Customer Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant!
Comment: This is a very good piece of work by Lawrence James. I like his style of writing which is simple, effective and oftentimes humorous. I don't hesitate in reccomending it. I picked this little gem up from a discount book store at a store in West London when I was studying as an undergraduate. Great book - do buy it.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Lots of information, but a simplistic and juvenile analysis.
Comment: Just looking at the bilbliography Mr. James seems to have done a great deal of research for this book and attempts to cover a very broad subject. Nonetheless he hasn't done a good job. The book comes across as one mans apologia for the Raj. The selectively sampled references and his inappropriate citing of fiction as supporting information make this of little value to anyone seeking to understand the complex history of the British presence in India the institutions they encountered or built and the personalities that underscored it all. Might be of use to someone looking for a few useful snippets to support dinner table opinion, though.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A realistic view in a world of political correctness
Comment: James has produced a definitive account of the British Empire's greatest achievement without succumbing to the political correctness that clouds our ability to analyse and conclude based solely on the facts and the views of the time. The book traces the path from the initial fedual oligarchies with whom other nations and peoples had traded for centuries to the creation of the jewel of the world's largest empire to the today's position as the largest democracy in the world. This is an account of which both Indians and Britons should be immensely proud. From the British perspective, the legacy is a large and stable democracy able to solve its own problems as a largely united people under the rule of law. A country with an infrastructure and an open democratic process that is the envy of many other bankrupt, tribal and murderous ex-colonies of the European powers. For the Indians, a sense of proud nationhood not forged through brutal civil war and genocide and a true place and identity in the modern world. They retain a true love of Britain as a grateful friend.
I would recommend this book to those who wish to learn about a shared history through analysis of truth and facts
Customer Rating:
Summary: Still an anglocentric view
Comment: ... this is a truly excellent factual account of the period studied,...[but] my reaction on finishing the book was disappointment. The author had clearly ignored his own analysis of the facts of colonialism and stuck to his principal belief that the British occupation was essentially 'a good thing'. Much of the first half of the book is a real eyeopener - the statistics of the poverty at least partly caused by British adventurers are arresting. However, the author's final conclusions lead me to believe that they were written considerably after the rest of the book - you can't say on the one hand that India was a rich country before the British arrived and wasn't when they left, and then on the other hand say that the British presence was benign, giving the Indians hospitals, railways and schools (not enough of them, I might add). Other countries that have not had the pleasure of European colonialism - Japan or Thailand for instance - seem to have done OK without us. Sure, India has created some of its own problems in the last 50 years, but those are its own problems to make. That's democracy in action.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An superb survey of a key part of British and Indian history
Comment: This book takes a wide perspective on a key component of both British and Indian history. He deals impressively with matters as diverse as racial attitudes, the part played by the Raj in Britain's position in the ninteenth century world, and the rise of Indian nationalism. All of this is done in a readable and engaging manner which must mark it down as one of the best surveys of this immense subject that have been written in recent years.
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