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WORK TITLE: The Chaos of Empire
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: London, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/book/hardcover/the-chaos-of-empire/9781610392938 * http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/history/people/staff/Academic/wilsonj/index.aspx * https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonewilson/ * https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/an-indian-empire-built-out-of-paper-66p6zpn20
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: nr2002010202
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/nr2002010202
HEADING: Wilson, Jon E.
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100 1_ |a Wilson, Jon E.
670 __ |a Governing property, making law, 2000: |b t.p. (Jon E. Wilson, St. Hugh’s Coll.; D.Phil. thesis, Univ. of Oxford) authorsÌ• declaration form (Fac. of Mod. Hist.) thesis cat. inf. form (Jon Edward Wilson, b. Apr. 20, 1973; author’s preferred form of name entry: Wilson, Jon E.)
670 __ |a The making of a colonial order, 2003: |b t.p. (Jon Wilson; King’s Coll. London)
PERSONAL
Born April 20, 1973, in Leicester, England.
EDUCATION:Received degrees from New School for Social Research and Oxford University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. King’s College London, senior lecturer, 1999—. Historians in Residence, director.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Jon E. Wilson is a historian and academic working at King’s College London as a senior lecturer. His research primarily focuses on the governmental workings of south Asia and the British Isles. Prior to starting his career, he attended the New School for Social Research and Oxford University. He is also affiliated with Historians in Residence.
The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India is Wilson’s first published book. It profiles the British Raj, which reigned over India during its period of British colonization. In outlining the British Raj’s presence over Indian society, Wilson presents the idea that the Raj did far more harm to the country than what is traditionally portrayed. His ultimate message is a warning against the propaganda that the British Raj was a beneficial force upon Indian society. He also seeks to contradict other negative narratives related to the British Raj, the main two being its economic leeching of India and its ironfisted leadership. Rather, Wilson argues that Britain’s tight hold over India came out of a need to assert and maintain its own power. The British Raj worried that, if they were not strict enough, their reign would topple. The same theory extends to the Raj’s individual members, who signed on to gain even more status than they currently enjoyed. Wilson asserts that Britain’s strategy of colonizing India was an unwise one, and uses historical evidence and research to explain why. The chronology of the book extends from the beginning of British colonial rule over India to its fall in 1947, and highlights the lasting effects the Raj left upon the country from its reign.
Based on Wilson’s research, British officials had little interest in assisting the pre-existing Indian government in bettering the country. Rather, they remained as hands-off as possible, only making their presence known through documentation. Parts of the country were reserved solely for British residents, creating a climate of segregation. Development within the country slowed to a standstill. What few innovations reached India’s borders were brought there not out of a sense of benevolence and desire for progress, but out of a need to express opposition. The British Raj viewed the colonization of India with nonchalance. What little interest Britain did invest in India came in the form of developing its martial institutions rather than any other facet of the country’s society.
Wilson establishes that the British Raj shirked several of the duties that came with running a colonized nation. Infrastructural development wasn’t the only part of society that suffered. For decades, citizens relied on modes of transportation that were long considered outdated by the rest of the world. The economy sagged. Citizens starved as a result of skyrocketing grocery bills and collapsing job markets. Craftsmen quickly found themselves out of work and with no other ways to secure income for themselves. Basic education also suffered, leaving a population with less than twenty percent of its people having gained a sense of literacy. People remained unsure of how the law was supposed to approach them and their property. Basic utilities, such as electricity, maintained an unstable presence across the country. The sociopolitical damage Wilson describes as being wrought by the British Raj upon India remains entangled with the country’s infrastructure to this day. It wasn’t until the British Raj toppled that India was able to witness any substantial, positive change to their society, all of which they manifested for themselves.
In addition to his historical analysis, Wilson also delves into the reasons behind the British Raj’s inability to administer proper governance to India. He asserts that Britain approached the colonization of India with the wrong goals in mind. Specifically, its focus on power above all else hurt its chances of success significantly. Because it cared more about looking like a powerful nation above all else, it was ineffectual when it came to any other aspects of leadership. Furthermore, the methods Britain used in its rule were what caused such instability, its model being far different from any it had used in its colonization of other countries. As a result, the British Raj gradually lost its power and hold over the country. Indian people gradually came to fill government positions again, so much so that as the empire’s reached its end, the British Raj was heavily Indian-run. Wilson ultimately posits that Britain should have approached India with fraternization in mind. Had they set aside their need for power, they might have been able to help India to become an even greater nation, thereby avoiding all of the problems and plagues that persist within the country and weaken it to this very day. A Publishers Weekly contributor remarked that Wilson’s “bold claim is ably supported by deep research.” In the Financial Times Online, Maria Misra wrote: “The core of the book is a virtuoso takedown of cherished shibboleths of Raj mythology.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Library Journal, September 15, 2016, Michael Farrell, review of The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India, p. 101.
Publishers Weekly, September 26, 2016, review of The Chaos of Empire, p. 78.
ONLINE
Financial Times Online, https://www.ft.com/ (September 2, 2016), Maria Misra, review of The Chaos of Empire.
PublicAffairs Books Website, http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/ (July 7, 2017), author profile.*
Jon Wilson was born in Leicester, England, educated at Oxford University and the New School for Social Research in New York, and has taught history at King's College London since 1999. He directs Historians in Residence, a project connecting history with public institutions in London. Alongside his historical research he comments in a range of media on contemporary British and South Asian politics and government.
The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of
India
Publishers Weekly.
263.39 (Sept. 26, 2016): p78.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India
Jon Wilson. Public Affairs, $29.99 (592p) ISBN 978-1-61039-293-8
Wilson, senior lecturer in history at King's College London, ambitiously challenges the image of the British Raj as stable, unitary, and fully
sovereign over the millions of Indians it claimed to govern. Tracing the history of British power in India from the founding of the East India
Company and its claim to monopoly power over Asian trade to the cusp of Indian independence in 1947, Wilson paints a picture of an unruly,
fragmented empire riven by violence and unrest. British officials shunned open engagement with Indian rulers, preferring to sequester themselves
in Europeanized enclaves and churn out reams of paperwork that served to cover up the messy realities of British rule in India. Wilson's major
intervention is to resist the temptation to take the Raj at face value. "In reality," he writes, "the British proclaimed their strength and purpose when
their authority seemed the most fragile," rendering largely meaningless historians' preoccupation with analyzing the rhetoric of the civilizing
mission and other justifications for empire. Puncturing myths about the Raj, Wilson may understate the material and epistemological
transformations occasioned by imperial rule by limiting his definition of power to political power, but his bold claim is ably supported by deep
research. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India." Publishers Weekly, 26 Sept. 2016, p. 78. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465558243&it=r&asid=a47552e13ea9c2fe75868c6abc31cc9b. Accessed 23 June
2017.
6/23/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1498243099645 2/3
Gale Document Number: GALE|A465558243
---
6/23/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Wilson, Jon. The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the
Conquest of India
Michael Farrell
Library Journal.
141.15 (Sept. 15, 2016): p101.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Wilson, Jon. The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India. PublicAffairs. Oct. 2016. 584p. illus. maps. notes. bibliog. index.
ISBN 9781610392938. $29.99; ebk. ISBN 9781610392945. HIST
Most histories of the Raj emphasize either Britain's ruthlessness in ruling India or its economic exploitation of the subcontinent. According to
Wilson (history, King's Coll. London), Britain didn't realize much economic benefit out of India, its oppressive policies born out of the fear that
they would lose power. Britain didn't rule India because the colony made Britain wealthy or was important for the maintenance of British power
elsewhere in the world. Rather Britain governed because a small number of British imperial bureaucrats and rulers wanted to maintain their
privilege. Wilson asserts that Britain never really maintained sovereign authority over India and depended upon the country's structures and
people to sustain what he calls an illusion of power. Militating against this thesis is the significant role that India played for Britain in World Wars
I and II, which Wilson glosses over quickly. In fact, the book suffers from Wilson's decision not to examine the place of India in the larger British
Empire, instead focusing exclusively on the nature of Britain's hold on the area. VERDICT Wilson's prose is rather dry, and most readers will be
better served by Barbara and Thomas Metcalf's A Concise History of Modern India.--Michael Farrell, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando,
FL
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Farrell, Michael. "Wilson, Jon. The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India." Library Journal, 15 Sept. 2016, p. 101+.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463632578&it=r&asid=54d4baf7af2687d352f62113a2778726. Accessed 23 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463632578
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India Conquered by Jon Wilson review — the chaos of empire
A history of Britain’s Indian Raj suggests it failed at everything bar propaganda
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SEPTEMBER 2, 2016 by: Maria Misra
Britain seems to be experiencing a wave of nostalgia for empire. The Brexit campaign was full of promises to restore old imperial links — typical was a Ukip spokesman’s declaration that “Outside the EU, the world is our oyster, and the Commonwealth remains that precious pearl within.” Meanwhile, Boris Johnson dismissed Barack Obama’s pro-Europeanism as the predictable prejudice of someone of “part-Kenyan” heritage with an “ancestral dislike of the British Empire”. As for the public, a 2014 YouGov poll found 59 per cent were proud of the empire, while 49 per cent thought it had made the colonies “better off”.
But are the achievements of empire really something to boast about? Those who think so will cite the usual litany of railways built, sound laws conferred, economies developed: civilising mission accomplished. But Jon Wilson, a specialist in Indian history at King’s College London, disagrees. In India Conquered, Wilson suggests that far from rescuing India from chaos, the British caused it. And the pride many feel for that empire is really just the afterglow of the only thing the Raj was outstandingly good at — boosterish propaganda.
The core of the book is a virtuoso takedown of cherished shibboleths of Raj mythology. Railways, for example, came relatively late by global standards and were pioneered in the face of colonial indifference. Official interest, when it did come, insisted that the network follow military, not economic priorities, much reducing its developmental impact. Similarly, irrigation projects were often pursued in the face of official apathy and stinginess. Wilson argues that much of the British-built system, far from being cutting-edge technology, would not have been unfamiliar to the inventors of the South Indian irrigation sluices of the early first millennium.
On legal issues, the British ducked the most difficult task — of reforming and universalising personal law, leaving a confused tangle of property legislation that impeded rather than promoted modern commercial relations. British economic policy in the last quarter of the 19th century not only encouraged the destruction of millions of artisanal jobs, but also undermined traditional noblesse oblige support systems. With nothing to replace them, periods of food-price inflation led to the deaths of millions in famines. This was globalisation with a very hard edge indeed.
When, after two centuries of rule, the British left India, bullock carts were still the most important form of transport in many areas, only 0.2 per cent of its half-million villages had electricity, and a meagre 12 per cent of the population was literate. These were not achievements that many leaders of modern-era states would wish to trumpet, and even the much-maligned “planned” Nehruvian model of development that followed decolonisation achieved far higher rates of growth and human development.
So why was the Raj such a disappointment? Wilson’s book is not an anti-imperialist polemic; indeed, he implies that the imperial enterprise need not have been such a failure. One problem, he argues, was the grip of small-state, laissez faire liberalism; this was not the approach that modernised America, Germany and Japan.
Of course, it could be argued that these were all nation-states, and national governments enjoy a legitimacy that enables them to make bold demands and instigate radical reforms in the interests of development; such legitimacy is something empires often struggle to generate. But Wilson interestingly suggests another reason for the failure of the Raj to make any real difference in India: its singularly narrow and rigid view of power. The British saw themselves as “conquerors” and believed that this alone was enough to confer legitimacy.
Indians, however, felt differently, and with good reason. It would be hard to argue that India had ever really been “conquered”: the British were initially the “invited” rulers of parts of India and battles were won as much by covert diplomacy as fighting. In one sense, the Raj could barely be called British at all. A few thousand Brits perched, often rather distantly, atop administrative, military and commercial pyramids of hundreds of thousands of Indians. By 1942 even the cherished Indian Civil Service — Lloyd George’s “steel frame” — was predominantly Indian, the judiciary having been almost wholly indianised by the 1920s.
Despite this, as Wilson says, many of the British clung to a delusion of “victors’ sovereignty”. The result was an arrogant, racist and disdainful attitude towards Indians, and also a belief that British power in India had to be absolute. Had the Raj been more willing to collaborate with Indians, and to recognise India’s own political traditions, in which power is diffused across groups and sovereignty layered and devolved, it might have achieved much more. But “subsidiarity”, as they call it in Brussels, never was the British way.
India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire, by Jon Wilson, Simon & Schuster, RRP£25, 432 pages
Published in the US next month by PublicAffairs as ‘The Chaos of Empire’
Maria Misra is author of ‘Vishnu’s Crowded Temple: India since the Great Rebellion’ (Penguin)