The Lion and the Tiger: The Rise and Fall of the British Raj, 1600-1947

By Denis Judd

Book Overview

By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, after a series of titanic struggles against the French and various local rulers during the eighteenth century, Britain had 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.
In The Lion and the Tiger, Denis Judd tells the fascinating story of the British impact upon India, capturing the essence of what the Raj really meant both for the British and their Indian subjects. Judd examines virtually every aspect of this long and controversial relationship, from 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 splendor, 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. Against this epic backdrop, and using many revealing contemporary accounts, Judd explores the consequences of British rule for both rulers and ruled. Were the British intent on development or exploitation? Were they the "civilizing force" they claimed? What were Britain's greatest legacies--democracy and the rule of law, or cricket and an efficient railway system?
Vividly written, based on extensive research, with many new and colorful documentary extracts and literary sources to illustrate the story, The Lion and the Tiger provides an engaging account of a key moment in British Imperial history.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192803581
• ISBN13: 9780192803580
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.4" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Excellent author, excellent book

Great book, every page of it. If you are not very acquainted with India history and if you are seeking for a concise history of British Rule in this country, this is for sure a good choice. The reading is absorbing, in particular on how the author explain the most important aspects of the 350 years of interaction, using lots of real notes and letters of those who lived there -- accounts that help you grasp, and understand better, how was it to live in India in those years, both for Britons and Indians. The relationship was difficult and left some sensibilities in the Indians that last to this day, but I think it was meant to be since both rulers and ruled were so different in almost every aspect. One corollary from the partition of India is that is not good to have two strong religions in a country, for that meaning rivalry and violence. You can see that also in the ex-Yugoslavia and even in today Iraq (shia and sunni muslims).