A History of British India

Dr. Viskontas delves into core aspects of Indian culture that provide a rich background for the story of British rule; grasping the key precepts of Hinduism; studying the caste system, the features of Indian families and marriages.

Dr. Viskontas examines the monumental empire of the Mughals, the Islamic rulers of India; investigating how the Mughals governed through military skill, administrative brilliance and religious tolerance; exploring 18th-century Indian society.

Exploring further how the Indian subcontinent drifts toward colonialism; how regionalization of the Mughal Empire compromises the ability to govern; charting the rise of powerful families who play a critical role in the emergence of British rule.

Witnessing the English East India Company, a trading organization, expand its early footing in Bengal; studying the Company's transformation through military conquests; following the Company's expansion by employing the Mughal revenue system.

How British scholars and administrators pursue knowledge of Indian culture; how early British colonials adapt to living within Indian society; how British misunderstanding of Indian traditional customs has consequences for policymaking.

Hayden discusses British racial paradigms in Company-ruled India, which emphasizes differences between Indians and the British to justify colonial rule; exploring the British notion of masculinity; how it bolsters their self-perception.

Hayden explains how trends in England affects India's governance; attempts by the British to educate and reform India through Christian evangelicalism; the economic relationship between Britain and India that leads to the Great Uprising of 1857.

Accumulated religious, economic, and political grievances against the East India Company set the stage for the Great Uprising of 1857; observing how the mutiny changes British attitudes toward India; the way Britain governs it under the Raj.

Examining the nature of the colonial economy; tracing economic decisions by the British that constrain the livelihoods of artisans and peasants; observing how these policies affect the millions who toil to produce wealth.

Hayden explains how as a social institution, caste changes markedly under British colonial rule; examining how the British encounter caste and try to understand it; caste becomes significantly linked with the colonial tax revenue system.

Discovering how the broader traditions of Hinduism are affected by the colonial experience; the assault on Hinduism by Christian missionaries; looking at important Hindu reform movements; grasping how key reformist thinking links Hinduism with India.

Investigating how Indian Islam undergoes profound shifts under colonial rule; the advent of the English language and education distances Muslims from Hindus; assessing how the Deobandi reform movement reinvents Indian Islam to ensure its survival.

Hayden studies British racial attitudes toward Indians in the late 19th century; how these conceptions manifest the Indian governance; learning about the officials who administrate the Raj, the Indian Civil Service and the modernization of India.

Hayden discusses how India's princely states play a crucial role in maintaining British power; examining the princely kingdoms which remain separate from the British; the contradiction of a modernizing British Raj that supports feudal princes.

The new generation of Indians spearheads Indian nationalism; Indian National Congress representing moderate nationalists; repressive British policies sowing anticolonial sentiment; strengthening nationalist fervor erupts into political extremism.

Hayden examines the severe effects of the First World War on India's economy; moderate and radical nationalists responds to the war by pressing for concessions and independence; strains in the colonial relationship leads to the emergence of Gandhi.

Gandhi's life and how he becomes a nationalist leader; his political philosophy; the political tools of ahimsa and satyagraha; the forces of modernity and British rule that Gandhi critiques; the event that thrusts him onto the national stage.

Gandhi reorganizes the Indian National Congress into a mass political machine; Indians boycott the British on a national scale; these actions expose moral faults in the Raj; the Raj's counterstrategies attempt to marginalize the freedom seekers.

Indian Muslim identity in the 20th century; the impact on Indian Muslims of the First World War; the Muslim Khalifat Movement opposes Britain's war aims against the Ottoman Caliphate; Hindu/Muslim religious-political rivalries; the idea of Pakistan.

The second round of Indian nationalist action against the British; the effects on India of the global economic depression; the Civil Disobedience Campaign; boycotting of British goods; the Raj's countertactic of extending constitutional concessions.

Britain's wartime mobilization alienates the Indian National Congress; the resulting Quit India Movement becomes the largest uprising against the British since 1857; the war's aftermath sets the stage for the end of 200 years of colonial rule.

Increasing levels of dissent and agrarian suffering follow World War II; the rise of the Muslim League after 1940; its presence in the negotiations for independence; the League's actions spark terrible communal violence in the Raj's final days.

The factors in Britain's decision to quit India; the negotiations between the National Congress, the Muslim League and the British; the contrasting visions of an independent India; Hindu-Muslim violence affects the partition of India and Pakistan.

The events following partition, which sees widespread killings and large displacement of human populations; what the events of 1947 mean for the Indian National Congress, Pakistanis and the British; the legacy of the British Raj's rule in India.