Inglorious Empire: what the British did to India [Paperback]

In the eighteenth century, Indias share of the world economy was as large as Europes. 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 giftfrom the railways to the rule of lawwas designed in Britains interests alone. He goes on to show how Britains Industrial Revolution was founded on Indias deindustrialization and the destruction of its textile industry. In this bold and incisive reassessment of colonialism, Tharoor exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britains stained Indian legacy.

Listening to Tharoor is addicting enough, and this book, born out of his speech at The Oxford Union (which went viral) is just as captivating. Tharoor compellingly posits why the British Raj in India should never be ennobled or confused as a gift, and exposes the destructive rape of India at the hands of its colonizers.

Ferocious and astonishing. Essential for a Britain lost in sepia fantasies about its past,Inglorious Empireis history at its clearest and cutting best.

Brilliant & A searing indictment of the Raj and its impact on India. & Required reading for all Anglophiles in former British colonies, and needs to be a textbook in Britain.

Tharoor convincingly demolishes some of the more persistent myths about Britains supposedly civilizing mission in India & [he] charts the destruction of pre-colonial systems of government by the British and their ubiquitous ledgers and rule books & The statistics are worth repeating.

Tharoors book  arising from a contentious Oxford Union debate in 2015 where he proposed the l³e