Awards

• Winner of SAHR Templer Medal/Chapple First Book Prize 2023

Overview

This book explores the last years of the British East India Company using the life of General Sir James Abbott--explorer, guerilla, district officer, and possible inspiration for Mr. Kurtz in Heart of Darkness--as a thread to reexamine the social and sexual relationships between Britons and Indians and chronicle the collapse of their social contract.

Full Product Details

9781538169575

Table of Contents

Reviews

In Heart Like a Fakir, Chris Mason uses the voluminous papers of General Sir James Abbott-- explorer, soldier, and district officer who lived as a 'native' amongst the peoples of the Hazara district--to explore how relations, social and sexual, between Britons and Indians broke down in the last decades of British East India Company rule. This breakdown--which contributed to the mutiny uprising--is usually attributed to the arrival of Christian missionaries and British women in significant numbers in the early years of the nineteenth century. Mason's work suggests that historians need to look much more closely at the twenty-five years before the mutiny uprising. This is essential reading for all those interested in the last years of East India Company rule.--Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of London

Author Information

Chris Mason is professor of national security affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available