The Last Prince of Bengal: A Family's Journey from an Indian Palace to the Australian Outback

by Lyn Innes

The Nawab Nazim was born into one of India's most powerful royal families. Three times the size of Great Britain, his kingdom ranged from the soaring Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. However, in 1880, he was forced to abdicate by the British authorities, who saw him as a threat and permanently abolished his titles. The Nawab s change in fortune marked the end of an era in India and left his secret English family abandoned.

The Last Prince of Bengal tells the true story of the Nawab Nazim, his wife and their descendants, as they sought by turns to befriend, settle in and eventually escape Britain. From glamourous receptions with Queen Victoria to a scandalous Muslim marriage with an English chambermaid; from Bengal tiger hunts to sheep farming in the harsh Australian outback, Lyn Innes recounts her ancestors extraordinary journey from royalty to relative anonymity.

Exposing complex prejudices regarding race, class and gender, this riveting account visits the extremes of British rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is also the intimate story of one family and their place in defining moments of recent Indian, British and Australian history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, India

256 pages, Hardcover

Published August 12, 2021

Reviews

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Although her husband's Qu'ran had a prominent place in my grandmother's house amid the leather bound volumes of Thackeray and Dickens and the more colourful covers of the books she herself had written, and although his dress clothes and family seal were there, not once did my grandmother ever speak to her grandchildren about him or about India. We were made aware of his status, but had no sense of him as a person. That very silence aroused my curiosity. Who was my grandfather and what kind of world had he and his ancestors inhabited?"

I reckoned that this was not my kind of book but I still went ahead and agreed and though I was mostly correct, I'm happy I read it as it generated deep interest in particular strands of global histories that I want to explore. For example, the presence of peoples of African descent in Indian Royal courts, both in high and low positions. The archival sources that she cited also garnered fascination. It was great to see how this shard of history played out in context of a larger Indian & colonial history.

There are moments when this book can feel a little perfunctory, she is after all limited by the trajectory of her subjects. Still, I felt there were opportunities to branch off and go into detail about places and things. The chapters overlap a bit, revisiting and repeating events which can feel clumsy. Apart from the short prologue and epilogue, the I-voice is absent from the text and it's resolutely in third person. I feel a bit more of Lyn would have better it. That being said, it's a most competent book.



(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

[Aarathi Ganesan · Rating 5 out of 5]

exceptional—incredibly hard to make the facts and facsimiles of history engaging to read, but Innes does this so elegantly. This memoir serves as a prism for the internationalism that the Empire brought about, offering fascinating insight into how lives and circumstances were shaped by this factor. despite the nawab being awfully unlikeable—and therefore hard to feel sorry for—an all around terrific read!

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book has a lot of interesting aspects. It relates the relationship between one of the Indian princes and a lower class British woman at the end of the 19th century. There's is a lot of really interesting details in here which is unsparing of the reality of British politics towards the Indian princes. It would be interesting to see a deeper analysis of the intersection of class and race.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of an Indian royal family that was effectively destroyed by their treatment by the British.