Josiah the Great

by Ben Macintyre

First published 2004

Amazon

4.2(252)

Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker, travels to India in the 1820s and enters the military and political world created by the East India Company, the Sikh Empire and the competing rulers of Afghanistan. Medical knowledge, confidence and a remarkable capacity for self-invention allow him to move between courts and armies while pursuing an ambition to secure territory and rank for himself.

Ben Macintyre reconstructs Harlan’s career from surviving papers and contemporary records. The journey carries him through Punjab and Afghanistan during the early phase of the Great Game, where European adventurers could become advisers, generals and intermediaries to Asian rulers. Harlan’s life exposes the mixture of curiosity, opportunism and imperial self-belief that made such careers possible, while also showing how fragile personal advancement could be in a region shaped by dynastic rivalry, shifting allegiance and expanding British power.