Download or read book The British in India written by David Gilmour and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Inglorious Empire written by Shashi Tharoor and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2018-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Before the Raj written by James Mulholland and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: Translocal Anglo-India -- A Cultural Company-State and the Colonial Public Sphere -- Newspapers and Reading Publics in Eighteenth-Century India -- The Vagrant Muse: Fashioning Reputation across Eurasia -- Undoing Britain in Bengal -- Tristram Shandy in Bombay -- Agonies of Empire: Captivity Narratives and the Mysore Wars, 1767-1799 -- Literary Culture of Colonial Outposts: Penang, Sumatra, Java, 1771-1816.
Download or read book The History of British India written by James Mill and published by . This book was released on 1848 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The British Raj written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-01-07 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts written about the Raj by British and Indians *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "A significant fact which stands out is that those parts of India which have been longest under British rule are the poorest today. Indeed some kind of chart might be drawn up to indicate the close connection between length of British rule and progressive growth of poverty." - Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India The British East India Company served as one of the key players in the formation of the British Empire. From its origins as a trading company struggling to keep up with its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish competitors to its tenure as the ruling authority of the Indian subcontinent to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company serves as a lens through which to explore the much larger economic and social forces that shaped the formation of a global British Empire. As a private company that became a non-state global power in its own right, the East India Company also serves as a cautionary tale all too relevant to the modern world's current political and economic situation. On its most basic level, the East India Company played an essential part in the development of long-distance trade between Britain and Asia. The trade in textiles, ceramics, tea, and other goods brought a huge influx of capital into the British economy. This not only fueled the Industrial Revolution, but also created a demand for luxury items amongst the middle classes. The economic growth provided by the East India Company was one factor in Britain's ascendancy from a middling regional power to the most powerful nation on the planet. The profits generated by the East India Company also created incentive for other European powers to follow its lead, which led to three centuries of competition for colonies around the world. This process went well beyond Asia to affect most of the planet, including Africa and the Middle East.. Beyond its obvious influence in areas like trade and commerce, the East India Company also served as a point of cultural contact between Western Europeans, South Asians, and East Asians. Quintessentially British practices such as tea drinking were made possible by East India Company trade. The products and cultural practices traveling back and forth on East India Company ships from one continent to another also reconfigured the way societies around the globe viewed sexuality, gender, class, and labor. On a much darker level, the East India Company fueled white supremacy and European concepts of Orientalism. Ultimately, the company's activity across the Indian subcontinent led to further British involvement there, and the British Raj, a period of British dominance and rule over India that formally began in 1857 and lasted until 1947, remains a highly debated topic amongst historians, political scientists, the British people, and the people of modern India. It's necessary to seek an understanding of the people, forces, and events shaping the history of British India to arrive at valid conclusions about the British-Indian experience and to understand the continued divide over its legacy. Perhaps then it's possible to answer Lewis's question: "Is it possible that British rule was both destructive and creative at the same time?" The British Raj: The History and Legacy of Great Britain's Imperialism in India and the Indian Subcontinent looks at the importance of British colonialism in the region, and how it has affected the course of history to this day. Along with pictures and a bibliography, you will learn about the British Raj like never before.
Download or read book Raj written by Lawrence James and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-08-12 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the critically acclaimed author of "The Rise and Fall of the British Empire" comes an unapologetic revisionist history of British rule in India. James recounts the twists and turns of imperialism and independence with a wealth of new material. 8-page photo insert.
Download or read book The British in India written by David Gilmour and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, SPECTATOR, NEW STATESMAN, TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR The British in this book lived in India from shortly after the reign of Elizabeth I until well into the reign of Elizabeth II. Who were they? What drove these men and women to risk their lives on long voyages down the Atlantic and across the Indian Ocean or later via the Suez Canal? And when they got to India, what did they do and how did they live? This book explores the lives of the many different sorts of Briton who went to India: viceroys and offcials, soldiers and missionaries, planters and foresters, merchants, engineers, teachers and doctors. It evokes the three and a half centuries of their ambitions and experiences, together with the lives of their families, recording the diversity of their work and their leisure, and the complexity of their relationships with the peoples of India. It also describes the lives of many who did not fit in with the usual image of the Raj: the tramps and rascals, the men who 'went native', the women who scorned the role of the traditional memsahib. David Gilmour has spent decades researching in archives, studying the papers of many people who have never been written about before, to create a magnificent tapestry of British life in India. It is exceptional work of scholarly recovery portrays individuals with understanding and humour, and makes an original and engaging contribution to a long and important period of British and Indian history.
Download or read book Gandhi Before India written by Ramachandra Guha and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the first volume of a magisterial biography of Mohandas Gandhi that gives us the most illuminating portrait we have had of the life, the work and the historical context of one of the most abidingly influential—and controversial—men in modern history. Ramachandra Guha—hailed by Time as “Indian democracy’s preeminent chronicler”—takes us from Gandhi’s birth in 1869 through his upbringing in Gujarat, his two years as a student in London and his two decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa. Guha has uncovered myriad previously untapped documents, including private papers of Gandhi’s contemporaries and co-workers; contemporary newspapers and court documents; the writings of Gandhi’s children; and secret files kept by British Empire functionaries. Using this wealth of material in an exuberant, brilliantly nuanced and detailed narrative, Guha describes the social, political and personal worlds inside of which Gandhi began the journey that would earn him the honorific Mahatma: “Great Soul.” And, more clearly than ever before, he elucidates how Gandhi’s work in South Africa—far from being a mere prelude to his accomplishments in India—was profoundly influential in his evolution as a family man, political thinker, social reformer and, ultimately, beloved leader. In 1893, when Gandhi set sail for South Africa, he was a twenty-three-year-old lawyer who had failed to establish himself in India. In this remarkable biography, the author makes clear the fundamental ways in which Gandhi’s ideas were shaped before his return to India in 1915. It was during his years in England and South Africa, Guha shows us, that Gandhi came to understand the nature of imperialism and racism; and in South Africa that he forged the philosophy and techniques that would undermine and eventually overthrow the British Raj. Gandhi Before India gives us equally vivid portraits of the man and the world he lived in: a world of sharp contrasts among the coastal culture of his birthplace, High Victorian London, and colonial South Africa. It explores in abundant detail Gandhi’s experiments with dissident cults such as the Tolstoyans; his friendships with radical Jews, heterodox Christians and devout Muslims; his enmities and rivalries; and his often overlooked failures as a husband and father. It tells the dramatic, profoundly moving story of how Gandhi inspired the devotion of thousands of followers in South Africa as he mobilized a cross-class and inter-religious coalition, pledged to non-violence in their battle against a brutally racist regime. Researched with unequaled depth and breadth, and written with extraordinary grace and clarity, Gandhi Before India is, on every level, fully commensurate with its subject. It will radically alter our understanding and appreciation of twentieth-century India’s greatest man.
Download or read book Mapping an Empire written by Matthew H. Edney and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-02-15 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating history of the British surveys of India, Matthew H. Edney relates how imperial Britain used modern survey techniques to not only create and define the spatial image of its Empire, but also to legitimate its colonialist activities. "There is much to be praised in this book. It is an excellent history of how India came to be painted red in the nineteenth century. But more importantly, Mapping an Empire sets a new standard for books that examine a fundamental problem in the history of European imperialism."—D. Graham Burnett, Times Literary Supplement "Mapping an Empire is undoubtedly a major contribution to the rapidly growing literature on science and empire, and a work which deserves to stimulate a great deal of fresh thinking and informed research."—David Arnold, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History "This case study offers broadly applicable insights into the relationship between ideology, technology and politics. . . . Carefully read, this is a tale of irony about wishful thinking and the limits of knowledge."—Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire written by P. J. Marshall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-08-02 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Up to World War II and beyond, the British ruled over a vast empire. Modern western attitudes towards the imperial past tend either towards nostalgia for British power or revulsion at what seem to be the abuses of that power. The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire adopts neither of these approaches. It aims to create historical understanding about the British empire on the assumption that such understanding is important for any informed appreciation of the modern world. Through striking illustration and a text written by leading experts, this book examines the experience of colonialism in North America, India, Africa, Australia, and the Caribbean, as well as the impact of the empire on Britain itself. Emphasis is placed on social and cultural history, including slavery, trade, religion, art, and the movement of ideas. How did the British rule their empire? Who benefited economically from the empire? And who lost?
Download or read book The British Raj written by Captivating History and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sources for the History of British India in the Seventeenth Century written by Sir Shafaʼat Ahmad Khan and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The British Raj in India written by S. M. Burke and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 699 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth Century India written by Robert Travers and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-19 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Peace Poverty and Betrayal written by Roderick Matthews and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-06-20 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we explain Britain's long rule in India beyond the cliches of 'imperial' versus 'nationalist' interpretations? In this new history, Roderick Matthews tells a more nuanced story of 'oblige and rule', the foundation of common purpose between colonisers and powerful Indians. Peace, Poverty and Betrayal argues that this was more a state of being than a system: British policy was never clear or consistent; the East India Company went from a manifestly incompetent ruler to, arguably, the world's first liberal government; and among British and Indians alike there were both progressive and conservative attitudes to colonisation. Matthews skilfully illustrates that this very diversity and ambiguity of British-Indian relations also drove the social changes that led to the struggle for independence. Skewering the simplistic binaries that often dominate the debate, Peace, Poverty and Betrayal is a fresh and elegant history of British India.
Download or read book The Proudest Day written by Anthony Read and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1999-07 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Lion and the Tiger written by Denis Judd and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative and lively account of the long and controversial history of the British in India, from the foundation of the East India Company in 1600; to Ghandi's innovative leadership of the increasingly militant Indian Nationalist movement: and finally to Lord Mountbatten's 'swift surgeryof partition', leaving behind the Independent states of India and Pakistan.Against this epic backdrop, Judd explores the consequences of British control for both Indians and the British in India.What was the effect on their daily lives, and on the lives they were effectively controlling? Were the British intent on development or exploitation? Were they a 'civilizing'force? Easy answers are avoided, and difficult questions provoked in this fascinating book.
