Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India

by Lawrence James

This is the brilliantly told story of one of the wonders of the modern world - how in less than a hundred years the British made themselves masters of India. They ruled it for another hundred, departing in 1947, leaving behind the independent states of India and Pakistan. British rule taught Indians to see themselves as Indians and its benefits included railways, hospitals, law and a universal language. But the Raj, outwardly so monolithic and magnificent, was always precarious. Its masters knew that it rested ultimately on the goodwill of Indians. This is a new look at a subject rich in incident and character; the India of the Raj was that of Clive, Kipling, Curzon and Gandhi and a host of lesser known others. RAJ will provoke debate, for it sheds new light on Mountbatten and the events of 1946-47 which ended an exercise in benign autocracy and an experiment in altruism.

Genres: History, India, Nonfiction, British Literature, Asia, 19th Century, World History

732 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Edwin James Lawrence, most commonly known as Lawrence James, is an English historian and writer.

James graduated with a BA in English & History from the University of York in 1966, and subsequently undertook a research degree at Merton College, Oxford. Following a career as a teacher, James became a full-time writer in 1985.

James has written several works of popular history about the British Empire, and has contributed pieces for Daily Mail, The Times and the Literary Review.

Reviews

[Madhu R · Rating 1 out of 5]

Racist, historically inaccurate, and worst of all: tedious. If you're interested at all in the history or India, there are so many other books worth reading, namely The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple (or any reputable college textbook on the subject).

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to say I am very disappointed in this book. It is far too biased. The author, while he shows great knowledge of the British regime, paints a skewed picture of Indians in a way that I found both tedious and scholastically irresponsible. The Indian side of things is over simplified and at many points poorly constructed. I even found James to be, dare I say it, rather racist at times. Read at your own risk, and keep a few barrels of salt handy.

[Madeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't always decide to read 700-page books on a whim, but when I do, they're about subjects I know almost nothing about.

When I was in high school I discovered Bollywood movies, thanks to a relative giving me a VHS copy of Lagaan. It was about an Indian village in the 1800's challenging the local British army cantonment to a cricket match, with the wager being that if the villagers won they wouldn't have to pay taxes for three years, and it represents everything I know about the British occupation of India. (not that I'm knocking it - it's awesome, and if you have a spare four hours you should totally watch it). So obviously, Lawrence James had a lot of work to do with his book when I picked it up at the library.

It's extensive, I'll say that for him. The book covers the trajectory of the British rule in India, from the fall of the Mughal empire in 1740 to India becoming an independent nation in 1947. James identifies key players in each era, describes various rebellions and wars that India was involved in during the time, and explains how the British maintained control. The larger question that James seeks to answer with his book is this: how did a tiny island nation manage to take control of a country many times larger and more densely populated than theirs, and keep that control for more than two hundred years? Because, James reminds us, India in the 18th century wasn't some undeveloped African nation where the natives had never even seen a white person before. India had a monarchy, technology, medicine, art - a culture and a history just as rich, if not richer, than Britain's. How in the hell did Britain take control and keep it for so long? James's book examines the ways the British kept the Indians under control, including how they quelled various rebellions (the unsettling solution of the British to these situations seems to always have been "shoot into unarmed groups of protestors until the protest stops"), and how the constant tensions between Muslims and Hindus led to the creation of Pakistan. He also discusses how India became independent, and what the lasting effects of British rule were.

As I said at the beginning of this review, I knew nothing about this subject before starting the book, so I don't feel fully qualified to evaluate whether James is overly biased or not. But that being said, he certainly feels biased. He's extremely forgiving whenever he's discussing despotic measures taken by the British (whenever he describes the whole mass-murdering-protesters thing, he's weirdly dispassionate about it while rattling off the death tolls of unarmed civilians), and also he hates Gandhi. Like, a lot. According to James, Gandhi wasn't the glorified saint everyone says he is, and was really a manipulative, shrewd man who manufactured his own image of holiness and peacefulness, and was more than happy to encourage his followers to sacrifice themselves while he stayed safe.

Okay, is this a thing? The last time I studied Gandhi was during a high school social studies class (where they basically just sat us in front of that Ben Kingsley biopic for four class periods), so I have no idea how universally accepted this view of Gandhi is. Are we really revising how Gandhi is perceived, or is James just being a dick? I don't know enough about the subject to be sure about this, but I do know that James's book has a distinctively pro-colonizer viewpoint, and it made me uncomfortable. Judge for yourself:

"Today, the principles which underlay the Raj are unfashionable. We dislike the notion of one people assuming superiority over another and re-ordering their lives. Imperialism, however well-meaning it may have been (and it was not always), is a discredited creed and the benefits it brought are either overlooked or devalued. By contrast, and often in the teeth of much recent experience, national self-determination is considered to be a source of human happiness. The right of peoples to decide their own future is inviolate, irrespective of whether they've choose wisely or whether the government which emerges is just, honest, and humane. Late-twentieth-century political correctness has been added to post-colonial guilt syndromes and the residual Marxism which still lurks on many university campuses, with the result that any British, Indian, or American historians have a good word to say about the Raj, or, for that matter, any other type of colonial government. At their poor best, colonial regimes are portrayed as expressions of incomplete paternalism, and at their worst as oppressive, racialist, exploitative and the source of the Third World's present woes. The balance is slowly being adjusted, not least because the recent history of so many of Europe's colonies has been a saga of a decline into tyranny, chaos, and internecine war from which they seem unable to rescue themselves."

Hoo boy.

[Dimitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wisely anchored on the familiar markers of Clive, the Mutiny & the Indian Congress.
Not too apologetic to take down Ghandi's saintly status & the hagiographic misrepresentations of terrorism by Indian historians.

[Hemants · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was pretty one sided but I expected that. That was the whole reason I picked it up, I wanted to see how the British saw the 200 year occupation and exploitation of India. The author points to this in the Epilogue of the book that currently people look at Imperialism as bad but that was not the prevalent thought process over 200 years ago.

The book does get quite a few things right and the British should be credited for uniting India and giving it a national identity, before it was petty princely states fighting each other. The abolition of child marriage, the practice of sati, and a whole lot of other good things came out of the British rule in India.

As an Indian I was very intrigued by the fact that the British thought they were our saviors and were doing us all a favor.

I am not a huge Nehru and Gandhi fan (I know that's blasphemy coming from an Indian), but the author called them what they were; Nehru a socialist and Gandhi a very shrewd politician who did not care how many people died, he was feeding his ego. Congress was looking out for its own political future and its cronies.

Alas nothing has changed in India, Congress and the political class are still raping the common man...

[Angad Brar · Rating 1 out of 5]

i hope,oneday author of this book will find some time for history reading,and stop this colonial propaganda.most biased book i've ever come near to.Mr.Lawrence James,theres other side of story too,if you ever interested in.and i assure you,it is far more gloomy than your rosy "british raj" stories

[Manu]

Well, well, history isn't what it used to be! At least not when I juxtapose this book against what I was taught in schools. As Lawrence James notes in the Epilogue, a past shaped by foreigners reminds a nation of its submission, and doesn't really bode well for pride or self-confidence. So we lionise our own efforts and heroes and shape a new narrative. And that is what goes into the history books.
The good news is that India did become free from British rule on August 15th 1947. The original deadline was June 1948, but as with most everything else in India, the astrologers had the final say. But everything else, from the time the British first arrived on Indian shores, to this event, more than a couple of centuries later, is seen through a lens that tries hard to be objective, but is also inevitably tinted a bit by the bias of the author, who is an English historian. But at least, his bibliography is extensive enough to support it.
The book begins with the ideal prologue - the sunset years of the Mughal empire, and then covers the first century of British presence in the first 250 pages. This includes not just the skirmishes with the French down south, but also the East India Company's battles in Bengal, and Clive's victory in Plassey, which apparently assumed a supernatural significance and was seen by some Hindus as the starting point of a predestined historical cycle that would last a century. No coincidence that rumours of this was in full flow in 1857, right before the mutiny. Between Plassey and the Mutiny, there was the gradual expansion of the Company's land assets, helped to a large extent by the infighting and lack of unity among Indian rulers. The Company wanted the freedom to trade, and everything else that happened seems to be a byproduct!
The mutiny itself seems to have been a throughly disorganised series of skirmishes and battles, with every move by the sepoys being led more by circumstances than by design. At some point, the last Mughal Emperor was seen as a good idea to rally around, and he was forced to play his part reluctantly. The leaders whom our version of history has designated as the first freedom fighters - notably the Rani of Jhansi and Nana Saheb - were at best tactical leaders more interested in the sovereignty of their kingdoms, since they were the losers in the prevalent Raj system. And there was very little impact down South, or even the West for that matter. Having said that, it did give the British a fright.
From then until World War 1, there are interesting sections around The Great Game, the main theatre being the frontier and Afghanistan. This was also the time when Anglo Indians started organising themselves, and Indians too began understanding, and thus demanding Home Rule. A Russian invasion was on the minds of folks on both sides, and largely that was only where it was. But this did lead to a lot of intrigue and the Afghan wars. Also interesting is how many of these incidents made its way into popular culture via books, and then movies.
1919 was a decisive year, and it is fascinating to read about the granular circumstances that drove men to take certain actions. Case in point - Dyer, his chronic discomfort and pain from old war injuries, the hype that a huge uprising was in the offing, and finally the Jallianwala Bagh. Gandhi first rose to prominence in 1919, just after the Spanish Flu hit Indian shores, and specifically thanks to the Rowlatt Act in March 1919, against which he first experimented with the satyagraha. The book isn't very flattering to him, and talks about his numerous failures in organising mass movements, which got away from his control very fast. "Gandhi was also a consummate showman and a shrewd politician, with a knack of projecting himself in such a way to attract the greatest possible attention in India and abroad" In essence, very good at political stagecraft, but the cult of Gandhi was so popular that it was sufficient to give the Congress, which had its tentacles everywhere but didn't really have a plan, a dominant status in the provincial assembly elections. Some villagers actually sent messages to Gandhi in the ballot box!
By the 1930s, the Hindu-Muslim rifts were growing wider, and the cult of Jinnah was becoming popular. Another rising personality was Bose, whom Gandhi did not trust. Bose considered Gandhi's moves against the British mild, and it finally took him away from the Congress, and then a ricochet across alliances which finally led to very little. The story is depressing every time I come across it.
The final years of the Raj actually highlights the in-fighting and intrigue among the country's top politicians. To note that if the Labour party hadn't come to power after the Second World War, and Churchill was still in power, the story of India would have been very different. Attlee, and his party, were more supportive of India's self-governance. The winding up job was left to Lord Mountbatten, even though the book portrays his predecessor The Viscount Wavell as being the more capable man. In fact, Mountbatten is shown to be everything but impartial and detached. Edwina's flirtation with Nehru didn't help either. His lack of understanding on how princely states were coerced into accepting Indian suzerainty also led him to buckle under Nehru's pressure.
In essence, the book shows everyone involved in a completely new light from what I (as an Indian) had seen thanks to my history lessons. I think we tend to regard our leaders as men with clear and objective plans, but it seems there were just ordinary men sometimes tossed into extraordinary events and trying to do what they thought was right. Strange, but historical figures are people too. :)
If you're interested in history, this is a must read. It meanders a bit, but persist and you will be rewarded with a very different picture from what you know.

[Ayan Dutta · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most definitive and exhaustive account of the Raj that I have read so far ! Don’t fall for the propagandist and juvenile history of Shashi Tharoor ( he mentions this work by Lawrence with utter disregard and disdain in his book AnEraofDarkness) , Lawrence does and excellent job of narrating the events with sincere care to remain unbiased !

650 odd pages ( in very small font) makes it a long and at times tiring read , but the reader is rewarded profusely as the book gathers pace .

[Sandeep · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a history buff I thought this book would provide a good background on the rise and fall of the British Raj. While Lawrence James covers the entire history of British rule in India he is far from impartial. The undertones and some instances overtones of racial superiority were rather disturbing. At various points in the book he condones the colonial narrative that the British conquered and ruled India out of the goodness of their hearts, to bring civilization and technology to a backward, superstitious culture. The atrocities, looting and pillaging of Indian resources and wealth is glossed over and sugar coated. While James goes through excruciating pains to provide the perspectives of various British generals, ordinary soldiers, civil servants, intellectuals and even visitors, those of Indians is largely left out. For example he dedicates more than a few pages to the perspectives of colonial authors like Kipling, E.M Forster and Henty, the perspectives of Indian authors and intellectuals is glaringly omitted (case in point Rabindranath Tagore is mentioned in passing - a nobel laureate no less!). He also characterizes Indians who rebelled against British subjugation as "terrorists". As they say, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. I have a feeling the author has a very romantic view of the colonial era and in some ways maybe wishes it still existed.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a substantial tome of about 650 pages, plus bibliography 20 pages and notes 39 pages, and an index. The author has written eight other books involving Britain and its overseas exploits so I have some faith in what he has written in this book. The book is exceedingly well researched and detailed and often contains excerpts from letters and reports to provide a contiguous story about the East India Company commencing its operations in India from 1740 through to the British withdrawal in1947. I read this book over a number months, in between other books, and found the story of India and the association by Britain to be one of exploitation, racism and greed at all levels. If you have an interest in India and Britain I can recommend Raj as a very useful and detailed illumination of the societies of that era.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A general history of the British empire in India, with a perspective that is basically sympathetic to the project. Helps as an introduction to the history, and offers some interesting insights into the experience of British administrators, the ways in which they coopted local elites and violence professionals to undergird their rule, and the independence movement that eventually ousted them. It compresses a lot of history into an already-long volume, and despite efforts to draw on contemporaneous correspondence and writings, skims over the perspective of most Indians. The origins of the East India Company, and the British economic and mercantile interests in India, are also largely glossed over in favor of a military-centric narrative. Again, works fairly well as a chronological overview to British rule, but far from exhaustive or definitive in its treatment.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot that one could say about this book. Its fluid prose as it dissects the public and personal lives of the men who broke the subcontinent and ruled it, its dry wit as it lays out the foundation and disintegration of one of the largest colonial enterprises ever imposed on a subject people, or the way it makes the unceasing tragedy of that terrible chapter of human history.

Indeed, it is that last one that makes this book so baffling. It refuses to give credit to the Indians who were conquered, whether the admittedly selfish Mughal lords that initially dominated it nor the architects of modern India such as Nehru, Jinnah, or Gandhi. The portrayals of Clive and Mountbatten may shine a spotlight on their many flaws, but they receive a forgiving, even lighthearted treatment compared to any of the Indian personages that depicts them as flawed great personages doing their best with what they were given. No comparable nor contemporary Indian figure is given such grace.

Why, when all of the incompetence, all of the ignorant cruelty, all of the deliberate malfeasance and naked greed is out on display so vividly, would the author choose to be so one-sided? This is all made clear in the epilogue, which switches from a mildly critical (yet somewhat overly charitable) breakdown of the flaws of the Empire into a full-throated defense of it.

If British imperialist apologists are to be believed, and the author counts self-admittedly among their ranks, then everything good in India and elsewhere in conquered territory came from the Empire. We are to believe, based on the author's own words, that imperialism has gotten a bad rap and indeed that the people of India should be grateful to its former Emperor for its laws, railroads, democracy, and education system. Never mind that literally millions died as a result of neglectful incompetence during multiple famines or a million and a half more in the abysmal partition of India and Pakistan, that India was drained of blood and treasure for a century to fill British coffers and staff British armies at its own expense, nor that the whole project began in greed and bloodshed. Never mind that the practices they imposed led to crushing misery and economic suffering for millions nor that similar British colonies elsewhere failed to achieve those results - why, it's almost as if the Indian people already had a fairly functional society that the British merely imposed their stamp on. We are meant to blame strands of Marxism on college campuses and liberal hand-wringing for ignoring all the "good" that they did and giving all that violence and a century of parasitic dominion a bad rap.

We shall never be able to turn back the clock and see how India might have fared without conquest. Would they have been able to modernize successfully, form durable and equitable political systems and the world-class education system it enjoys today?

We may never know, but I don't think I'm controversial in saying that the people responsible for "making" British India had no right to enact it and that its "unmaking" came far too late. To hell with the Empire for its unanswered crimes and to hell with this author, too, for trying to defend them.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bilge, rubbish and awful - books like this should not still have been published in the year 2000 - it is just another attempt to prettify and excuse the rapacious greed and barbarous deeds of the British empire. Give it a wide birth and read something honest like M. Mukerjee's Churchill's Secret War: the British Empire and the Ravaging of India in WWII' or Mike Davis's Late Victorian Holocaust', for example and there are many more.

[Morgon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the book was informative in a lot of ways, the reader gets the feeling the author is only telling one side of the story. You don't get all the facts, thus making it impossible to truly understand how it all came to be. I would still recommend reading it, just don't expect too much.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good book. Covers in-depth the 'Great Game', Robert Clive, Mountbatten, etc. However it is not for the Indian nationalist types.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot to say about this book, but I'm not anyone of import nor am I immensely qualified to discuss Indian history, but I have always been fascinated by it. Especially the years of colonial rule under the British. Where the West and East met in a really fascinating way and whose primary sources I am capable of reading because both sides recorded much of what they thought in the English language. I didn't know what to expect from this book, but I did know that it took a more nuanced/sympathetic view towards the Raj than most other contemporary histories. I'm not opposed to this in theory, I think the legacy of colonialism is way more complicated and cannot be answered with a simple "it was bad," or "it was good." Since most histories/classes/debates take the side against colonialism it is important to remind ourselves of the cultures and the histories that were actually impacted.
Despite what other reviewers of this work have said on here, this work isn't racist in any way. We can always imagine slights or be uncharitable to our opponents, but James speaks of many Indians, Indian rulers, and India in general, in glowing terms throughout the book when appropriate. He also appropriately castigates many British leaders and the British pulbic for their failures or lack of moral character. I can only believe that the people who are leveling that accusation against him here are either Hindutva nationalists, or people who don't understand nuance and that gray is the most common historical color when describing moral decisions. I think what seems to have set most people off was James' description of Gandhi as "vain." This is actually one of his favorite adjectives in the book to use for historical characters, both British and Indian, and perhaps says more about James' view of politicians than anything else. But I understand many people's gut reaction. Gandhi is one of those figures who is basically historically impervious to critique. His actions and legacy is so great it is hard to criticize him without coming off as cynical or vindictive. He's solidly in the pantheon with Lincoln, Kennedy, and MLK as examples of people who are "too good" to touch. It usually takes a few generations for these taboos to wipe away, and James was ahead of the curve. In recent scholarship Gandhi has come under more scrutiny for his methods and personal life, so James' critique now seems soft by comparison. If you don't believe me just look up how Gandhi's sleeping habits with young girls. Does that make him historically irrelevant or some great evil? I don't think so, but it should allow us to view him as a man and not as a god. All of this to say, don't believe the people calling James a racist without quoting passages from his book, they probably didn't read it or didn't pay attention.
This book is well researched clocking in at about 650 pages of texts with the rest being footnotes and bibliography from a wide variety of sources both Indian and British alongside others. Just doing a quick glimpse at other novels about the British Raj this is the most scholarly and wide ranging. I think one would be hard pressed to completely dismiss James' arguments. He covers a lot of ground from the beginnings of discovery and colonization to 1947. This means he cannot spend a significant amount of time in any one period and there were parts that I believed should be expanded more, like the 19th century more generally, and the famine during the Second World War which only got a small section of a chapter. I imagine if one wanted to dive more into those things they would have to track down books that specifically deal with those subjects.
While the hard history was fascinating to me, I found while reading that I actually loved the chapters that showed the cultural interaction more than anything else. The chapter on sex and religion was particularly fascinating, but I loved the exchange of material culture and the details of how India was perceived in Britain and how it shifted and morphed from a land of opulence and degeneracy, to a land of excitement and adventure, to a land of spiritual enlightenment, to a land of backwards thinking. It was all very fascinating. Likewise, it was interesting to see the change of the Indian view of the British and how it shifted and changed as the centuries went on, and ranged from hatred, to gratefulness, to ambivalence.
I was also glad that this book dispelled some myths for me. The chief one came to me from my days of playing Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties expansion. In that game you play as an Indian officer who helps lead the mutiny against the British which ends up being put down mirroring what happened in real life. However, the game presents the popular story that the British were aloof or uncaring colonial masters who didn't care about their subjects religious qualms. Which led to the using of pigs fat for cartridges. This was a the story that was spread by the Sepoy mutineers in real life and the game accepts it as fact as do many normal people I imagine, but through his research James shows that this was rumor that was spread either through ignorance or to intentionally stir up anger. I also learned that they weren't fighting to throw off colonialism, but that it was mostly a Muslim mutiny which was intent on restoring the Mughals to power. It's just fascinating seeing what I have been normally taught and believed about this, but in actuality it was more complicated and maybe, dare I say, better for everyone that it was put down by the British (although James points out the atrocities committed by the British and their Indian regulars and I would agree that those are also very bad.)
The point is that I am glad that I read this book and I honestly think others should read it as well. Especially if you have an interest in history, Indian history, or colonialism and its legacies. If you disagree it is still probably worth reading so you can produce a well researched counter argument to some of James' claims. Really the only thing I have against it is that it was too obtuse at times and James is lucky that I have played enough map painting games that I know where these locations that he discussed were from memory because I imagine any novice of India would have no idea where any of these things were taking place. It is a massive place and James could have phrased or structured things for the casual reader better, especially because that is the target audience. Regardless, I would recommend this book to those interested.

[Ahte S · Rating 5 out of 5]

James sets out to give a post-colonial review of the Raj 50 or so years after the dust had settled since its’ end. The story starts with the adventures of the EIC and Clive, goes through the mutiny and the Raj itself, ending with the partition and conclusions on what the Raj had meant and achieved.

Packed full of information and various primary and secondary sources referenced throughout, the book gives a varied and nuanced view of the Raj (despite the lamentation of Hindu nationalists that can be found here). It documents socio-political conditions throughout the various Indian states/principalities/provinces and how they altered over the course of company rule and the Raj.

Religion plays a central role including attempts of the EIC and Christian ministries to reform the pagan Hindu religions. Involving campaigns of extermination against the most dastardly sects, such as the infamous thuggees, and retaliation against Christian proselytising by Hindus and Muslims, leading to the 1857 mutiny. Proclamations of Jihad by neighbouring rulers, raids by Pashtun tribesmen seeking loot under the auspices of holy war, communal violence and outright genocidal massacres between all sides. Religion was one of the few things that Britain’s “civilising mission” failed to tame under its’ liberal creeds in India and today remains a major flashpoint within the country.

We see the economic and educational development of India. The establishment of military colleges by the EIC and the early Indian railroad. Later, under the Raj, the establishment of the Indian civil service and the education of an elite class of administrators for the Raj, in hopes they could one day take over the rule of the country and civilise their lesser countrymen in “benevolent” British-style governance. Literacy was restricted to the Brahmin caste before British rule and by independence, in 1947, ranged from 12-15%, enough to set the foundations for a new modern government capable of self-rule.

There were downsides, famines and massacres were commonplace, Britain rarely restrained the use of brute force to keep the natives in line and ethnic/religious tensions were always flaring up. The British famine codes no doubt alleviated the worst effects of famines, and saw a massive population boom in India with the population increasing by 400% over the period of British rule and the GDP accordingly (although GDP per capita did not change much). The effects of modernised cash-crop agriculture in Bengal saw one of the worst tragedies of British rule in 1943 with the Bengal famine, alongside early extortionist EIC tax policies in Bengal in 1770 leading to a similarly horrifying famine. However, overall population growth and comparison to famines before British rule show an overall improvement in food security throughout the period. James’ does not shy away from presenting both the benevolent British policies that saved lives but also the miscalculations (and at times greedy or malicious acts) that destroyed them.

This book has only slight (pro-British) bias compared to most books on this topic which tend to have extremely anti-British tendencies and often contain outright lies. I would recommend to anyone interested in the topic.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazon.com
When Robert Clive, a "harum-scarum schoolboy" not yet out of his teens, arrived in India in 1744, he found himself in the middle of chaos: English merchants fought against French traders, Indian princes warred among themselves, Portuguese and Dutch privateers plied the coasts, and throughout the country, anarchy reigned. Clive flourished amid the confusion. He quickly distinguished himself both in battle, showing bravery and unusual presence of mind, and in trade. The combination was profitable for his employer, the East India Company, and although Clive committed suicide in the wake of political scandal in 1774, he set in motion what would become the British conquest of India and the establishment of the Raj, a mixed form of government in which the English ruled through a network of Indian politicians and civil servants. Outwardly stable, the Raj was constantly under threat both by Indian aspirations to self-rule and by other imperialists' intrigues, notably on the part of Russia, Britain's chief competitor in what would come to be called "the great game." Lawrence James, a longtime student of British military history, offers a sweeping, and wholly absorbing, narrative account of the Raj, taking it from Clive's time to the era of Mahatma Gandhi and the flamboyant Viscount Mountbatten, the last British viceroy of India. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly
Even though James gives relatively short shrift to the period between the battle of Plassey (1757) and the second Maratha war (1817-1818), when the East India Company used arms and bribery to take over the Indian subcontinent, this is still a big book. But for what the British historian and author of The Rise and Fall of the British Empire wanted to do, it had to be big. James is a very lucid writer on a variety of topics, whether military, economic, social or political. His primary interest has been military history and it shows here. While not every reader will be fascinated by detailed descriptions of, say, military maneuvers of Sikh wars, these same details add intensity to the narrative of the Indian Mutiny (1857-59); the Great Game, that tortuous Anglo-Russian squabble over Afghanistan; or the doings of Subhas Chandra Bose during WWII. Opting against a simple chronology, James works in chapters on the position of Indian princes in the Raj, the differences between British and Indian sexuality and the romanticized, Kipling-esque vision of India that pervaded Britain in the early 20th century. There is a great deal about Britain here: the reception back home of newly rich Nabobs (a corruption of nawab); the British reaction to reports of the Indian Mutiny and the 1919 Amritsar massacre; the irreconcilable friction between Britain's devotion to economic expediency and liberal paternalism. In fact, some may find that the emphasis is a little too much on the "British" of the subtitle and not enough on the "India," but James presents a consistently intriguing take on a deeply complicated history.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

[Oliver Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me long enough.

This book, as the title suggests, is about the British Raj, from Clive and Hastings in the late 18th century to Indian Independence in the mid 20th century.

Let's not beat around the bush here. This book is told from a predominantly British perspective. Despite this however I thought it was, on the whole, rather well-balanced.

This point is important to note on this site. I've read other reviews for this book on Goodreads and some say it's biased, incorrect or even racist. I wondered whether I had read a different book to them. Whilst certainly one-sided, I wouldn't necessarily say this is the same as being unbiased. Lawrence James, the author, isn't some pro-British propagandist as some others have implied. There is a lot of criticism of the British in this book, not as a whole of course but towards a multitude of soldiers, statesmen and administrators (they made up the bulk of the Raj) who ended up f-ing up in one way or another.

I felt the author gave me enough information for me to form my own conclusions about the Raj, some quite different (and sometimes more negative) to his own.

This all being said though, the book's one-sided nature is definitely it's biggest fault, more so during the first half of the book than the second half, the latter seeing the advent of Indians who can actually speak English!

I wondered constantly what contemporary Indians thought about the various events and subjects brought up in the book. This is surely a rather vital perspective given how its their country. That said, given the amount of languages involved when talking about the Indian sub-continent (23 languages according to a cursory look on Wikipedia), it's somewhat understandable he didn't want to blow open that particular can of worms.

To my understanding, it is only recently that sources from these Indian languages have started to be translated into English, which, to my mind, has been used to great advantage recently by William Dalrymple.

Be all of this what it may, this is still a fine telling of the incredible story of the British Raj. It's comprehensive, informative, and easy to read. However, I do not believe it is the definitive book on the British Raj. To my mind it doesn't exist yet. Someone needs to combine the sources from both Britain AND India to make an absolute stonker of a book on this period. I don't envy anyone who has set his or her-self that task.

Until that time arrives however, this book shall certainly do.

[K S Chahar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Raj: The Making of British India by Lawrence James is, quite transparently, a book written for a British (and very comfort-seeking) audience. It reads less like a history of colonial rule and more like a long, meticulously footnoted reassurance session: “Don’t worry, we weren’t that bad—and, anyway, the natives should be grateful.” The tone is polished, the prose is confident, and beneath all that elegance lies a very old, very familiar colonial mindset.

The book’s central emotional demand seems to be that Indians should more or less say “thank you” to the very government that enslaved them. Time and again, James frames the British presence as an essentially civilising, rational, almost benevolent project—tragically misunderstood by the people it ruled. That millions suffered, starved, and died in the process is treated as either a tragic accident of history or the fault of others: inept Indian rulers, greedy local elites, or the chaos of the subcontinent itself.

One of the book’s favourite tricks is the classic colonial move: British success is attributed not to ruthless opportunism, but to the “incapability” and “divisions” of Indian rulers. The message is clear: India was conquered not because the British were predatory, but because Indians were just so astonishingly incompetent that conquest was almost a moral duty. What James conveniently fails to convey is how much of the early British success was driven by unembarrassed greed—officers of the East India Company lining their pockets, abusing their power, and gaming every possible advantage in the name of profit, not principle.

In military matters too, James works hard to avoid calling a spade a spade. The British are credited with “superior organisation” and “tactics,” which is a very tidy way of saying: they introduced new weapons, exploited divisions, and made bribery into a strategic art form. Paying off enemy generals and sowing disloyalty among adversaries’ military personnel becomes, in this narrative, the mark of British genius rather than the corruption and manipulation it actually was.

At a deeper level, the book indulges a truly breath-taking conceit: that Indians should be thankful for the destruction and distortion of thousands of years of civilisation, social systems, and local institutions. Ancient cultures and complex polities are treated as raw material for the British to shape, ‘improve,’ and, where convenient, erase. The subtext: you had “tradition”; we gave you “modernity,” so perhaps a little gratitude is in order.

James repeatedly glorifies British governance as an enlightened regime of justice, morality, and reason. It’s all very noble—until you remember the critical detail he elegantly glides past: British subjects in India were largely shielded from the jurisdiction of Indian judges. The much-trumpeted “rule of law” operated on a racial hierarchy: one law for Europeans, another for the colonised. This uncomfortable fact is either downplayed or buried under the usual rhetoric of reforms, codes, and legal modernisation.

The book also has a particularly sour undertone toward Hindu India. In its eagerness to construct British racial and cultural superiority, it frequently discredits or trivialises indigenous traditions, beliefs, and social structures. The impression is unmistakable: pre-British India was irrational, superstitious, fragmentary; the British arrive with reason, order, and moral clarity. That this requires a sustained, almost obsessive dismissal of Hindu civilisation is a feature, not a bug.

When it comes to Indian soldiers, the selectivity becomes almost comical. The glory, courage, and sacrifice of Indian troops in the World Wars are barely given their due. The legendary Battle of Saragarhi? Ignored. The heroic stands at places like Kang? Silenced. But when the narrative reaches the surrender of Singapore and Malaya, suddenly the Indian Army is front and center—as the main culprit. British leadership errors, strategic miscalculations, and command failures are gently airbrushed, while Indians are handed the blame. It is a neat piece of narrative bookkeeping: credit up, blame down.

Curiously, perhaps even unintentionally, James does brush against a topic that British-leaning histories usually prefer to smother: the violent, mass nature of the Quit India movement in 1942. He touches—though without fully exploring—the scale of the unrest, the near-insurrectionary conditions in some regions, and the fact that it required air power to contain in places. In doing so, he almost stumbles into acknowledging that this was no minor protest but something close to a second war of independence. Yet even here, the framing is anxious and controlling, careful not to concede too much moral ground to the Indian side.

On the Bengal Famine of 1943, the acrobatics are particularly striking. James blames hoarding and market distortions, as if three million people simply died because local traders were greedy and logistics were complicated. Churchill’s decisions, including the diversion of food grains and the refusal to adequately prioritise famine relief, are smoothed over or excused under the banner of “war effort.” The deliberate choices that turned scarcity into mass death are thus cleverly displaced from London to Bengal’s bazaars.

When the story reaches the end of the Raj, the explanation offered for British departure is as bloodless as possible: India, we are told, simply ceased to be a viable commercial asset. Once the empire no longer paid, it was time to go. There is little serious reckoning with the moral, political, and military pressures that made continued rule untenable. The countless Indians who fought, agitated, suffered imprisonment, and died for freedom vanish behind a profit-and-loss calculation.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the book is how it asks to be read. This is not a work seeking to confront the full ugliness of empire. It demands instead that the reader accept its underlying purpose: to reinterpret the Raj as a project that was, on balance, rational, civilised, and morally defensible. Any engagement with it therefore has to be done with eyes wide open: understanding precisely why it was written and whose conscience it seeks to soothe. Read it, by all means—but treat it as a primary source in imperial nostalgia, not as a final word on Indian history.

Nothing illustrates this bias more starkly than the treatment of General Dyer and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. James bends over backwards to frame Dyer’s massacre of unarmed, trapped civilians as a kind of grim necessity born of fears of rebellion, hinting at conspiracies of mutiny without offering serious evidence. The bodies in Amritsar become, in effect, a regrettable but understandable footnote in the great imperial struggle for order. That so many Indians saw it, correctly, as a turning point of unforgivable brutality seems almost incidental to the narrative.

In summary, *Raj: The Making of British India* is not so much a balanced history as a carefully constructed apologia, wrapped in eloquent prose and selective memory. It is worth reading—but only if the reader is alert to its omissions, distortions, and deep-seated prejudices. As a portrait of how parts of Britain still wish to remember the empire, it is invaluable. As a fair account of what that empire did to India, it is precisely the opposite.

[Kalyan Tirunahari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everything you need to know about 250 years of British Rule in India from British point of view. All the way from Robert Clive in 17th century to Lord Mountbatten 20th century. The author is a Britisher who admires Colonialism to some extent. He might come across as a racist himself but he is clearly not, he just puts raw facts for us(Asians and Non Whites) to consume with a pinch of salt. In spite of his support to Imperialistic rule of British, in every page you would find him criticizing the British for the amount of plunder and loot they did to India over centuries. The racism that they showed on Indians, the Anarchy that lasted over large areas of India is quite evident.

British East India company created two major famines in India as a result of this diversion of Indian agriculture produce and other resources to Britain and else where. According to Britain's Official estimate the mind numbing figures of 50 million(5 crores) starved to death in 1876AD famine and another 20 million(2 crores) in the other famines.

British did introduce some good reforms though, should be commended for some of the benefits we still see to date. Don't fall for the myth that British laid Railways/roadways/telegraphs etc, they had their own selfish motive to easily transport wealth out of the country, so they had to build those. No credit to them there.

My pet peeve for the book is that it is a 1000 pages and hard to read while lying down ;)

[E.T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first book of Indian history under British rule from a British POV.
So, it was a bit of a paradigm-shift. Also, the first book overall that i have read for the period 1757-1857, which has virtually no books available on it. Also, the book is very well-rounded in the sense it explores social,cultural,economic aspects in reasonable depth too.

How does one rate a history book ?
Does one consider things that have been left out or does one consider the lack of depth on some issues or does one evaluate by how enjoyable the read was ?
For example, the author has not bothered to explore the roots of Hindu-Muslim conflict. People like Savarkar, Maulana Ali among others do not feature in this book at all. The gradual progress in building of Indian constitution from 1909 is vague.
But, all in all it was an interesting read.

[Anthony Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An in-depth portrait of the Raj in all its nobility and hypocrisy, glory and cruelty. The readers should be warned that this book is basically two books in one- from 1750 -1880 or so, it is not really strict history, but more an examination of long-term social and administrative trends, that gives you an in-depth look at the way people worked, lived, and thought, but not really a full picture of events or a deep look at famous individuals (it doesn't mention at all, for example, how the East India Company was formed or what its earliest days were like, and if you didn't already know the Marquess Wellesley was Wellington's brother, you won't find out here). Around about 1880, it switches tack and offers a much fuller picture of events and people.

It may be a bit jarring to read, but as long as you don't mind that you'll come away enriched.

[Thabitta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three amazing things about this book:
* The author used the perfect words for description. There were also anecdotes and popular sayings that are impossible to find elsewhere. For example, the referenced sentence, "Whenever there was a crisis, every Indian looked for and to the nearest Englishman," reveals to the reader the racial attitudes of the natives.
* The references to external sources were a goldmine for more information. The quotations were also chosen carefully. The attention to detail is extraordinary.
* It tells the story about the relationship between the Indians and Englishmen in the most neutral and pragmatic way. There are no romantic allusions to the holiness or the righteousness of the nature of the freedom struggle.

[Paul O'Leary · Rating 4 out of 5]

First rate history of England's imperial history in India. Great overall survey. How the East Indian Company practically backed into Empire is completely fascinating. Good business requires stable government; if you can't buy this or it becomes too expensive to maintain then you just assume governmental authority. Empire on the cheap, indeed....
The author does exhibit some bias towards the English perspective, which I imagine stems primarily from his being English. If you're not too sensitive to the radical fact of an author having something of a particular world-view then treat yourself to this read.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did a good job of explaining how Britain was able to conquer India/Pakistan and come to an accomodation in what is now Afghanistan with the rivalries caused by the collapse of the Mughal Empire. Of course Guns, Germs and Steel explains how Britain was doing the conquering and not India. It also gives a very good overview of the Partition and the tragedy that is still causing today. The author was too pro-British Empire for my taste but he makes some good points to counter the prevailing views in academia.

[Simrah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mean yeah this was interesting, and I hope it's useful for my dissertation but also wow this guy thinks that the British gifted India with amazing gifts like democracy! And the British got curry so that's so nice too.

We can just pretend that the famines and draining of India's resources never happened and the British didn't completely change the economy in India so that it would benefit them.

Basically he thinks the British Raj was great and it's made me mad but it's an interesting read.

[Tom Milton · Rating 5 out of 5]

An illuminating history of Britain in India that increased my understanding of both countries.

[Andreas Michaelides · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book about the History of India while the British were there, a very detailed and analytical book. I was very impressed and I learned a lot about India.

[Julie Bozza]

Christmas present from my friend Tracey. Gonna have to write the novel set in India now, aren't I?