The British in India: A Social History of the Raj

by David Gilmour

An immersive portrait of the lives of the British in India, from the seventeenth century to Independence
Who of the British went to India, and why? We know about Kipling and Forster, Orwell and Scott, but what of the youthful forestry official, the enterprising boxwallah, the fervid missionary? What motivated them to travel halfway around the globe, what lives did they lead when they got there, and what did they think about it all?
Full of spirited, illuminating anecdotes drawn from long-forgotten memoirs, correspondence, and government documents, The British in India weaves a rich tapestry of the everyday experiences of the Britons who found themselves in "the jewel in the crown" of the British Empire. David Gilmour captures the substance and texture of their work, home, and social lives, and illustrates how these transformed across the several centuries of British presence and rule in the subcontinent, from the East India Company's first trading station in 1615 to the twilight of the Raj and Partition and Independence in 1947. He takes us through remote hill stations, bustling coastal ports, opulent palaces, regimented cantonments, and dense jungles, revealing the country as seen through British eyes, and wittily reveling in all the particular concerns and contradictions that were a consequence of that limited perspective. The British in India is a breathtaking accomplishment, a vivid and balanced history written with brio, elegance, and erudition.

Genres: History, India, Nonfiction, Asia, British Literature, Audiobook, World History

642 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Sir David Robert Gilmour, 4th Baronet is a Scottish author. He is the first son of Ian Gilmour, Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar, 3rd Baronet, and Lady Caroline Margaret Montagu-Douglas-Scott, the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Buccleuch. HRH Princess Margaret was his sponsor at his Christening. He became the 4th baronet on the death of his father in 2007.

Gilmour was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford.

Gilmour is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL).

He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and four children.

Reviews

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a social history of the British Raj and more generally the British presence in India, written by a novelist who is also an historian. The intent of the book as a social history is to “open a camera lens” on the lives of the British people who took part in the rule of India over its long course - not to mandate a specific history but to describe and explain the varied lives, backgrounds, experiences, and accomplishments of the people who together made up the Raj. This is not a military or political history and the timeline is loosely chronological. The intent is more to provide a picture of the British in India and let them tell their own stories. For source material, Mr. Gilmour has made use of a vast array of memoirs and diaries, collections of letters, public records, and works of literature as the bases for his account.

I am not generally supportive of this approach to history because in the wrong hands it allows the historian to avoid responsibility for judgment and analysis. I will make an exception for this book, because the subject matter is so vast and the varied interpretations of the political reality so contentious that Gilmour’s approach is valuable for giving readers a chance to shake their heads out and take a look at the story of the British in India in all of its variety and with lots of telling detail.

Consider the vastness of the subject matter. In terms of contemporary political units, “India” encompasses Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Burma. In terms of population, this area is rivalled in population only by China (although I do not have the latest statistics) and it will almost certainly be the most populous region on earth very soon if it is not already. In terms of the time frame of interest, British contract with India via the East India Company, began in 1612, although contact began a bit earlier. The company took over rule of India after 1757, which it maintained until 1858. Britain ruled India directly until Independence was obtained in 1947. It is inconceivable to me that a single narrative could tie this mass of social interactions together.

Gilmour goes about his work skillfully and with some fine writing. The book has three general parts covering the general orientations of the British, the various ways in which working life in British was organized, and a general of the different sorts of personal experiences people had. The second section was striking in the it provided details on how various professions and occupations - including the military - were organized. The third section detailed personal life ranging from courtship and marriage, to sex, to children and family life, to relations with people in England, to education, to recreation, to general issues of virtue and vice. This only scratches the surface of the book. The book is also filled with all sorts of historical trivia - for example the origins of the “gin and tonic”.

This is a long detailed book that is not for everyone. For those with an interest in India, it is well worth reading. This is not intended as a social history of Indians or Pakistanis, or others in the area, however, but it is well documented and suggestive of further reading.

[Asim Bakhshi · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times, it was unputdownable, and at times, it was a stretch, but only because it has so many subjects that a few might not be able to grab attention when you are in a particular mood.

In any case, it was a spectacular idea to model a work of history as a camera with an open shutter. With so many diverse stories of so many men and women, Gilmour has devised a really ingenious way of capturing the complexity of the social life of colonial agents in British India. It isn't an oral history but a social history written as snippets with real cast.

The structure of the book invites a lot of reflection as you finish the book and find yourself awestruck by its sheer expanse.

[Chris Bull · Rating 4 out of 5]

No man ever went to the East Indies with good intentions — Walpole

Gilmour certainly went through the archives to research this tome, however it seems strange that he included very few documents and recollections from Indians and AngloIndians.
The British were there for 300 years and it changed both India and is still changing Britain. The coming of the Raj and the Rebellion in 1857 were milestones. The life for many was short and a hardship, but considering the times and local conditions was probably in keeping with the general overlook. It wasn’t all high tea and tennis.
I can relate to the fact that many have been overseas for an extended period of time cannot easily transition to life back home.

[Julian Douglass · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, my lord was this book a slog. I feel as if Mr. Gilmour found every diary kept of every person from Great Britain who went to India and recorded their lives, their trials, and their tribulations. The book just became repetitive and repetitive and it really didn’t seem to offer any major insights into life in Inda during British rule. Snoozer for sure, glad to be done with it.

[MasterSal]

Adding to the TBR because a fiction book I am reading is annoying incorrect (in my head) of how social standing worked in British Raj. However before I condemn the book I should probably get the facts rights I guess 😂

[Stephen King · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and encyclopedic account of the British in India over three centuries, told often through the letters and accounts of those who lived and worked there. This is a brilliant historical account which avoids over simplifications or political posturing. Divided into thematic chapters such as the British approach to Sports or Death on the subcontinent, it analyses the topics drawing on each century’s attitudes and accounts.

[Lizzi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have some mixed feelings about this book. It started out well with overviews of how the East India Company and later the various militaries and government agencies, as well as the Indian Civil Service, expanded into the subcontinent and guaranteed a British presence in India for centuries. But from there it reads like a great big list of people who went out there, with a few sentences for each. This became exhausting to read as there wasn’t one single thread to follow. The decision not to make the information chronological was also an error I think, as it made it even harder to keep track of things and it felt like the narrative was bouncing about all over the place. There was also a distinct lack of an Indian voice - I appreciate this book is about the British, and Gilmour does state early on that he’s not going to talk much about Anglo-Indian relations, but again I think this was an error. It means that it all sounds quite jolly even when mentioning tragedies. His caveat at the end that ‘it wasn’t all bad’ is fair on some points, and he even quotes Manmohan Singh when he was PM in 2005, acknowledging the legacy of government etc that the British left. But then he calls Edward Said a “generaliser”, which goes too far the other way. Overall I think his attitude is far too gentle, too nostalgic, too ‘nice’. There were a handful of personal stories that I could get a handle on and connect to, that sounded interesting, but so many were just a list of EIC, ICS, and military bods that had similar lives. None of it sounded remarkable. I have a personal connection to India, in that my grandmother was Anglo-Indian and at least two generations before her were born there on the English side. And so I wanted a more human connection to this time and place, and I did not find it in this book. It is more of a catalogue than a story, with quite a rosy view of imperialism. So as I said, it left me with mixed feelings. I struggled to read the endless lists and anecdotes, and I admit I couldn’t finish it but rather skimmed for information I might actually find interesting. A shame really. Luckily I have a few other books on this topic that might be more accessible and rewarding.

[Dee Mcgee · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is for a pure historian. Too much detail - felt at times it was written about every English person who set foot in India and what they had for breakfast, etc.

[Richard Dennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the Sunday Times Book of the Year, 2018, for a reason. The scholarship is extraordinary. The writing is easy going and lucid. The content is all about people, it just gets better, as the jigsaw fills up. For example: ‘Adultery in Victorian Britain was regarded as so scandalous that it could ruin political lives, as it did in the cases of Charles Dilke and Charles Parnell. Yet in Victorian India it did not destroy careers or even delay promotions very much’.

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I am not going to attempt to set up scales or produce a balance sheet, to weight indigo planters who tyrannized Indian peasants against doctors who saved Indian lives..."

In the final chapter of this illuminating history the author describes his intent for writing as 'a camera with its shutter open.' Letting us readers peer through, to learn as much as we can about people we can only meet through historical study, and draw our own conclusions – or not.

More than any history book I can remember reading, I found myself thinking "Boy I wish I could have seen that." That's not to praise every point of history described, but to praise Gilmour's ability to paint a picture that feels realistic and visit-able but still full of fascination and wonder.

Two suggestions for reading this book:
• Don't start here. This book is accurately described as a Social History, one that focuses far more on the individual stories and daily lives of the British in India. In that pursuit it skips or assumes the broader histories of the intertwining of these two nations. If you're interested in this book, I would definitely encourage reading it, but only after getting a 'bird's eye view of the British Empire's years in India as this book does not take the time to paint the overall timeline very clearly.

• Consider this a reference book. As I was just borrowing it from the library, I ate this book up from cover to cover, blasting straight through - and even though I enjoyed nearly every page, it was a bit exhausting in its granular and investigative approach. BiA is written in a way that would facilitate bouncing around and following threads of interest rather than plowing straight through in a straight line.

Pretty scattered review but like, the book's big and dense and I have a million billion thoughts and none of them are connected. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

[AHW · Rating 2 out of 5]

An encyclopedic, exhaustingly empirical pro-imperialist historical catalogue of the lives of the British in the Raj. This isn’t much of a social history, in that it “apolitically” refuses to analyze the social relations at play, preferring to pile on detail - very sanitized detail, overwhelmingly from British sources like autobiography and letters. We hear very little of what interpersonal relationships between Brits and Indians were concretely like, only general statements, and nothing of these various people and their social functions from the view of Indians or others interacting with them. It thus reads as a liberal-minded reactionary’s highly detailed catalogue of imperial fandom trivia. Gilmour only airs his liberal pro-imperial attitude in the afterword, in which he tries to make the philanthropic acts of “good imperialists” overshadow the “bad imperialists”, but that attitude structures the book and determines its shortcomings throughout. The highlight of his afterword has to be his characterization of the tepid Edward Said as some sort of fuming historical extremist.

Any large catalogue of well-sourced information can be useful, and I did learn quite a bit of use from this book, but even there one must be careful about how Gilmour skews history by way of omission. To mention a British official’s assignment to famine work, for example, without mentioning that the Raj actively turned food distribution problems and weather events into famine so severe that it substantially reduced the Indian population over the long term, is an act of historical distortion.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is definitely written from the British perspective and contains lots of detail about individuals in India, but it ignores Indian perspectives and there is a tendency to write from a very 'establishment' version of history - with regular references to which prominent public school or Oxbridge college different people attended.

His descriptions of everyday life for British officers is really eye-opening.
He talks about the responsibilities of DO (District Officer) who were responsible for large area and gives the example of a 24 year old Oxford graduate who is thrust into this work with little preparation but seems to enjoy it. At the same time, it does sound like a lonely existence.

He discusses how India was seen as a soure of wealth, with young British men seeing how they could gett rich. This might be thanks to gifts from nawabs for very senior officers or trading.

The chapter on sex and marriage is interesting. It talks about the custom of bibis which gradually declined the 19th century, marriage to upper class Indians. It talks about the experience of British women who travelled to India. But also about difficulties of British men who were discouraged from early marriage in order that they would be mobile.
Finally, he discusses and casts some doubt on Kipling's suggestion that there was adultery in hill stations.
To summarise, the writer focuses on personal stories of Brits in India but overlooks larger political questions and Indian points of view.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a social history looking at the experiences of the British in India from the days of the East India Company to Partition and beyond. It is structured thematically rather than chronologically, with chapters on topics such as working life, formalities, sport, illness and death, to name a few. It is really well researched, but as one might expect focuses most on the lives of the educated and literate where sources are plentiful (although there is a significant amount of interesting detail about life in the military).

The book is well written, more towards the academic than the popular in style, but the content is accessible without too many theories or analytical passages. Gilmour states that his intention is to let his characters move in front of the lens, and he certainly does this, with a wide variety of characters and situations being covered quite briefly, but with wit and sensitivity. It is a book that steers the reader away from generalisations to appreciate the wide range of individual experiences from the period.

I particularly enjoyed the stories of the redoubtable women who appear in the pages, and found the final chapter ‘Last Posts’ very poignant as it dealt with illness, death (often of young children) and the final decision whether to stay on (in India, Pakistan or East Pakistan) after Partition. There are also some wonderful photographs that help to bring the stories to life.

[Eunice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a magnificent survey of the archives left behind by the British in India over the entire period from their first visits to the end of the Raj. The range of sources and family records that the author has consulted is extremely broad.

It provides a wealth of detail about the everyday lives of the people at work and at play, in their interactions with everyone from Maharajas to sweepers. It also provides many surprises -people who challenged the stereotypical images of the Briton in his club, people who confirmed them, their love of the countryside or their desire to replant a bit of England or Scotland in their new locations.

It is however very dense with an enormous amount of detail which while very well put together and presented, may only be of interest to those who have themselves a special interest in the subcontinent.

[Ashwani Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a one sided social history of the Raj from the British point of view. Don't expect to learn much about the Indian experience of the Raj, e.g. how did the people in the mofussil view and interact with the white sahib; how did the sepoy relate to his white officer; how did Indian cultural life change as a result of the Raj. Perhaps, an Indian historian will need to write that perspective.

Having said that, the book is an excellent summary of the British experience and very stimulating if this period intrigues you. The book 'outs' several famous people whom most people will not suspect of having an India connection, e.g. George Orwell or Vivian Leigh (of Gone with the Wind).

A glaring omission that I can't help remarking on... there is no mention in the book of Jim Corbett, the great shikari.

[Felicity · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book - full of anecdotal history. David Gilmour's research is impeccable and I wish I had access to as many personal papers as he has quoted from in this book. If you are looking for a serious historical account of the British in India - this book probably isn't for you. The author makes it clear that this is a social history and he achieves what he set out to write. Although the book is long, I enjoyed it from beginning to end and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the social history of the British in India during this period.

[Bella Nicole Persephone Radant · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF
The book takes an almost wholly uncritical perspective on the imperialist project that was the colonial operation in India. It also largely fails to take into consideration any Indian perspective. Which, for a social history, I would argue is rather important because social interactions require multiple parties.

The author takes an most blase attitude toward the multiple atrocities that Britain committed and overall seems to have a "Well yes it was bad for India but it was the glory days of the British empire and wasn't that rather swell" attitude.

The only reason that it's not a one star is that the author is, indeed, deeply thorough in his scholarship and is honest about his perspective in the introduction. But I cannot believe that the 500+ pages used here could not have been better served putting forward some Indian voices, or even just more voices of women and children who were with victims and perpetrators of the colonial project

[Catriona]

So this is basically a treasure trove of anecdotes from Brits who lived, visited or were involved in the occupation of India.

They are roughly grouped by theme but there appears to be no analysis or chronology.

I'll be honest and say I picked this book up knowing nothing about it and hoping for a good introduction to the subject of the involvement of Britian in the subcontinent. This book is not that.

Definitely one for those who already have a good grasp of, and are passionate about the subject.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly the kind of history book I enjoy most, focusing on what I would roughly call "folk sociology": stories about regular people, and how society functioned.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. Covers a lot of depth and also written in a way that's easy to dip in and out of.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you’re picking up a book at random and this is the one you pull out blindfolded, this is probably not the book for you. But if you want a nonfiction book on the title topic, you’d be hard pressed to find a more detailed account. Filled with short and sometimes amusing anecdotes, Gilmour’s book gives what feels like a full (one-sided non political) view of life for the British in colonial India.

[Subodh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The British ruled India from nearly two centuries - beginning with the battle of Plassey in 1757, and ending with independence for India and Pakistan in 1947. They started arriving here in the seventeenth century when the East India Company got the charter for trading with India in 1600. They were latecomers to India; the Portuguese, the Dutch and the Danes had preceded them, and the French arrived around the same time. The Mughal Empire started disintegrating after the death of the sixth emperor Aurangzeb in 1707. Regional satraps of Mughals became independent princes and there were frequent skirmishes between them for a larger slice of the political and economic pie. First the French and then the British realized that their soldiers were more effective than the poorly led soldiers of the local princes and used this advantage first to take sides in local conflicts, and then to grab political power for themselves. By 1757 the British had emerged clear winners in this game.

David Gilmour doesn't go into the political and military history of British rule in India - except incidentally. This book is about the people - the British men and women who came to India and made it their home - some permanently, and the others for a good part of their lives. A lot of them met premature death in this foreign land. The initial draw for India was money - from trade and peculation in the beginning; and from generous salaries for officers of the ICS and other services later. There were many, however, motivated by wanderlust, thirst for adventure or love for the exotic. Gilmour gives us a glimpse of what these people were like, where did they come from, what were their motives, how they prepared themselves for India, what was it like to travel to India, what was daily life like, how did they cope with the tedium of life in a strange land.

The chapters are organized according to themes: It begins with a discussion of the numbers, followed by the origins and identities of those who went to India for money, adventure or service. In case of women the objective could be as prosaic as finding a husband. Later chapters take up life in India and the final chapter is dedicated to those who stayed on in India or Pakistan after independence. Each chapter is full of short sketches of persons who have left records of their experiences. Many prominent individuals figure in several different chapters - thanks to the rich life they led in India. Within each chapter the author takes liberty with chronology - he could be telling us about someone from the late nineteenth century, and jump back a hundred years to someone else who had a similar or dramatically different experience. It took me some time to get used to these chronological jumps.

The author's style is readable. Given the nature of the book he can't go deep into any one theme, or give us a well rounded picture of any one personality. I would have preferred a different treatment that would take up a few - may be a dozen - personalities from Governors General to private soldiers and discussed their lives in depth. Other persons could be mentioned in passing.

[Phyllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great 'listen'. The reader, Michael Page, was a perfect fit for the subject matter. Gilmour provides an in-depth, enjoyable look at the impact of changing social mores as well as the changes that occurred once travel to India became more convenient, thus introducing more British women/wives to the mix.

[Robin Kuritzky · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful social history of the British experience in India over three centuries showing every facet of the actual lives of people in very different time periods; thousands of individual anecdotes, vivid, astonishing and very readable.

[Rosa Angelone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a political history. It is more of a roundup of how various British people reacted to the reality of colonial India. I really liked the book. The author includes a lot of first person accounts and each chapter is around a subject. Like transportation or the schools that acted as feeders for the East India Company. The book has been out awhile and I had put it off because I was worried it would be some nostalgia trip through what ever the British version of the "The Lost Cause" myth is. At least in my experience of the book I didn't think the British were put on a pedestal and often seemed petty and pedantic at best. What the book does well I think is show briefly what British people felt and saw and did. It is a skimming over the top of the experience but an excellent way to dive into the complicated and immense history of that time in place.

[LeAnna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book for giving me a better understanding of the British experience in India. It definitely rounded out what I’d gleaned from novels and movies. The majority of the book was quite interesting, presenting different experiences in chronological order in relation to various themes. In a few places, particularly the beginning chapters, this was a bit of a slog to get through as it was a bit too much like a very long list. Often I found myself wishing that more had been devoted to presenting certain people & their experiences in greater detail, although I realize that would be more biographical than social history. In that sense this is a book that falls a little more towards research than reading, although overall it does a good job of being accessible to a wider audience than simply academics.

[Erez Agami · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very in depth and exhaustive history of the lives of the British in India. In fairness, this book does not attempt to provide a critique or dissection of the concept of imperialism or of the narrative of the British Empire, although in my opinion, it somewhat glosses over some of the negatives, or takes quotes from British people at face value without critique.

All in all though it's fascinating to learn about niche aspects of colonial life like travel, day to day work, leisure and the motivations of different types of people over the centuries of British colonialism. You are unlikely to find a better researched or more granular book on the topic.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting and entertaining book. A rarity these days given the proclivities of the publishing world, it takes the people who worked in and ran the Empire in India in the context of their own time and does not demonize them according to the standards of our own. This is not to say it unstintingly praises them, their hypocrisy is absolutely skewered in a remarkably stinging yet hilarious dry British sense of humor. The book brings back to live the people and their time in both their own words and the contemporary words and actions of the people of India. The book was a joy to read.

[Caro · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great beach book: needs sustained time to read (600-plus pages), informative but not too taxing, and prompts many hunts for further information and related books (everyone from Kipling to M.M. Kaye and beyond). Gilmour has a keen eye for the telling anecdote, and there are many eccentrics and witty people, as well as some tragic stories, to call on. He avoids the issue of whether the British belonged there at all and how they treated Indians, except in a short end chapter where he reiterates that this is a social, not political, history.

[Diane James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this book although it wasn’t what I thought it would be. It is an encyclopaedic study of every aspect imaginable of the British experience in India spanning 300 years of imperial life. It was very interesting in parts, but for me crammed with so much detail I couldn’t help but skim certain parts. In any case, the book is very informative and I came away with a clearer picture of what it was really like to be posted in India during the Raj. I have a far less romantic view as a result!