Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India

Name: Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India
Rating: 4.642857074737549 (14 reviews)

Shashi Tharoor

Feb 2018 · Penguin UK

4.6

14 reviews

Ebook

336

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About this ebook

The Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller on India's experience of British colonialism, by the internationally-acclaimed author and diplomat Shashi Tharoor

'Tharoor's impassioned polemic slices straight to the heart of the darkness that drives all empires ... laying bare the grim, and high, cost of the British Empire for its former subjects. An essential read' Financial Times

In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. The Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die from starvation.

British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial 'gift' - from the railways to the rule of law - was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India's deindustrialisation, and the destruction of its textile industry.

In this bold and incisive reassessment of colonialism, Tharoor exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britain's stained Indian legacy.

Ratings and reviews

4.6

14 reviews

A Google user

October 24, 2018

Just like the Dutch in Indonesia (I am Dutch) and many other colonial powers, the English had only one goal in India and that was to enrich themself whatever the cost for the local people. India had been running itself for a longer time then most Western countries and it did not need the English langauge nor its law system to develop further. It would have build its own train system and would have saved money in the process. But many westerners are shortsighted and only see their own system as the best.

4 people found this review helpful

unika Check

February 7, 2018

Truth hurts. Yet some behave like ostriches bearing their heads and think everything is hunky dory. A lot of us knew this for a long time. The off spring should be ashamed.

1 person found this review helpful

Bhavesh Mistry

April 24, 2018

A good factual read. The truth of empire needs to be taught in British schools to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. History should be about the good and the bad about your country's past

About the author

SHASHI THAROOR is the bestselling author of twenty books, both fiction and non-fiction, besides being a noted critic and columnist. His books include the pathbreaking satire The Great Indian Novel (1989), the classic India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997), the bestselling An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India, for which he won the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, 2016, for Books (Non-Fiction), and The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and His India. He has been Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for External Affairs in the Government of India. He is a three-time member of the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram and chairs the Parliament Information
Technology committee. He has won numerous literary awards, including a national Sahitya Akademi award, a Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Crossword Lifetime Achievement Award. He was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, India's highest honour for overseas Indians, in 2004, and honoured as New Age Politician of the Year (2010) by NDTV.

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