How not to write history

Rosie Llewellyn-Jones's book explores the impact of East India Company on India, but it fails to address why British influence remained patchy, unlike in North America of the Antipodes

Empire Building The Construction of British India 1690-1860

Author: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

Publisher: Penguin-Viking

Pages: xii+239

Price: Rs 799

Lately, several British authors have tried to highlight some positive aspect or the other of colonial rule in India. Many of these books are flawed and not persuasive, but occasionally, one comes across an outstandingly balanced perspective. Roderick Matthews’ Peace, Poverty and Betrayal was one such study (reviewed in these pages on October 27, 2021). Rosie Llewellyn-Jones’ book seems to aspire to be in this select group, ending thus: “The East India Company often got things wrong, but it got some things right too.” But it does not offer a convincing narrative to back this statement.

The book covers the construction activities of the East India Company (EIC), not just building forts, warehouses, factories and palaces but also land surveying, roads, and even botanical gardens. EIC used Indian contractors and labour to build monuments, cemeteries, barracks, racecourses, hotels and lodges.  The emergence of cantonments — complete townships centred on military detachments with their own local administration — in this period is highlighted as a major achievement.  And, of course, the railways. The author sees in these the impact of European Enlightenment on India’s discovery of its own history.  She claims that toward the end of the period under reference, EIC had introduced “intangible changes…aimed at standardising what seemed like a bewildering array of local usage and customs.”

Contrast Ms Llewellyn-Jones echoing Katherine Mayo 95 years later with Mr Matthews’ conclusion: “The most significant thing the British stole from the Indians was the opportunity to design their own future, to fashion modern patterns of political, economic and social behaviour with a sustainable, integrated dynamic that did not leave so many Indians resisting, resenting or adrift from modernity.” Ms Llewellyn-Jones cannot be called courageous; foolhardy more likely describes her strenuous efforts.

The author’s lack of credibility arises from the utter absence of any sense of enlightenment on part of EIC officers in their overall behaviour.  Barring notable exceptions — Sir William Jones, or Lord Dalhousie, for example —  most EIC bigwigs were like Warren Hastings or Robert Clive, seeking their fortune by whatever means possible in the benighted, malaria-infested land to which they had been sent, teeming with people they did not understand at all.  That is, if they could survive in the first place.  And EIC itself was at all times acutely conscious of its main objective, that of profit from trade, and grudgingly sanctioned construction activities when they became essential to that pursuit, always with the rider that utmost economies were to be observed in their execution. The author herself admits all this.

She claims that “by 1860, most of the systems that were to govern British India for the next 87 years…had been put in place.”  She cites the starting of central services to cover civil administration, forests, and medicine; the establishment of public works departments, and, of course, railways to conclude that “the foundations of modern India were being laid.”  But most of these activities, including the services, had just barely begun by 1860.  The first railway line was merely seven years old.  All of EIC’s initiatives amounted to scratching the surface to find straws to clutch at, not foundation-laying.

The defining event of the period leading up to 1860 was the 1857 uprising, which thoroughly discredited EIC and its corrupt officials, leading to its hasty and unlamented demise.  The India that became a part of the British Empire was a vast patchwork of British territories and hundreds of large and small native principalities, each with its own pattern of administration.  The first task of the Imperial administration was to create a single national entity out of this hodgepodge.

That is why the reference to British India juxtaposed with the time period 1690-1860 in the subtitle of the book sticks in one’s craw. British India ought to refer to the period after 1858, when the Imperial Civil Service, together with railways, the legal system, and the Indian Army, emerged as the most important components of British rule.

Ms Llewellyn-Jones is a sloppy researcher and writer. Her bibliography does not include Romesh Chandra Dutt, Bipan Chandra, or S Irfan Habib, acknowledged master historians of British India.  I can only guess whether this omission is by design or accident.  She correctly says that the distance between “Bombay’s Bori Bunder to Thane” is 21 miles.  But it becomes 35 miles five pages later!  She calls the 5 ft 6 in gauge metre gauge instead of broad gauge (metre gauge is 3 ft 3 3/8 in).  The book abounds in similar errors.

“Historians” of Ms Llewellyn-Jones’ ilk do not ask as to why the British influence in India remained patchy, unlike in North America of the Antipodes.  If they did, they would discover that the British came to India not to settle but to profit from their sojourn in an inhospitable environment, both physical and cultural, as quickly as possible, living in splendid isolation in cantonments and hill stations.  Elsewhere in the world, they actually put down roots and helped create modern, livable societies. That foundational inability of the author to raise the right question makes this whole edifice rather shaky.