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4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
Actually, a pretty good piece of history to read for the modern-world, where multinational corporations seemingly work beyond the law and systematically work to destroy workers' rights. Raj India is what you get when for profit corporations set the rules.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
challenging
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
A history of the British colonization of India and its aftermath focused on breaking down point by point why people who say colonialism was ultimately good for India are incredibly wrong. It’s a view I was already aligned with, but I was still shocked by the depth of the depravity of British rule as they put extraction of wealth from the subcontinent above everything else, leaving scars that are still felt there today.
there isn’t a punishment in the world that is suitable for British crimes in India, and yet they walked away without so much as a slap on the wrist
- I’m so serious, what do you mean that the British came and did all this bullshit and they have never ever faced a single consequence for any of their actions
- they enslaved people, they murdered people, they raped and pillaged and starved and massacred and in the end they were able to just leave…just like that…it’s absolutely insane
- i feel like people vaguely know that colonialism is bad and that the British were Not Very Nice when they were in India but the reality of what actually went down is so completely disgusting and vile and horrible and atrocious and it’s so concerning and infuriating that this unfathomably terrible thing which is incredibly well documented is just being overlooked and sidestepped and reduced down to “colonialism was an oopsie, they said they were sorry”
- anyways
- I actually really liked the structure of this book, and how it wasn’t a chronological account and instead kind of addressed the main “myths” about British colonialism and broke down why they were stupid and baseless and so very wrong
- I also think the tone of the book was engaging - the book is very detailed but the author manages to give the book some life and make it not read like a history textbook - it’s very well written and there’s some nuggets of humour in the writing too
- my one main issue with this is the Ghandi veneration - at least address the fact that he was a complete weirdo?? Or if you strongly believe this to be a baseless accusation then talk about why???
- also, as a paki I must be annoying and complain about how there was an undercurrent of weird anti-pakistan sentiment in this - I’m not an idiot so I’m not blind to the many flaws of my country but I also feel like this isn’t the time or the place to be taking shots at Pakistan, no matter how small or brief they were - like go ahead and dunk on the fact that Pakistans military is a problem and that it’s had several military dictatorships but let’s not say that all of the border tensions come down to Pakistani terrorism - this plus the fact that the “Kashmir issue” was very clearly not discussed (which I do get, this book isn’t a complete history it’s just the fact that it’s a major issue today and so talking about how the problem has started doesn’t seem like something that’s beyond the scope fk the book)
- anyways
- overall it’s a very good and insightful read that details all of the many ways that the British tore apart the very soul of a once prospering nation
- I’m so serious, what do you mean that the British came and did all this bullshit and they have never ever faced a single consequence for any of their actions
- they enslaved people, they murdered people, they raped and pillaged and starved and massacred and in the end they were able to just leave…just like that…it’s absolutely insane
- i feel like people vaguely know that colonialism is bad and that the British were Not Very Nice when they were in India but the reality of what actually went down is so completely disgusting and vile and horrible and atrocious and it’s so concerning and infuriating that this unfathomably terrible thing which is incredibly well documented is just being overlooked and sidestepped and reduced down to “colonialism was an oopsie, they said they were sorry”
- anyways
- I actually really liked the structure of this book, and how it wasn’t a chronological account and instead kind of addressed the main “myths” about British colonialism and broke down why they were stupid and baseless and so very wrong
- I also think the tone of the book was engaging - the book is very detailed but the author manages to give the book some life and make it not read like a history textbook - it’s very well written and there’s some nuggets of humour in the writing too
- my one main issue with this is the Ghandi veneration - at least address the fact that he was a complete weirdo?? Or if you strongly believe this to be a baseless accusation then talk about why???
- also, as a paki I must be annoying and complain about how there was an undercurrent of weird anti-pakistan sentiment in this - I’m not an idiot so I’m not blind to the many flaws of my country but I also feel like this isn’t the time or the place to be taking shots at Pakistan, no matter how small or brief they were - like go ahead and dunk on the fact that Pakistans military is a problem and that it’s had several military dictatorships but let’s not say that all of the border tensions come down to Pakistani terrorism - this plus the fact that the “Kashmir issue” was very clearly not discussed (which I do get, this book isn’t a complete history it’s just the fact that it’s a major issue today and so talking about how the problem has started doesn’t seem like something that’s beyond the scope fk the book)
- anyways
- overall it’s a very good and insightful read that details all of the many ways that the British tore apart the very soul of a once prospering nation
In a nutshell, they bled the country dry and congratulated themselves for the Christian charity they thought they were exercising by bringing the joys of English culture, “democracy”, tea, and cricket to the “uncivilized” natives of the Indian subcontinent. This is definitely a polemic, but it is clearly a necessary one, as far too few in the Anglosphere have much awareness of the issues the author raises.
A few quotes from the book should suffice to give a basic idea of the general thrust of the author’s argument:
“At the beginning of the eighteenth century, as the British economic historian Angus Maddison has demonstrated, India’s share of the world economy was 23 per cent, as large as all of Europe put together. (It had been 27 per cent in 1700, when the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s treasury raked in £ 100 million in tax revenues alone.) By the time the British departed India, it had dropped to just over 3 per cent. The reason was simple: India was governed for the benefit of Britain. Britain’s rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India.”
and
“The British extracted from India approximately £ 18,000,000 each year between 1765 and 1815. ‘There are few kings in Europe’, wrote the Comte de Châtelet, French ambassador to London, ‘richer than the Directors of the English East India Company.’ Taxation by the Company—usually at a minimum of 50 per cent of income—was so onerous that two-thirds of the population ruled by the British in the late eighteenth century fled their lands.”
and
“As long as the East India Company was in charge, its profits skyrocketed to the point that its dividend payouts were legendary, making its soaring stock the most sought-after by British investors. When its mismanagement and oppression culminated in the Revolt of 1857, called by many Indian historians the First War of Independence but trivialized by the British themselves as the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’, the Crown took over the administration of this ‘Jewel in the Crown’ of Her Britannic Majesty’s vast empire. But it paid the Company for the privilege, adding the handsome purchase price to the public debt of India, to be redeemed (both principal and generous rates of interest) by taxing the victims, the Indian people.”
and
“The manipulation of currency, throughout a feature of the colonial enterprise, reached its worst during the Great Depression of 1929–30, when Indian farmers (like those in the North American prairies) grew their grain but discovered no one could afford to buy it. Agricultural prices collapsed, but British tax demands did not; and cruelly, the British decided to restrict India’s money supply, fearing that the devaluation of Indian currency would cause losses to the British from a corresponding decline in the sterling value of their assets in India. So Britain insisted that the Indian rupee stay fixed at 1 shilling sixpence, and obliged the Indian government to take notes and coins out of circulation to keep the exchange rate high. The total amount of cash in circulation in the Indian economy fell from some 5 billion rupees in 1929 to 4 billion in 1930 and as low as 3 billion in 1938. Indians starved but their currency stayed high, and the value of British assets in India was protected.”
and
“Justice, in British India, was far from blind: it was highly attentive to the skin colour of the defendant. Crimes committed by whites against Indians attracted minimal punishment; an Englishmen who shot dead his Indian servant got six months’ jail time and a modest fine (then about 100 rupees), while an Indian convicted of attempted rape against an Englishwoman was sentenced to twenty years rigorous imprisonment. Only a handful of Englishman were convicted of murder in India in the first 150 years of British rule. The death of an Indian at British hands was always an accident, and that of a Briton because of an Indian’s actions always a capital crime.”
and
“As we have seen, by the time it ended, nearly 4 million Bengalis starved to death in the 1943 famine. Nothing can excuse the odious behaviour of Winston Churchill, who deliberately ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles in Greece and elsewhere. ‘The starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis is less serious’ than that of ‘sturdy Greeks’, he argued.”
and
“When reminded of the suffering of his victims his response was typically Churchillian: The famine was their own fault, he said, for ‘breeding like rabbits’. When officers of conscience pointed out in a telegram to the prime minister the scale of the tragedy caused by his decisions, Churchill’s only reaction was to ask peevishly: ‘why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?’”
A few quotes from the book should suffice to give a basic idea of the general thrust of the author’s argument:
“At the beginning of the eighteenth century, as the British economic historian Angus Maddison has demonstrated, India’s share of the world economy was 23 per cent, as large as all of Europe put together. (It had been 27 per cent in 1700, when the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s treasury raked in £ 100 million in tax revenues alone.) By the time the British departed India, it had dropped to just over 3 per cent. The reason was simple: India was governed for the benefit of Britain. Britain’s rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India.”
and
“The British extracted from India approximately £ 18,000,000 each year between 1765 and 1815. ‘There are few kings in Europe’, wrote the Comte de Châtelet, French ambassador to London, ‘richer than the Directors of the English East India Company.’ Taxation by the Company—usually at a minimum of 50 per cent of income—was so onerous that two-thirds of the population ruled by the British in the late eighteenth century fled their lands.”
and
“As long as the East India Company was in charge, its profits skyrocketed to the point that its dividend payouts were legendary, making its soaring stock the most sought-after by British investors. When its mismanagement and oppression culminated in the Revolt of 1857, called by many Indian historians the First War of Independence but trivialized by the British themselves as the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’, the Crown took over the administration of this ‘Jewel in the Crown’ of Her Britannic Majesty’s vast empire. But it paid the Company for the privilege, adding the handsome purchase price to the public debt of India, to be redeemed (both principal and generous rates of interest) by taxing the victims, the Indian people.”
and
“The manipulation of currency, throughout a feature of the colonial enterprise, reached its worst during the Great Depression of 1929–30, when Indian farmers (like those in the North American prairies) grew their grain but discovered no one could afford to buy it. Agricultural prices collapsed, but British tax demands did not; and cruelly, the British decided to restrict India’s money supply, fearing that the devaluation of Indian currency would cause losses to the British from a corresponding decline in the sterling value of their assets in India. So Britain insisted that the Indian rupee stay fixed at 1 shilling sixpence, and obliged the Indian government to take notes and coins out of circulation to keep the exchange rate high. The total amount of cash in circulation in the Indian economy fell from some 5 billion rupees in 1929 to 4 billion in 1930 and as low as 3 billion in 1938. Indians starved but their currency stayed high, and the value of British assets in India was protected.”
and
“Justice, in British India, was far from blind: it was highly attentive to the skin colour of the defendant. Crimes committed by whites against Indians attracted minimal punishment; an Englishmen who shot dead his Indian servant got six months’ jail time and a modest fine (then about 100 rupees), while an Indian convicted of attempted rape against an Englishwoman was sentenced to twenty years rigorous imprisonment. Only a handful of Englishman were convicted of murder in India in the first 150 years of British rule. The death of an Indian at British hands was always an accident, and that of a Briton because of an Indian’s actions always a capital crime.”
and
“As we have seen, by the time it ended, nearly 4 million Bengalis starved to death in the 1943 famine. Nothing can excuse the odious behaviour of Winston Churchill, who deliberately ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles in Greece and elsewhere. ‘The starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis is less serious’ than that of ‘sturdy Greeks’, he argued.”
and
“When reminded of the suffering of his victims his response was typically Churchillian: The famine was their own fault, he said, for ‘breeding like rabbits’. When officers of conscience pointed out in a telegram to the prime minister the scale of the tragedy caused by his decisions, Churchill’s only reaction was to ask peevishly: ‘why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?’”
Despite studying history I never learnt a single thing about British imperialism in India during school or college, so I've been trying to fill in the big gaps in my knowledge and have learnt a huge amount from Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire.
Tharoor points to statistics showing that many British people think that the British empire was a positive force (including columnists in today's Times newspaper), and systemically shows how wrong this view is in every aspect of both the East India Company and British Raj's colonisation of India (including the bloody railways thing that people always want to bring up)
What I did study at school was the occupation of Ireland, so I was under no illusions that British imperialism was in any way benevolent, but in my naivety I was still shocked by the sheer scale of wealth stolen from India, and the horrifying brutality perpetrated. It was also illuminating to see how much opposition there was to the EIC and later the government's actions in India at the time, dispelling the much repeated 'it was a different time with different values' myth.
As the author is an Indian politician, I did get the sense that I was missing some context and bias in the parts about independence and current Indian politics, but I don't think it made much difference to the value of the book overall, especially as a British reader. Recommended, especially for those who feel lost in the current discussions about British history and decolonisation.
Tharoor points to statistics showing that many British people think that the British empire was a positive force (including columnists in today's Times newspaper), and systemically shows how wrong this view is in every aspect of both the East India Company and British Raj's colonisation of India (including the bloody railways thing that people always want to bring up)
What I did study at school was the occupation of Ireland, so I was under no illusions that British imperialism was in any way benevolent, but in my naivety I was still shocked by the sheer scale of wealth stolen from India, and the horrifying brutality perpetrated. It was also illuminating to see how much opposition there was to the EIC and later the government's actions in India at the time, dispelling the much repeated 'it was a different time with different values' myth.
As the author is an Indian politician, I did get the sense that I was missing some context and bias in the parts about independence and current Indian politics, but I don't think it made much difference to the value of the book overall, especially as a British reader. Recommended, especially for those who feel lost in the current discussions about British history and decolonisation.
challenging
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, Racism, Colonisation
challenging
informative
Persuasively written and narrated, the book does provide a systematic take down of most pro-colonial arguments. Tharoor’s voice is scathing and ironic, and makes for an active and enjoyable read.
However, all of his appeals to factuality are undermined by his utter disdain for even the idea of Pakistan, and his claims about religious ethnic cleansing and fervent militarism in that country while saying nothing of India’s similar history and present. Would it not make his case stronger to acknowledge to the point of view of Muslims who saw a separate state as their safest option, and yet still show how divisive and damaging Britain’s rule was to India’s different religious communities? Does Muhammad Ali Jinnah have to have been selfish or stupid or both to show how badly Partition was executed? Demonstrating that pre-colonial India was far more cosmopolitan and tolerant than post-colonial India doesn’t negate the lived reality of minorities living in those less tolerant eras. And to say nothing of the Hindu majority’s own flaws in navigating this divide is willfully ignorant.
This, plus a twenty-minute tangent extolling Mahatma Gandhi’s virtues while ignoring any facts that might tarnish his image as India’s great hero, really tanked Tharoor’s credibility in the latter third of the book. He’s a smart man making good, well-founded arguments. But his refusal to even acknowledge his heavy nationalist bent to the detriment of his factual contentions is a glaring weakness of this book.
However, all of his appeals to factuality are undermined by his utter disdain for even the idea of Pakistan, and his claims about religious ethnic cleansing and fervent militarism in that country while saying nothing of India’s similar history and present. Would it not make his case stronger to acknowledge to the point of view of Muslims who saw a separate state as their safest option, and yet still show how divisive and damaging Britain’s rule was to India’s different religious communities? Does Muhammad Ali Jinnah have to have been selfish or stupid or both to show how badly Partition was executed? Demonstrating that pre-colonial India was far more cosmopolitan and tolerant than post-colonial India doesn’t negate the lived reality of minorities living in those less tolerant eras. And to say nothing of the Hindu majority’s own flaws in navigating this divide is willfully ignorant.
This, plus a twenty-minute tangent extolling Mahatma Gandhi’s virtues while ignoring any facts that might tarnish his image as India’s great hero, really tanked Tharoor’s credibility in the latter third of the book. He’s a smart man making good, well-founded arguments. But his refusal to even acknowledge his heavy nationalist bent to the detriment of his factual contentions is a glaring weakness of this book.