About this item
"Jon Wilson visits often ignored arenas of British-Indian contact to mount a devastating critique of British rule. The exercise of sovereignty . . . was deemed sufficient unto itself. Policy-making was chaotic and implementation uneven. . . . The only constant was violence. This is a brave and long-overdue riposte to Raj romanticists." - John Keay, author of India: A History and The Honourable CompanyThe longstanding mythology of the British Raj is starkly and critically wrong. 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. Following the lives of administrators, soldiers, and subjects - both British and Indian - this compelling narrative traces Britain's rule, from the East India Company's first transactions in the 1680s to Indian Independence in 1947.
About the Author
Jon Wilson is Professor of Modern History at King's College London, where he teaches and researches the history of South Asia and the world beyond. He is interested in the everyday life of politics and government, and its complicated relationship to ideas about how the world is organised. His last book India Conquered (US title The Chaos of Empire) was shortlisted for the Longman-History Today Prize. Jon Wilson is currently writing a global history of the nation state since 1945. He lives in Eltham, South East London.
