The Men Who Ruled India: The Founders
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
At the dawn of Britain's most audacious imperial undertaking, a handful of ambitious, conflicted, and often brilliant men set out to govern a subcontinent of staggering complexity — and in doing so, forged the foundations of the British Raj. The Men Who Ruled India: The Founders chronicles the early architects of British rule in India, tracing the careers of the East India Company's administrators, soldiers, and civil servants who transformed a trading enterprise into a continental empire. Philip Woodruff — a pen name for Philip Mason, himself a former officer of the Indian Civil Service — writes with the authority of an insider, bringing vivid biographical detail and sharp historical judgement to bear on figures such as Clive, Hastings, and Cornwallis. The first volume of Woodruff's celebrated two-part series, this work argues that the character of British India was shaped less by grand policy than by the temperament and moral convictions of individual men operating at the edges of a known world. Woodruff's prose is measured and elegant, balancing sympathy with clear-eyed critique, and his command of both the human drama and the administrative machinery of empire is unparalleled. A landmark work of Anglo-Indian historiography, it raises a question that lingers long after the final page: were these founders empire-builders of vision, or merely men overtaken by the momentum of history?
Author: Philip Woodruff
Format: Hardback
Published: 1953, Jonathan Cape
Genre: Asian history
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
At the dawn of Britain's most audacious imperial undertaking, a handful of ambitious, conflicted, and often brilliant men set out to govern a subcontinent of staggering complexity — and in doing so, forged the foundations of the British Raj. The Men Who Ruled India: The Founders chronicles the early architects of British rule in India, tracing the careers of the East India Company's administrators, soldiers, and civil servants who transformed a trading enterprise into a continental empire. Philip Woodruff — a pen name for Philip Mason, himself a former officer of the Indian Civil Service — writes with the authority of an insider, bringing vivid biographical detail and sharp historical judgement to bear on figures such as Clive, Hastings, and Cornwallis. The first volume of Woodruff's celebrated two-part series, this work argues that the character of British India was shaped less by grand policy than by the temperament and moral convictions of individual men operating at the edges of a known world. Woodruff's prose is measured and elegant, balancing sympathy with clear-eyed critique, and his command of both the human drama and the administrative machinery of empire is unparalleled. A landmark work of Anglo-Indian historiography, it raises a question that lingers long after the final page: were these founders empire-builders of vision, or merely men overtaken by the momentum of history?