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Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India, by Lawrence James
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In less that one hundred years, the British made themselves the masters of India. They ruled for another hundred, leaving behind the independent nations of India and Pakistan when they finally withdrew in 1947. Both nations would owe much to the British Raj: under its rule, Indians learned to see themselves as Indians; its benefits included railways, roads, canals, schools, universities, hospitals, universal language and common law.
None of this, however, was planned. After a series of emergencies in the eighteenth century transformed a business partnership-the East India Company-into the most formidable war machine in Asia, conquest gathered its own momentum. Fortunes grew, but, alongside them, Britons grew troubled by the despotism that had been created in their name. The result was the formation of a government that balanced firmness with benevolence, and had as its goal the advancement of India.
But the Raj, outwardly so monolithic and magnificent, always rested precariously on the goodwill of Indians. In this remarkable exploration of British rule in India, Lawrence James chronicles the astonishing heroism that created it, the mixture of compromise and firmness that characterized it, and the twists and turns of the independence struggle that ended it.
- Sales Rank: #342820 in Books
- Brand: Historical & Reference Books St. Martin's Press
- Published on: 2000-08-12
- Released on: 2000-08-12
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.93" h x 1.97" w x 6.04" l, 1.60 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 768 pages
Amazon.com Review
When Robert Clive, a "harum-scarum schoolboy" not yet out of his teens, arrived in India in 1744, he found himself in the middle of chaos: English merchants fought against French traders, Indian princes warred among themselves, Portuguese and Dutch privateers plied the coasts, and throughout the country, anarchy reigned. Clive flourished amid the confusion. He quickly distinguished himself both in battle, showing bravery and unusual presence of mind, and in trade. The combination was profitable for his employer, the East India Company, and although Clive committed suicide in the wake of political scandal in 1774, he set in motion what would become the British conquest of India and the establishment of the Raj, a mixed form of government in which the English ruled through a network of Indian politicians and civil servants. Outwardly stable, the Raj was constantly under threat both by Indian aspirations to self-rule and by other imperialists' intrigues, notably on the part of Russia, Britain's chief competitor in what would come to be called "the great game." Lawrence James, a longtime student of British military history, offers a sweeping, and wholly absorbing, narrative account of the Raj, taking it from Clive's time to the era of Mahatma Gandhi and the flamboyant Viscount Mountbatten, the last British viceroy of India. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
Even though James gives relatively short shrift to the period between the battle of Plassey (1757) and the second Maratha war (1817-1818), when the East India Company used arms and bribery to take over the Indian subcontinent, this is still a big book. But for what the British historian and author of The Rise and Fall of the British Empire wanted to do, it had to be big. James is a very lucid writer on a variety of topics, whether military, economic, social or political. His primary interest has been military history and it shows here. While not every reader will be fascinated by detailed descriptions of, say, military maneuvers of Sikh wars, these same details add intensity to the narrative of the Indian Mutiny (1857-59); the Great Game, that tortuous Anglo-Russian squabble over Afghanistan; or the doings of Subhas Chandra Bose during WWII. Opting against a simple chronology, James works in chapters on the position of Indian princes in the Raj, the differences between British and Indian sexuality and the romanticized, Kipling-esque vision of India that pervaded Britain in the early 20th century. There is a great deal about Britain here: the reception back home of newly rich Nabobs (a corruption of nawab); the British reaction to reports of the Indian Mutiny and the 1919 Amritsar massacre; the irreconcilable friction between Britain's devotion to economic expediency and liberal paternalism. In fact, some may find that the emphasis is a little too much on the "British" of the subtitle and not enough on the "India," but James presents a consistently intriguing take on a deeply complicated history.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
After writing several acclaimed histories primarily focused on British imperial military history, James (The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, St. Martin's, 1996) now concentrates on India, the old Empire's cornerstone. With an orientation to historical narrative instead of analysis, the work often raises questions it does not answer. Military perspectives dominate, but James fails to show the relationship between government and the military. Hardly anyone receives favorable discussion in this "revisionist" recounting of the Raj's rise and fall, while crucial figures (Clive, Hastings, Gandhi, Mountbatten) are treated shabbily. Nehru, strangely, is hardly mentioned. Military buffs might like this rather long history, but those interested in an impartial treatment will be better served by other recent titles, e.g., Shashi Tharoor's From Midnight to the Millennium (LJ 6/1/97).?Donald Johnson, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Minneapolis
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
49 of 54 people found the following review helpful.
Vivid Colors, Fuzzy Shapes
By E. T. Veal
Whatever its impact on India, the two centuries of the British Raj were an inspiration for novelists, poets, painters, film makers and popular historians. Lawrence James falls into the last group. His "Raj" is a set of overlapping portraits: some exciting, some grandiose, some grim, some exotic, all animated and colorful. They do not quite blend into a coherent picture of British rule but are fascinating to view.
Mr. James has set himself the task of covering political, institutional and social history. Although he limits himself to the British point of view, the job is too big for even a bulky volume like this one. As a consequence, many years and events receive brief notices or none at all. (By comparison, Sir Penderel Moon's "The British Conquest and Dominion of India", which concentrates almost completely on politics, is over twice as long.) The institutional and social accounts likewise jump around. There is, for example, a section, set before the Indian Mutiny of 1857, on the onerous taxation imposed on Indian villages, in which we are told of tax rates of 50 to 75 percent of net income. Later, in a different context, appear economic statistics for a single locality, which have the villagers paying taxes of about five percent. The discrepancy is not explained, nor even alluded to. Did the British wisely cut taxes after the Mutiny? Were rates drastically different in different areas? Did widespread evasion make the nominal rates a sham? Are the figures for some reason not comparable? There is no way to tell, and the question is surely not unimportant.
Elsewhere, as in the section on the Princely States, the author recounts a multitude of details without leaving a clear impression. One would like some estimate of the balance between playboy rajas and their hardworking counterparts, and between princes loyal to the paramount power and those who submitted only under duress. The mere alternation of scandal and praise is not satisfactory.
If, however, one looks at the parts without worrying about their sum, this is an informative (and certainly lively) book. Subjects range from concise histories of the Raj's most dramatic eras (its formation in the 18th Century, the Great Mutiny and the nationalist struggles of the 20th century) to taxation and policing to the social and sexual lives of the sahib class to India's participation in the World Wars to literature and films about the Raj. Unhappily, the author's serviceable prose is too frequently marred by copy editing that is wretched even by the low standards of our day. Jarring is the frequent use of "whom" where "who" would be correct (a most unusual error). Surrealistic is this garbled statement (p. 451) about a corps of staunchly Islamic troops: "Pathans, always highly receptive to Pan-Islamic appeals, were responsible for two mutinies of the 130th Baluchis during the winter of 1914-15, both sparked off by fears of being forced to follow Muslims." My puzzlement lasted until I figured out that "to follow Muslims" was supposed to read "to fight fellow Muslims".
Some earlier reviews on this site decry Mr. James' supposed partiality for the British rulers and inattention to the masses of their subjects. That is a misguided criticism. The author is alert for signs of racialism, arrogance and ineptitude among the British, occasionally to the point of unfairness. Were those Englishmen who deplored Hindu customs really more blameworthy than the post-1948 politicians who sought to suppress them and turn India into a secular state (an effort that is now encountering a dangerous backlash)? As for his summary evaluation that the Raj was good for the subcontinent, that is a left-handed compliment. He reckons that, given the realities of 18th and 19th century geopolitics, India was bound to fall prey to some form of European imperialism and that the British form was more benign than any of the alternatives.
It is true that he is strongly critical of Mahatma Gandhi's insouciance concerning the outcome of World War II and of vain, incompetent Lord Mountbatten's handling of the partition between India and Pakistan. Anyone who thinks that India would have been better off in the Far Eastern Co-Prosperity Sphere or that Mountbatten deserves no blame for the butcher's bill of 1948 should turn elsewhere for reading matter, preferably to works of utopian fantasy.
The Raj is such a sprawling subject that no single volume can paint it entire. This one, while imperfect in many ways, is a good starting point.
26 of 29 people found the following review helpful.
An entertaining, uneven history -
By Luke D Jasenosky
Professor James' book is enlightening, but also a bit uneven and narrow. The image of jovial British troops in exotic locations will probably always enter one's mind when one thinks of the Raj, but Professor James elaborates nicely on the day to day drudgery of the average soldier, and one of the strongest points of the book is the hot, dusty atmosphere that surrounds his discussions of commerce, the hunt, food, sexual relations, and many other topics. The discussion of India's involvement in the second world war is also fascinating. I do not feel that James' book necessarily presents a biased view, but because it does concentrate on the British experience first and foremost, and relies heavily on British correspondance and debate in parliament, I can understand how one might walk away with the impression that the Indian experience was treated lightly, or even unfairly. On the debit side, I finished the book feeling that I hadn't really learned anything knew about the overarching British imperial experience, and I agree with a previous commentator who stated that the final years were glossed over. The book is also short on maps, and I had to pull out the atlas a number of times to pinpoint the location of the events being described. Overall a good narrative and cultural (on the British side, mostly) history that could have used a larger dose of figures and analysis.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Despite flaws, a very useful and impressive read
By ST
This is a flawed but useful book on the British Raj in India. First let us get the flaws out of the way. Many people here have mentioned its supremacist viewpoint, quoting the jacket blurb. In fact, the jacket description does not do justice to James. He is somewhat to the British side of the center, but does a decent job of showing all viewpoints and giving credit and/or censure where they are due. If anything, the author's fault is that he is not as much objective as omni-subjective. This, and his tendency to write complete sentences without attribution, lead us to believe there is a multiparty debate going on inside the author's head.
Another fault which has been mentioned by Edward Veal in a review here is the low copy editing standards. Several sentences just could not be right, and I wish I had Edward's zeal in writing some down, because I've forgotten them now. One thing I do remember is the manglings of Indian names. These range from the minor but irritating (Khatri is written Khastri, Krishna is written Khrishna or Khrisha) to the random and absurd (Raghoji [Bhosle, a Maratha general] is called Rahugi) to the meaning changing (Garhwali means "from Garhwal"; the author uses Gharwali meaning housewife). The usage of "gi" for the honorific "ji" at the end of Indian names is especially irritating, surely the author should know that the rule of "g" being soft before "i" is not applicable to Indic languages? Now these are *not* contemporary anglicizations. James is not consistent about that either. If Kutch becomes Kachchh (current spelling), why isnt Poona Pune or Cawnpore Kanpur?
The last flaw is that James is simply not a good writer in the caliber of your typical British historian. His writing can be jumpy, inconsistent, and is memorable for the bad aspects rather than the good. He uses pet words (eg. will-o-the-wisp) excessively, and uses unnecessarily hard words -- which furthermore are misspelled, eg. I still dont know what läocooned means but I'm sure the umlaut shouldnt be atop the "a". In the chapter on Russia-Britian tensions (a superfluous chapter if there was one), he repeatedly uses the word "Maskirovka" to refer to Russia's deceptive tactics. The word comes from a chess move, but I doubt it was used thusly before Stalinist times. After the seventh time it appears, I was like, okay we get it, let's move on.
Now for the good parts. There is a *wealth* of information in this book. As I said before, James is British of center, but this is not a bad thing for someone raised on the British-bad India-good B&W wisdom of Indian Government textbooks and the typically hagiographic/sensational works of Indian writers. How many Indians would know that Peshwa Nanasaheb, far from being a hero of the First War of Indian Independence (or Sepoy Mutiny from the British angle; James correctly says the truth lay in the middle), ordered the murder of hundreds of innocent British women and children? Or that Naoroji won a council seat in Britain? Or that Charles Dickens wanted to exterminate all Hindus? Or the Swadeshi movement was protectionism for Indian traders in all but name? Or that Gandhi didnt care about people losing lives for his cause? Who remembers men such as Auchinleck, the army head who refused to accept honours because he felt Britain made a mess of leaving India? I would go so far as to say this book should be mandatory reading for every Indian history student, if only to get an alternate viewpoint.
The most exciting parts in the book undoubtedly correspond to the 45-47 era. The sheer volume of stuff happening and hitting the ceiling in those times, especially the few months before independence, is probably unparalleled in Indian history. James is especially good here, in these last few chapters.
The level of research that has gone into this book is impressive. It has a lot of detail, many eyewitness accounts and quotes and anecdotes, snippets from contemporary literature etc, which in my opinion get the pulse of a time better than the spouting of dates and events and such. All in all, not a great book, but a very useful and entertaining history.
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