Image of crossed swords

Read the Witcher

The Chaos of Empire

The British Raj and the Conquest of India

The Chaos of Empire Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Jon Wilson

Formats and Prices

Price

$14.99

Price

$19.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. ebook $14.99 $19.99 CAD
  2. Hardcover $29.99 $38.99 CAD
  3. Trade Paperback $21.99 $28.99 CAD

Also available from:

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.

Genre:

On Sale
Oct 25, 2016
Page Count
584 pages
Publisher
PublicAffairs
ISBN-13
9781610392945

You May Also Like

Unruly Waters
Unruly Waters $40.00 $50.00 CAD
Army of Empire
Army of Empire $40.00 $52.00 CAD
Fierce Enigmas
Fierce Enigmas $40.00 $51.00 CAD
India’s War
India’s War $35.00 $45.50 CAD
Why Growth Matters
Why Growth Matters $21.99 $28.99 CAD

Jon Wilson

About the Author

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.

Learn more about this author