The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India

Author:   Jon Wilson
Publisher:   PublicAffairs
ISBN:  

9781541767935


Pages:   592
Publication Date:   06 March 2018
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Available To Order   Availability explained
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The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India


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Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jon Wilson
Publisher:   PublicAffairs
Imprint:   PublicAffairs
Dimensions:   Width: 15.00cm , Height: 4.30cm , Length: 21.80cm
Weight:   0.590kg
ISBN:  

9781541767935


ISBN 10:   1541767934
Pages:   592
Publication Date:   06 March 2018
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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Jon Wilson was born in Leicester, England, educated at Oxford University and the New School for Social Research in New York, and has taught history at King's College London since 1999. He directs Historians in Residence, a project connecting history with public institutions in London. Alongside his historical research he comments in a range of media on contemporary British and South Asian politics and government.

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