Men of Their Time

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

Anyone who reads this book will either like it a lot or be moderately irritated. The reason is that it is unashamedly written from certain positions on race, gender and class, the three preoccupations of many history faculties. No writer is without prejudice, and every book carries bias. This work does so triumphantly. The introduction […]

Maiden Voyages

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

Few young women who joined the Fishing Fleet, the regular convoy of husband-seekers to British India, can have imagined what it was like to live with a tea planter or an engineer in the mofussil, the quaint Urdu word for the sticks. In the jungles of Assam or deserts of Sindh, they would find themselves […]

For Better, For Worse

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

The British Empire was spread over six continents, seven seas and three centuries, during which its focus shifted from the Atlantic to Asia and then to Africa. At its zenith it covered more than 12 million square miles, of which Great Britain itself formed less than 1 per cent. During the nineteenth century it was […]

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