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How did a few thousand people from a small, windswept island in the northern seas end up ruling a far distant subcontinent with a population of millions? Denis Judd tells the fascinating story of the remarkable British impact upon India, capturing the essence of what the Raj really meant both for the British and their Indian subjects. All aspects of this long and controversial relationship are discussed: the first tentative contacts between East and West, the foundation of the East India Company in 1600, the Victorian Raj in all its pomp and splendour, Gandhi`s revolutionary tactics to overthrow the Raj and restore India to the Indians, and Lord Mountbatten`s `swift surgery of Partition` in 1947, creating the independent Commonwealth states of India and Pakistan. British rule in India seemed highly unlikely when the British experience with India began in earnest over four hundred years ago, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. For many years the English interlopers and traders who made contact with the country were viewed by Indians as little more than pirates and potentially troublesome, conquering barbarians. After a series of titanic struggles against the French and various local rules during the eighteenth century, Britain gained mastery of the subcontinent. This period, and the century and a half that followed, saw two powerful cultures locked in an often bloody battle over political control, land, trade, and a way of life.
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