Book review: Himanshu Roy & Jawaid Alam (Eds.),A History of Colonial India: 1757 to 1947

This book has fourteen chapters, excluding the Introduction and Conclusion. Its contents show that it aims at providing more than a mere narrative. It examines how British colonial acquisitions developed out of the original drive of the English East India Company for commercial profits—monetary motives thus generating political ambitions. On the other hand, the book depicts how Indian ruling classes, chained to petty interests, failed to ‘modernise’ and so fell victims to British arms and diplomacy. The authors devote considerable space to describing not only the mechanism and scale of British colonialism in India but also the corresponding cultural crisis their dominance created in India. The volume also contains a fairly comprehensive account of the movement for social reform, especially the national movement. It offers a specially clear and fairly detailed account of the national movement.

Within fairly reasonable space (304 pp.), the book manages to convey to the reader all the essential facts about colonial India—the process of enslavement, the condition under that enslavement and, finally, liberation.