| This is an important book. However it has an anomalous, not to say
quirky, structure which may put some readers off. The history of
British India does not start till page 79 and before that we are faced
with a lengthy preface entitled 'Reshaping the Story' - a series of
essays in rough chronological order designed to explore issues that are
necessary in order to understand the history. The first is entitled Whigs
and Empire. British India was first shaped by the success of the Whigs
following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The author makes the point
that I8th century Whiggism was not concerned with democracy. The
freedoms it brought were very much to the advantage of an elite, but an
elite which permitted discussion and even dissent without the risk of
major upheaval or worse. In many ways this was attractive to Indians
also. The author makes it clear that many Indian interests coincided
with those of the British and enabled the latter to succeed.
The author grapples with imperialism and colonialism. Imperialism, he
suggests, was never an ideology, but 'a jumble of cultural and political
attitudes, born of victory and sustained by dominio , fond of hierarchy
and uncritical of supremacism'. In its British manifestation it was also
'tempered with humanitarian concerns and an occasional taste for self-criticism'. Matthews distinguishes it from colonialism in that,
uniquely, the British conquest of India was not about land. The rest of
the Empire involved to a greater or lesser degree a take-over of land for
British farmers. By contrast India had a sophisticated system of land
tenure, so that someone wanting to start a tea garden had to buy the
land from the existing owner at the market price. It was also the case
that the British had a weakness for sustaining the zamindars (landholders) - under the impression they were, or could become, country
gentlemen with a penchant for public service. The zamindars would
have had few incentives to want the British out.
Another strand in the book looks at how events in England might have
moulded the nabobs, the ICS and other British people in India. Until the
Great Reform Bill of 1832, the idea of paternalistic toffs managing the
lives of landl ess peasants was how things were in Britain, and it would
not have seemed that different in India. However as democracy set in
and the franchise in Britain was expanded, especially by the Reform
Act of 1867, this was no longer true - hence late 19th century/early 20th
century British unease at how India was governed.
Yet a further strand were the Presidency armies, which after 1857 were
deliberately kept large to protect British interests - far beyond what
was actually needed, and costing huge sums of money which might
have been used for more useful things such as infrastructure. This book
contains amusing thumbnail sketches of some of the main characters -
it is suggested that Lord Lytton's habit of lolling about was due to piles
and that Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall had an unhappy marriage - it may be
true, but I have had reason to study Sir Alfred and it is news to me.
Whether the odd structure of the book is justified, I rather doubt. There
must equally be a case for putting 'Reshaping the Story' after the
historical narrative and it certainly repays re-reading at that stage. Or it
might have been broken up into smaller sections to introduce each of
the narrative chapters. But there is no doubt that the author has given
us plenty to think about, not just subverting 'woke' simplifications, but
also showing how British attitudes to India changed over the nearly two
centuries of the Raj .
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