Raj

Name: Raj
Rating: 4.3 (228 reviews)

by Lawrence James

First published 1997

Amazon

4.2(228)

Lawrence James traces British power in India from the East India Company’s military and fiscal ascendancy in the eighteenth century to the transfer of power in 1947. Robert Clive’s victories in Bengal, the administrative settlements of Warren Hastings and Charles Cornwallis, and Richard Wellesley’s expansionist wars show how a trading corporation became a territorial state. The narrative also follows Indian rulers and confederacies that resisted or negotiated with the Company, including Tipu Sultan and Ranjit Singh, before annexation and reform under Dalhousie helped create the tensions that erupted in the rebellion of 1857.

After the Crown replaced Company rule, the book examines the institutions and contradictions of the Raj: viceroys and princely states, railways and law, military recruitment, racial hierarchy, famine and economic extraction. Imperial confidence under Victoria and Disraeli gives way to organised nationalism, mass politics and the competing demands that accompanied Gandhi’s campaigns and the Second World War. The final chapters consider Churchill’s opposition to rapid withdrawal and the hurried settlement that produced independent India and Pakistan amid partition, displacement and communal violence.

Historical Periods

Indian Rebellion of 18571857–1858 CE East India Company Rule1757–1858 CE Indian Independence Movement1885–1947 CE

Genres

Court & Political Fiction

Historical people

Victoria1819–1901 Tipu Sultan1751–1799 Winston Churchill1874–1965 Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley1760–1842 Ranjit Singh1780–1839 James Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie1812–1860 Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881 Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948 Robert Clive1725–1774 Charles Cornwallis