This is a pertinent narrative of the imperial era in India and is a must-read. ANANYA BORGOHAIN talks to Jon Wilson to know more about his book
Dr Jon Wilson, Senior lecturer in British Imperial & South Asian History at King’s College, london, presents a colossal piece of work, India Conquered (Simon&Schuster). It’s a detailed chronology of the imperial era — he has consciously avoided the term colonial throughout the book — in India. It starts much before the British Government establishes itself in India and then meticulously covers hundreds of years till Independence. The book was recently launched at the India International Centre, New Delhi, that organised an engaging panel discussion on the topic.
Wilson shares, “It took three to four years to finally come up with the book; 18 months were spent on writing alone. There was a lot of information which I went through to investigate more about Indian colonial history. There were Governmental archives, documents, books, research papers, innumerable such sources. It depends on the judgement of the historian as to what he wants to share with the world or omit from his resource materials. I should relate to the purpose and virtue of the information. Also, numbers matter; the statistics are crucial. For instance, the number of years, how many officers we are talking about, and how much money is involved, and so on. Often we look back at the past and try to rationalise things. I have tried to present a more human perspective than that.”
This book discusses in great detail how “for these 300 years, conquerors and governors projected themselves as heroes and improvers. The British public were sold an image of British authority and virtue. But beneath the veneer of pomp and splendour, British rule in India was anxious, fragile and fostered chaos”. One then wonders how modern Britain today looks at their ancestors’ rule over India. Are sections about racism and torture that prevailed in India during the British rule a part of school curriculum in Britain todayIJ
Wilson replies, “I don’t think British institutions evade the topic but there are mixed responses from the youths. Many from the older generation treat it with nostalgia, many face with realism and acceptance, while many are indifferent. But in the last couple of years, there’s a will to critically indulge about the topic.”
What sets Wilson’s book apart is that it’s engaging and enlightening both and contains fascinating anecdotes as well. For instance, British women from that time are not a part of the usual discourse. However, Wilson talks about Katherine Gyfford née Cooke. Katherine was the beautiful daughter of Thomas Cooke, an army captain and military engineer working for the East India Company. He married her off when she was barely 14 since he was grappling with financial crises. This was around 1709. The groom was John Harvey, old and crippled, but rich. Now, Harvey died within a year of the wedding. Katherine then married a man named Chown. Interestingly, he was charming but with no money. The couple was en route to Bombay to claim the money Harvey had left for Katherine when their ship was attacked by Kanhoji Angre’s fleet of ships. Kanhoji was the leader of the Maratha regime’s sea force and a supremely prominent political figure in western India. Chown bled to death in her arms. She was held at the Maratha fort of Kolaba for four months.
Wilson adds, “Why I write about her is because through Katherine Cooke’s life different forces that shaped the British dominance in India in the early 18th century. Her father worked for the British East India Company that brought a regime of power, torture, violence, laws, commerce, and so on; Harvey dealt with India for trading cotton in the Deccan region, a market the boomed in the early 18th century; and Kanhoji played a crucial role in the wars on India’s western seaboard with the East India Company. Katherine’s fate, especially her capture highlights a new political order in India.”
Interestingly, when compared to her, the female Indian freedom fighters sound more liberated and empowered. He agrees, “Yes, absolutely, the Englishwomen had an indirect involvement in the course of events. They were more like observers and scribes, distant from the events. Their Indian counterparts were certainly more active than them.”
This book, in many ways, is not just a unique chronology of the colonial period in India, but it is also a meticulous string of biographies of various figures that have shaped the political history of the country. Another vital character in his book, is Nader Shah. Nader Shah lived on the southern edge of the Caucasus Mountains between Russia and Iran. He recruited soldiers who seized power in Persia in the early 1730s. He also reunited Persia and defended it against the invading Turks and Russians. And eventually, he crowned himself the emperor of the Persia. Wilson says, “After invading India, he remained a Mughal emperor for only 57 days, in 1739, but in those days not only did he lay the basis for the East India Company to conquer territory in India for the first time but with his vandalism and savagery, it also marked a historic change in Indian politics and so writing this book without mentioning him was inescapable.” For the uninitiated, the Peacock Throne that Nader Shah took from Shah Jahan is today at the National Museum in Iran.
Delving deep, there are also insightful sections on British satirical magazines of the time such as Punch, trade of spices, advent of literary criticism with reference to James Mill and History of British India, the sea routes, and more modern markers such as photography (“The spread of the handheld Kodak No. 1 camera after 1888 allowed everyday scenes to be captured on film. Photographs were taken of clusters of the starving, queues of people receiving food or pay and neat lines of tents where they were accommodated.”) All of them seem to represent the subconscious evolution and reconfiguration of modern India.
At the panel discussion during the launch, the speakers also talked about the emerging critiques of both the Raj and contemporary nationalism vis-à-vis the writings of Ranajit Guha, Srinath Raghavan, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Rajmohan Gandhi, etc. Wilson believes that the mantle of empire has passed from Britain to America today, and this calls for a sincere discourse. As he writes in his must-read book, “The history of empire has been appropriated into a narrative about Indian national life. The history of empire was a history of action in the heat of the moment, not of coherent plans and ideas. The British dominance of India grew from the cumulative response of passionate and often angry men to the situation they had put themselves in India.” India Conquered is not just a pertinent piece of work for historians but a very crucial book for the layman and students alike, from across the globe.
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