The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 1917-1947

Ian Copland's comprehensive and meticulously researched study of the role played by the Indian princes, the maharajas and nawabs of South Asia, in the devolution of British colonial power is long overdue. By rehabilitating the princes as subjects of serious historical study, the author demonstrates that, far from being puppets under the control of the British, they were in fact significant actors on the Indian political stage in the inter-war period. He goes on to explain how and why an order so deep-rooted, and outwardly so strong, collapsed so quickly under the successor Congress government in New Delhi. The book will add a new dimension to the political history of late colonial India, and will also impact upon the wider history of the twentieth-century British empire.

First sentence: By the early 1940s the cosy, special relationship between the British crown and the Indian princes which forms the subject of this book had become so much a fact of political life in Delhi and Whitehall that people like Leo Amery, secretary of state in Churchill's wartime coalition government, could speak about it as if it had always existed.

Year

1997

Publisher

Foundation Books

Editions

1

Pages

316

ISBN

9788175960640

Data source: Wikidata