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  • Published: 17 September 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241004531
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 640
Categories:

The British in India

Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience




A panoramic social history chronicling the lives of hundreds of British people of all classes in the most important territory of the British Empire

The British in this book lived in India from shortly after the reign of Elizabeth I until well into the reign of Elizabeth II. They were soldiers, officials, businessmen, doctors and missionaries of both sexes, planters, engineers and many others, together with children, wives and sisters. This book describes their lives, their work and their extraordinarily varied interactions with the native populations; it also records the very diverse roles they played in the three centuries of British-Indian history. Gilmour writes of people who have never been written about before, men and women who are presented here with humanity and often with humour. The result is a magnificent tapestry of life, an exceptional work of scholarly recovery which reads like a great nineteenth-century novel. It makes a highly original and engaging contribution to a long an important period of British and Indian history.

  • Published: 17 September 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241004531
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 640
Categories:

About the author

David Gilmour

David Gilmour's books include the prize-winning biographies, Curzon and The Last Leopard: A Life of Giuseppe di Lampedusa. He is also the author of Cities of Spain, The Hungry Generations and several works on the politics of Spain and the Middle East. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, he is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books.

Also by David Gilmour

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Praise for The British in India

The British in India is an exceptional book. It evokes those animated crowd scenes painted by William Frith, full of people going about their workaday lives, or enjoying themselves. These paintings enchanted the Victorians, prompting them to ask: who are these people, where do they come from, what are they saying and thinking, and what will become of them? David Gilmour's canvas is British India and he provides the answers in a penetrating and vivid portrait of the British men and women who ran the show from the mid-18th century to 1947.

Lawrence James, The Times

Hugely researched and elegantly written, sensitive to the ironies of the past and brimming with colourful details, his book has no time for academic jargon or pretentious theorising ... Gilmour is interested in human complexity, not in moralistic posturing. Perhaps that is why his books sell

Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

This is the best kind of history: meticulously researched, elegantly and entertainingly written, and as wide in its sympathies as it is long in its reach

Peter Parker, Spectator

The narrative is studded with nuggets that illuminate the relationship between Britain and the sub-continent ... magisterial

Navtej Sarna, Financial Times