Rebels Against the Raj

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Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 1101874848
Total Pages : 496 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis Rebels Against the Raj by : Ramachandra Guha

Download or read book Rebels Against the Raj written by Ramachandra Guha and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary history of resistance and the fight for Indian independence—the little-known story of seven foreigners to India who joined the movement fighting for freedom from British colonial rule. Rebels Against the Raj tells the story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own: foreigners to India who across the late 19th to late 20th century arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence from British colonial rule. Of the seven, four were British, two American, and one Irish. Four men, three women. Before and after being jailed or deported they did remarkable and pioneering work in a variety of fields: journalism, social reform, education, the emancipation of women, environmentalism. This book tells their stories, each renegade motivated by idealism and genuine sacrifice; each connected to Gandhi, though some as acolytes where others found endless infuriation in his views; each understanding they would likely face prison sentences for their resistance, and likely live and die in India; each one leaving a profound impact on the region in which they worked, their legacies continuing through the institutions they founded and the generations and individuals they inspired. Through these entwined lives, wonderfully told by one of the world’s finest historians, we reach deep insights into relations between India and the West, and India’s story as a country searching for its identity and liberty beyond British colonial rule.

Rebels Against the British Rule

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Publisher : Atlantic Publishers & Dist
ISBN 13 : 9788171561643
Total Pages : 908 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (616 download)

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Book Synopsis Rebels Against the British Rule by : Bhai Kirpal Singh

Download or read book Rebels Against the British Rule written by Bhai Kirpal Singh and published by Atlantic Publishers & Dist. This book was released on 1995 with total page 908 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of documents and other writings relating to freedom struggle in Punjab against the British rule by Namdharis.

Britain's Empire

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Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1839764228
Total Pages : 577 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (397 download)

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Book Synopsis Britain's Empire by : Richard Gott

Download or read book Britain's Empire written by Richard Gott and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magisterial history of resistance to the rising of the British empire As the call for a new understanding of our national history grows louder, Britain’s Empire turns the received imperial story on its head. Richard Gott recounts the long-overlooked narrative of resisters, revolutionaries and revolters who stood up to the might of the Empire. In a story of almost continuous colonialist violence, Britain’s crimes unspool from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the Indian Mutiny, spanning the globe from Ireland to Australia. Capturing events from the perspective of the colonised, Gott unearths the all-but-forgotten stories excluded from mainstream histories.

Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1786732378
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

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Book Synopsis Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion by : Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst

Download or read book Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion written by Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-14 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While jihad has been the subject of countless studies in the wake of recent terrorist attacks, scholarship on the topic has so far paid little attention to South Asian Islam and, more specifically, its place in South Asian history. Seeking to fill some gaps in the historiography, Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst examines the effects of the 1857 Rebellion (long taught in Britain as the 'Indian Mutiny') on debates about the issue of jihad during the British Raj. Morgenstein Fuerst shows that the Rebellion had lasting, pronounced effects on the understanding by their Indian subjects (whether Muslim, Hindu or Sikh) of imperial rule by distant outsiders. For India's Muslims their interpretation of the Rebellion as jihad shaped subsequent discourses, definitions and codifications of Islam in the region. Morgenstein Fuerst concludes by demonstrating how these perceptions of jihad, contextualised within the framework of the 19th century Rebellion, continue to influence contemporary rhetoric about Islam and Muslims in the Indian subcontinent.Drawing on extensive primary source analysis, this unique take on Islamic identities in South Asia will be invaluable to scholars working on British colonial history, India and the Raj, as well as to those studying Islam in the region and beyond.

An Era of Darkness

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Author :
Publisher : Aleph Book Company
ISBN 13 : 9789383064656
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (646 download)

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Book Synopsis An Era of Darkness by : Shashi Tharoor

Download or read book An Era of Darkness written by Shashi Tharoor and published by Aleph Book Company. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A few years later, the young and weakened Mughal emperor, Shah Alam II, was browbeaten into issuing an edict that replaced his own revenue officials with the Company s representatives. Over the next several decades, the East India Company, backed by the British government, extended its control over most of India

Rebellion and Savagery

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Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812207114
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Rebellion and Savagery by : Geoffrey Plank

Download or read book Rebellion and Savagery written by Geoffrey Plank and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1745, Charles Edward Stuart, the grandson of England's King James II, landed on the western coast of Scotland intending to overthrow George II and restore the Stuart family to the throne. He gathered thousands of supporters, and the insurrection he led—the Jacobite Rising of 1745—was a crisis not only for Britain but for the entire British Empire. Rebellion and Savagery examines the 1745 rising and its aftermath on an imperial scale. Charles Edward gained support from the clans of the Scottish Highlands, communities that had long been derided as primitive. In 1745 the Jacobite Highlanders were denigrated both as rebels and as savages, and this double stigma helped provoke and legitimate the violence of the government's anti-Jacobite campaigns. Though the colonies stayed relatively peaceful in 1745, the rising inspired fear of a global conspiracy among Jacobites and other suspect groups, including North America's purported savages. The defeat of the rising transformed the leader of the army, the Duke of Cumberland, into a popular hero on both sides of the Atlantic. With unprecedented support for the maintenance of peacetime forces, Cumberland deployed new garrisons in the Scottish Highlands and also in the Mediterranean and North America. In all these places his troops were engaged in similar missions: demanding loyalty from all local inhabitants and advancing the cause of British civilization. The recent crisis gave a sense of urgency to their efforts. Confident that "a free people cannot oppress," the leaders of the army became Britain's most powerful and uncompromising imperialists. Geoffrey Plank argues that the events of 1745 marked a turning point in the fortunes of the British Empire by creating a new political interest in favor of aggressive imperialism, and also by sparking discussion of how the British should promote market-based economic relations in order to integrate indigenous peoples within their empire. The spread of these new political ideas was facilitated by a large-scale migration of people involved in the rising from Britain to the colonies, beginning with hundreds of prisoners seized on the field of battle and continuing in subsequent years to include thousands of men, women and children. Some of the migrants were former Jacobites and others had stood against the insurrection. The event affected all the British domains.

Britain's Pacification of Palestine

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107103207
Total Pages : 505 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Britain's Pacification of Palestine by : Matthew Hughes

Download or read book Britain's Pacification of Palestine written by Matthew Hughes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British Army's devastating effectiveness against colonial rebellion is exposed in this military history of Britain's pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine.

Inglorious Empire

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Publisher : Penguin Group
ISBN 13 : 9780141987149
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (871 download)

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Book Synopsis Inglorious Empire by : Shashi Tharoor

Download or read book Inglorious Empire written by Shashi Tharoor and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2018-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inglorious Empire' tells the real story of the British in India from the arrival of the East India Company to the end of the Raj, revealing how Britain's rise was built upon its plunder of India. 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. Beyond conquest and deception, 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 on and 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.

The Sepoy Rebellion of 1857

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Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781542344494
Total Pages : 82 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (444 download)

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Book Synopsis The Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 by : Charles River Charles River Editors

Download or read book The Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-01-04 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the rebellion *Includes a bibliography for further reading The British East India Company served as one of the key players in the formation of the British Empire. From its origins as a trading company struggling to keep up with its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish competitors to its tenure as the ruling authority of the Indian subcontinent to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company serves as a lens through which to explore the much larger economic and social forces that shaped the formation of a global British Empire. As a private company that became a non-state global power in its own right, the East India Company also serves as a cautionary tale all too relevant to the modern world's current political and economic situation. In Bengal, the region where the rebellion that would change British-Indian relations permanently took place, the Company shared power with a local nawab. The Company was given increasing responsibility, including the power to collect taxes, or Diwani, in 1773. Many have criticized this "Dual Authority" of both local Indian rulers and the rule of Company officials as allowing for greater corruption and creating anger and resentment throughout Bengal. Though a defender of Britain's contributions to India's history and economy, Kartar Lalvani calls the Company's collection of the Diwani "short-sighted greed" and charges the Company with a "horrendous blunder concerning the role of revenue collection." To the Indian people, the events of 1857 are known as the first War for Independence. For the British, the time is referred to as a mutiny, an uprising, or a rebellion. It is ironic that a similar story played out just under 100 years earlier, during the American Revolution, or as the Americans called it, the War for Independence. Whatever the moniker, in 1857, one of the Indian armies, the Bengal, mutinied. In the most cursory histories of the period, the cause of the rebellion is simply cited as an oversight, a change in the type of grease used in powder cartridges rumored to contain animal fat. This revelation horrified both Hindus and Muslims. The British response, which either failed to recognize the need to address the growing rumors or attempted to force Muslim and Hindu soldiers to use the ammunition despite their objections, made things worse. Author John McLeod explains that though the controversy over animal-greased rifle cartridges was the immediate cause of the conflict, economic, religious, and political resentment existed and had been worsening throughout 1856. He also argues that rather than the uprising being attributable to either one incident or one cause - such as concerns over attempts at religious conversion by Christian officers, anger at the British in general, or frustration over specific tax policies - the rebellion was fueled not only by those with specific complaints against the British, but by those who sought to end up on the right sight of history. McLeod argues that many Indians joined the rebellion only after the tide seemed to be turning in favor of Indian rebels: "In general, the deciding factor was whether or not such leaders felt that their interests and those of the people under their command would be best served by ending British rule." McLeod concludes that the basis of the mutiny was ultimately economic, observing that "the commercial and educated classes of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras had prospered under Company dominance, and held back." An estimated 80,000 Indians and over 5,000 British were killed during the rebellion, often horrifically, and as British historian Percival Griffiths said of the rebellion in retrospect, "It is useless to pass judgment on these excesses on both sides. Cruelty begets cruelty, and after a certain stage of suffering and horror justice and judgment give way to the demand for vengeance."

The Men Who Lost America

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300195249
Total Pages : 876 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis The Men Who Lost America by : Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy

Download or read book The Men Who Lost America written by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 876 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questioning popular belief, a historian and re-examines what exactly led to the British Empire’s loss of the American Revolution. The loss of America was an unexpected defeat for the powerful British Empire. Common wisdom has held that incompetent military commanders and political leaders in Britain must have been to blame, but were they? This intriguing book makes a different argument. Weaving together the personal stories of ten prominent men who directed the British dimension of the war, historian Andrew O’Shaughnessy dispels the incompetence myth and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve their surprising victory. In interlinked biographical chapters, the author follows the course of the war from the perspectives of King George III, Prime Minister Lord North, military leaders including General Burgoyne, the Earl of Sandwich, and others who, for the most part, led ably and even brilliantly. Victories were frequent, and in fact the British conquered every American city at some stage of the Revolutionary War. Yet roiling political complexities at home, combined with the fervency of the fighting Americans, proved fatal to the British war effort. The book concludes with a penetrating assessment of the years after Yorktown, when the British achieved victories against the French and Spanish, thereby keeping intact what remained of the British Empire. “A remarkable book about an important but curiously underappreciated subject: the British side of the American Revolution. With meticulous scholarship and an eloquent writing style, O'Shaughnessy gives us a fresh and compelling view of a critical aspect of the struggle that changed the world.”—Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire

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Publisher : Regnery Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1596986298
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (969 download)

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Book Synopsis The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire by : H. W. Crocker, III

Download or read book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire written by H. W. Crocker, III and published by Regnery Publishing. This book was released on 2011-10-24 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an irreverant and humorous look at the four-hundred-year history of the British empire.

Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776

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Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 039363471X
Total Pages : 235 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776 by : Patrick Spero

Download or read book Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776 written by Patrick Spero and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of the “Black Boys,” a rebellion on the American frontier in 1765 that sparked the American Revolution. In 1763, the Seven Years’ War ended in a spectacular victory for the British. The French army agreed to leave North America, but many Native Americans, fearing that the British Empire would expand onto their lands and conquer them, refused to lay down their weapons. Under the leadership of a shrewd Ottawa warrior named Pontiac, they kept fighting for their freedom, capturing several British forts and devastating many of the westernmost colonial settlements. The British, battered from the costly war, needed to stop the violent attacks on their borderlands. Peace with Pontiac was their only option—if they could convince him to negotiate. Enter George Croghan, a wily trader-turned-diplomat with close ties to Native Americans. Under the wary eye of the British commander-in-chief, Croghan organized one of the largest peace offerings ever assembled and began a daring voyage into the interior of North America in search of Pontiac. Meanwhile, a ragtag group of frontiersmen set about stopping this peace deal in its tracks. Furious at the Empire for capitulating to Native groups, whom they considered their sworn enemies, and suspicious of Croghan’s intentions, these colonists turned Native American tactics of warfare on the British Empire. Dressing as Native Americans and smearing their faces in charcoal, these frontiersmen, known as the Black Boys, launched targeted assaults to destroy Croghan’s peace offering before it could be delivered. The outcome of these interwoven struggles would determine whose independence would prevail on the American frontier—whether freedom would be defined by the British, Native Americans, or colonial settlers. Drawing on largely forgotten manuscript sources from archives across North America, Patrick Spero recasts the familiar narrative of the American Revolution, moving the action from the Eastern Seaboard to the treacherous western frontier. In spellbinding detail, Frontier Rebels reveals an often-overlooked truth: the West played a crucial role in igniting the flame of American independence.

Rebel Law

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1849047987
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (49 download)

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Book Synopsis Rebel Law by : Frank Ledwidge

Download or read book Rebel Law written by Frank Ledwidge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In most societies, courts are where the rubber of government meets the road of the people. If a state cannot settle disputes and enforce its decisions, to all intents and purposes it is no longer in charge. This is why successful rebels put courts and justice at the top of their agendas. Rebel Law explores this key weapon in the arsenal of insurgent groups, from the IRA's 'Republican Tribunals' of the 1920s to Islamic State's 'Caliphate of Law,' via the ALN in Algeria of the 50s and 60s and the Afghan Taliban of recent years. Frank Ledwidge delineates the battle in such ungoverned spaces between counterinsurgents seeking to retain the initiative and the insurgent courts undermining them. Contrasting colonial judicial strategy with the chaos of stabilisation operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, he offers compelling lessons for today's conflicts"--Book jacket.

Royals and Rebels

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197566944
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (975 download)

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Book Synopsis Royals and Rebels by : Priya Atwal

Download or read book Royals and Rebels written by Priya Atwal and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In late-eighteenth-century India, the glory of the Mughal emperors was fading, and ambitious newcomers seized power, changing the political map forever. Enter the legendary Maharajah Ranjit Singh, whose Sikh Empire stretched throughout northwestern India into Afghanistan and Tibet. Priya Atwal shines fresh light on this long-lost kingdom, looking beyond its founding father to restore the queens and princes to the story of this empire's spectacular rise and fall. She brings to life a self-made ruling family, inventively fusing Sikh, Mughal and European ideas of power, but eventually succumbing to gendered family politics, as the Sikh Empire fell to its great rival in the new India: the British. Royals and Rebels is a fascinating tale of family, royalty and the fluidity of power, set in a dramatic global era when new stars rose and upstart empires clashed.

The British Are Coming

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Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
ISBN 13 : 1627790446
Total Pages : 800 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (277 download)

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Book Synopsis The British Are Coming by : Rick Atkinson

Download or read book The British Are Coming written by Rick Atkinson and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the George Washington Prize Winner of the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History Winner of the Excellence in American History Book Award Winner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award From the bestselling author of the Liberation Trilogy comes the extraordinary first volume of his new trilogy about the American Revolution Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other superb books about World War II, has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he recounts the first twenty-one months of America’s violent war for independence. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world’s most formidable fighting force. It is a gripping saga alive with astonishing characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of artillery; Nathanael Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes a brilliant battle captain; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves to be the wiliest of diplomats; George Washington, the commander in chief who learns the difficult art of leadership when the war seems all but lost. The story is also told from the British perspective, making the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels all the more compelling. Full of riveting details and untold stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Rick Atkinson has given stirring new life to the first act of our country’s creation drama.

Troublesome Young Men

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Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1429923644
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Troublesome Young Men by : Lynne Olson

Download or read book Troublesome Young Men written by Lynne Olson and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2008-04-29 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting history of the daring politicians who challenged the disastrous policies of the British government on the eve of World War II On May 7, 1940, the House of Commons began perhaps the most crucial debate in British parliamentary history. On its outcome hung the future of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's government and also of Britain—indeed, perhaps, the world. Troublesome Young Men is Lynne Olson's fascinating account of how a small group of rebellious Tory MPs defied the Chamberlain government's defeatist policies that aimed to appease Europe's tyrants and eventually forced the prime minister's resignation. Some historians dismiss the "phony war" that preceded this turning point—from September 1939, when Britain and France declared war on Germany, to May 1940, when Winston Churchill became prime minister—as a time of waiting and inaction, but Olson makes no such mistake, and describes in dramatic detail the public unrest that spread through Britain then, as people realized how poorly prepared the nation was to confront Hitler, how their basic civil liberties were being jeopardized, and also that there were intrepid politicians willing to risk political suicide to spearhead the opposition to Chamberlain—Harold Macmillan, Robert Boothby, Leo Amery, Ronald Cartland, and Lord Robert Cranborne among them. The political and personal dramas that played out in Parliament and in the nation as Britain faced the threat of fascism virtually on its own are extraordinary—and, in Olson's hands, downright inspiring.

Gandhi Before India

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Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 038553230X
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Gandhi Before India by : Ramachandra Guha

Download or read book Gandhi Before India written by Ramachandra Guha and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the first volume of a magisterial biography of Mohandas Gandhi that gives us the most illuminating portrait we have had of the life, the work and the historical context of one of the most abidingly influential—and controversial—men in modern history. Ramachandra Guha—hailed by Time as “Indian democracy’s preeminent chronicler”—takes us from Gandhi’s birth in 1869 through his upbringing in Gujarat, his two years as a student in London and his two decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa. Guha has uncovered myriad previously untapped documents, including private papers of Gandhi’s contemporaries and co-workers; contemporary newspapers and court documents; the writings of Gandhi’s children; and secret files kept by British Empire functionaries. Using this wealth of material in an exuberant, brilliantly nuanced and detailed narrative, Guha describes the social, political and personal worlds inside of which Gandhi began the journey that would earn him the honorific Mahatma: “Great Soul.” And, more clearly than ever before, he elucidates how Gandhi’s work in South Africa—far from being a mere prelude to his accomplishments in India—was profoundly influential in his evolution as a family man, political thinker, social reformer and, ultimately, beloved leader. In 1893, when Gandhi set sail for South Africa, he was a twenty-three-year-old lawyer who had failed to establish himself in India. In this remarkable biography, the author makes clear the fundamental ways in which Gandhi’s ideas were shaped before his return to India in 1915. It was during his years in England and South Africa, Guha shows us, that Gandhi came to understand the nature of imperialism and racism; and in South Africa that he forged the philosophy and techniques that would undermine and eventually overthrow the British Raj. Gandhi Before India gives us equally vivid portraits of the man and the world he lived in: a world of sharp contrasts among the coastal culture of his birthplace, High Victorian London, and colonial South Africa. It explores in abundant detail Gandhi’s experiments with dissident cults such as the Tolstoyans; his friendships with radical Jews, heterodox Christians and devout Muslims; his enmities and rivalries; and his often overlooked failures as a husband and father. It tells the dramatic, profoundly moving story of how Gandhi inspired the devotion of thousands of followers in South Africa as he mobilized a cross-class and inter-religious coalition, pledged to non-violence in their battle against a brutally racist regime. Researched with unequaled depth and breadth, and written with extraordinary grace and clarity, Gandhi Before India is, on every level, fully commensurate with its subject. It will radically alter our understanding and appreciation of twentieth-century India’s greatest man.