully concocted fiction, here thoroughly and totally debunked.

An Era of Darkness

An Era of Darkness
Author: Shashi Tharoor
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789383064656

A few years later, the young and weakened Mughal emperor, Shah Alam II, was browbeaten into issuing an edict that replaced his own revenue officials with the Company s representatives. Over the next several decades, the East India Company, backed by the British government, extended its control over most of India