Author: Shashi Tharoor
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 9780141987149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
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.
Inglorious Empire
Author: Shashi Tharoor
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 9780141987149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 9780141987149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
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.
The British in India
Author: David Gilmour
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374713243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 641
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374713243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 641
Book Description
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.
Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars
Author: C. A. Bayly
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521310543
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510
Book Description
Widely acclaimed when it first appeared in hard covers, Dr Bayly's authoritative study traces the evolution of North Indian towns and merchant communities from the decline of Mughal dominion to the consolidation of mature Victorian empire following the 'mutiny' of 1857. The first section of the book looks at the response of the inhabitants of the Ganges Valley to the 'Time of Troubles' in the eighteenth century. The second section shows how the incoming British, were themselves constrained to build their new empire on this resilient network of towns, rural bazaars and merchant communities; and how in turn colonial trade and administration were moulded by indigenous forms of commerce and politics. The third section focuses on the social history of the towns under early colonial rule and includes an analysis of the culture and business methods of the Indian merchant family. It is based in part on the private records and histories of the business people themselves.
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521310543
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510
Book Description
Widely acclaimed when it first appeared in hard covers, Dr Bayly's authoritative study traces the evolution of North Indian towns and merchant communities from the decline of Mughal dominion to the consolidation of mature Victorian empire following the 'mutiny' of 1857. The first section of the book looks at the response of the inhabitants of the Ganges Valley to the 'Time of Troubles' in the eighteenth century. The second section shows how the incoming British, were themselves constrained to build their new empire on this resilient network of towns, rural bazaars and merchant communities; and how in turn colonial trade and administration were moulded by indigenous forms of commerce and politics. The third section focuses on the social history of the towns under early colonial rule and includes an analysis of the culture and business methods of the Indian merchant family. It is based in part on the private records and histories of the business people themselves.
The Chaos of Empire
Author: Jon Wilson
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610392949
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 586
Book Description
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.
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610392949
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 586
Book Description
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.
British India and Its Rulers
Author: Sir Henry Stewart Cunningham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
How the East Was Won
Author: Andrew Phillips
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009064193
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 662
Book Description
How did upstart outsiders forge vast new empires in early modern Asia, laying the foundations for today's modern mega-states of India and China? In How the East Was Won, Andrew Phillips reveals the crucial parallels uniting the Mughal Empire, the Qing Dynasty and the British Raj. Vastly outnumbered and stigmatised as parvenus, the Mughals and Manchus pioneered similar strategies of cultural statecraft, first to build the multicultural coalitions necessary for conquest, and then to bind the indigenous collaborators needed to subsequently uphold imperial rule. The English East India Company later adapted the same 'define and conquer' and 'define and rule' strategies to carve out the West's biggest colonial empire in Asia. Refuting existing accounts of the 'rise of the West', this book foregrounds the profoundly imitative rather than innovative character of Western colonialism to advance a new explanation of how universal empires arise and endure.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009064193
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 662
Book Description
How did upstart outsiders forge vast new empires in early modern Asia, laying the foundations for today's modern mega-states of India and China? In How the East Was Won, Andrew Phillips reveals the crucial parallels uniting the Mughal Empire, the Qing Dynasty and the British Raj. Vastly outnumbered and stigmatised as parvenus, the Mughals and Manchus pioneered similar strategies of cultural statecraft, first to build the multicultural coalitions necessary for conquest, and then to bind the indigenous collaborators needed to subsequently uphold imperial rule. The English East India Company later adapted the same 'define and conquer' and 'define and rule' strategies to carve out the West's biggest colonial empire in Asia. Refuting existing accounts of the 'rise of the West', this book foregrounds the profoundly imitative rather than innovative character of Western colonialism to advance a new explanation of how universal empires arise and endure.
History of British Rule in India
Author: Edward Thompson
Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Dist
ISBN: 9788171568031
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 1092
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Dist
ISBN: 9788171568031
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 1092
Book Description
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.
The Proudest Day
Author: Anthony Read
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393318982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 612
Book Description
A riveting account of the end of the Raj--the most romantic of all the great empires--told in compelling and colorful detail by the authors of "The Deadly Embrace" and "The Fall of Berlin." of photos.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393318982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 612
Book Description
A riveting account of the end of the Raj--the most romantic of all the great empires--told in compelling and colorful detail by the authors of "The Deadly Embrace" and "The Fall of Berlin." of photos.
An Era of Darkness
Author: Shashi Tharoor
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
ISBN: 9789383064656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
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
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
ISBN: 9789383064656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
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
Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India
Author: Robert Travers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139464167
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 16
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139464167
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 16
Book Description
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.