British India and other European colonists
A History of English Education in India (1781-1893)
By Syed Mahmood – 1895
The origin, rise and progress of English education in India, and its gradual development into an important arm of the administration of the state, constitute one of the most significant episodes, not only in though annuls of India, but in the history of the civilized world. That a race living in a distant region, differing from us in language, in manners, in religion, in short, in all that distinguishes the inhabitants of one country from those of another, should triumph over the barriers which nature has placed in its way, and unite under one scepter the various peoples of this vast continent, is in itself wonderful enough.
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British Opium Policy and its results to India and China
By F. S. Turner – 1876
These chapters were written in the earlier months of 1874, in response to an advertisement inserted in several newspapers inviting competitive essays upon British Opium Policy, and its Results to India and China.The© author did not see the advertisement until some time after its appearance, and the brief interval allowed for the composition of the book was for him abbreviated by the necessity of simultaneously carrying on other labors.
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Chapters on Oudh history and affairs
By Henry Crossley Irwin – 1890
If the reader were gifted with telescopic powers of vision, and could take his stand at sunrise some bright morning in early April on a certain wind-swept hill-side, almost exactly 82° E. longitude and 23° N. latitude, which is very vividly present before my mind’s eye at this moment, he would see before him, sloping gently southward to the Ganges, the great plain of Oudh. Behind him would rise in green, tumbled masses the pine-clad hills of Naipal, shutting out the distant glories of the snowy range. Here only in Oudh may still be tasted, though in diminished measure, the indescribable charm, which no one who has once known it can ever forget, of the wild, free, irresponsible life of the forest.
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Economics of British India
By Jadunath Sarkar – 1917
In this book the famous historian Jadunath Sarkar gets into details of all aspects of macro and micro economics of the British rule of that time. A wonderful work that contains all the facts figures and analysis of the economics of British India as it was in 1917.
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Exposition of the practical operation of the Judicial and Revenue Systems of India
By Raja Ram Mohan Roy – 1832
Raja Ram Mohan Roy (22 May 1772 – 27 September 1833) was the founder of the Brahmo Sabha movement in 1828, which engendered the Brahmo Samaj, an influential socio-religious reform movement. His influence was apparent in the fields of politics, public administration and education as well as religion.
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Famine truths, half truths, untruths
By Charles W. McMinn -1902
A comparison is made, with an outward show of candor, learning, and loyalty, between the famines of ancient times and those under British rule, by Romesh Chander Dutt, Professor of Indian History in London University, and he traces the frequency and severity of the latter to the crushing pressure of the land tax now exacted, as compared with the mild and gentle fiscal methods of Mogul and Hindu. If these things are true I for one would be foremost to exclaim with John Bright, “” Perish the British empire in India.
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Famines and land assessments in India
By Romesh Dutt – 1900
Romesh Chunder Dutt, (August 13, 1848 – November 30, 1909) was an Indian civil servant, economic historian, writer, and translator of Ramayana and Mahabharata. This book is a series of open letters to Lord Curzon on famines and land assessments in India.
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History of the French in India
By Col.G.B. Malleson – 1893
A complete and connected account of the doings of the French in India throughout the period embraced in this volume has never yet been given to the world. The student and the soldier whose curiosity and whose interest may have been alike aroused by the outline of the deeds of Dupleix and of La Bourdonnais, of Bussy and of Lally, given in the pages of Mr. Mill’s History of India, and who may have felt anxious to learn something more of the policy and aims of those famous Frenchmen, have hitherto been compelled to fall back for such information upon the voluminous work of Mr. Orme.
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The history of European commerce with India
By David MacPherson – 1812
No work has hitherto been offered to the Public, containing a faithful account of the commerce with India, brought down to the present time and therefore whoever wishes to acquire a competent knowledge of that most important branch of commercial history, must labor through a vast number of volumes, some written in Latin, and others in almost all the modern languages of Europe, with a copious interspersion of Oriental vocals and also through prodigious masses of controversial publications: and these being generally written with a view to mislead rather than to inform, the greatest caution is necessary in the perusal of them to guard the reader’s judgement from being carried away by the misrepresentations of party zeal or commercial jealousy.
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How the British ruined India
By Dr. V.V. Bedekar, V.Y.Sardesai
This study compares the condition of India, before and after the British rule. The British rule not only changed India’s fortunes, literally, but also shaped the world opinions on every aspect of India, its people, the social and religious life, particularly Hinduism. This study gives the actions and intentions of the British rulers and major policy makers, in their own words, so there should be no doubt left whatsoever about the British bias on every aspect of India.
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Imperial India
By Val C Prinsep – 1879
An artist’s journals Illustrated by numerous sketches taken at the courts of the principal chiefs in India.
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India and the war
By Lord Sydenham
This books describes the various regiments of the British Indian army with pictures and their history.
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India Famines their causes and prevention
By Romesh C Dutt- 1901
Ten Famines within Forty Years, i860 to 1900. The reports of the Indian Famine Commissions of 1880 and 1898 tell us a melancholy tale. For excluding severe scarcities, often confined to limited areas, there have been ten wide-spread famines in India within the last forty years ; and in spite of relief operations, the loss of life has been enormous.
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Indian recreations volume 1
By William Tennet – 1803
Consists of structure of domestic and rural economy of Muslims and Hindus.
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Indian recreations volume 3
By William Tennet – 1803
Thoughts on effects on British Government on the state of India accompanied by hints concerning means of improving the conditions of the natives of that country.
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Ladak – Physical, Statistical and Historical with notices of the surrounding countries
By Alexander Cunningham – 1848
I have endeavored in the following pages to give to the best of my ability and according to my means a full and accurate account of Ladak. I have twice visited the country once in 1846 and again in 1847, from a different route on each occasion and I have read every work I could procure on Ladak and Tibet. I am therefore willing to think that the various information that I want to present might not be entirely uninteresting to a general reader.
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Narrative of a journey through the upper provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824-1825
By Reginald Heber – 1825
The painful task of editing the works of the late Bishop of Calcutta having devolved upon his widow, she is anxious to state that her principal object in publishing the following Journal is, that its readers may be made acquainted with the nature and extent of the duties performed by the Bishop during the short time he presided over the Indian Church, as well as with the difficulties he encountered in the visitation of his extensive diocese.
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Oriental Memoirs – A narrative of seventeen years residence in India
By James Forbes – 1801
The correspondence from which these Memoirs are compiled, may perhaps strike the reader as being of a date not very recent : however, we must recollect that the Indian does not change ; that his manners, customs, institutions, and religion are the same as in the time of Alexander.
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Oudh and The East India Company, 1785-1801
By Purnendu Basu – 1943
Oudh deserves a special place in the history of the establishment of British dominion in India. It was after the acquisition of Bengal and Bihar that the East India Company for the first time took any serious interest in Oudh, first as a strong buffer between its dominions and the Mahrattas, the most serious rivals of the British in Northern India, and later as a fruitful source of income at a time when the financial position of the Company was far from comfortable. Oudh was also one of the most important recruiting grounds for the army in India. These considerations led Warren Hastings, and to a lesser extent, Cornwallis to interfere in the affairs of Oudh despite the general policy of non-interference laid down by the Court of Directors and made into law by Pitt’s India Act.
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Rambles & Recollections of an Indian official –
By Sir William Henry Sleeman – 1844
Major-general Sir William Henry Sleeman KCB (8 August 1788 – 10 February 1856) was a British soldier and administrator in British India, best known for his work suppressing Thuggee activity. Sleeman served as Resident at Gwalior from 1843 to 1849, and at Lucknow from 1849 to 1856. Whilst Resident at Lucknow he survived three assassination attempts. He was also opposed to the annexation of Oudh by Lord Dalhousie, but his advice was disregarded.
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Southern India
By Fanny Emily Penny -19094
India is a land of contrasts. They are not far to seek. They stand out with startling vividness side by side in the streets of every large town. Poverty and wealth, squalor and splendor, the twice -born Brahman and the despised outcaste move together in the broad highway, never touching each other as they pass, nor mingling their lives. Poverty devoid of pride humbly steps aside, holding out the suppliant hand as splendor, mounted on an elephant or Arab horse, rides by. This books contains paintings from Southern India of 1909.
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State of Christianity in India
By A Dubois – 1823
In which the conversion of Hondoos is considered impractical to which is added a vindication of the Hindoos in answer to the severe attack made by JA Dubois, missionary in Mysore authored of the ‘Description of people of India. These Letters were written at several periods, to friends who had asked the Author’s opinion on the subjects therein discussed. Two of them, the second and third, were addressed,to a dignitary of the established church, a learned and liberal-minded gentleman, who, so far from taking offence at the candor and freedom with which the Author expresses his sentiments, was pleased to return him his unqualified thanks for the same.
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The Charm of Bombay – An anthology of writings in praise of the first city of India
By R P Karkoria – 1915
The climate and character of the city of Bombay are so frequently condemned by the many visitors whose experience of it is limited to the shortest possible period when arriving at or departing from its shores that I cordially commend to the public a study of this volume, a collection of extracts from the writings of well-known people of many nationalities who have given themselves time to appreciate its many claims and attractions.
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The Diaries of three surgeons of Patna, 1763
By Walter Kelly Firminger – 1909
Includes the texts of diaries by William Anderson, Peter Campbell, and William Fullarton. Nearly fifty years ago, Mr. Talboys Wheeler called attention to the existence of these diaries, and in 1878 he gave a few very rare extracts from them in his Early Records of British India. Last year, guided by Mr. Talboys Wheeler’s report, the old papers were searched out for me by the kind officials of the imperial record department, and the Government of India most graciously accorded me permission to copy and publish them. It was only after the printing had been done, that I discovered that Mr. H. Beveridge had published Anderson’s Diary in the Calcutta Review of October 1884, and Campbell’s Diary and Fullarton’s Relation in a subsequent number.
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The Durbar
By Mortimer Menpes
Mortimer Luddington Menpes (22 February 1855 – 1 April 1938), was an Australian-born artist, author, printmaker and illustrator. There were three Delhi Durbars, the one of 1877, then the 1903 Curzon’s Durbar and lastly the 1911 Durbar. The notable thing about them is that they were all held in Delhi. British India may have been ruled from Calcutta up to the time of the 1911 Durbar, Bombay might be Kipling’s urba prima in India and Madras the oldest of the three Presidency cities but Delhi was rightfully the imperial city.
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The education of the women of India
By Minna Galbraith Cowan
It has been well said that no Western should attempt to make any general statement about inscrutable India ; the most he can venture to say is, that “” in certain places certain things which he saw may possibly have been what he thought they really were.”” The present volume is therefore based upon appearances which may or may not have represented reality, upon conversations with Government officials, missionaries and Indian friends, who kindly gave of their leisure to a stranger, and upon the study of Government Reports.
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The famine campaign in Southern India, Madras and Bombay Presidencies and Province of Mysore, 1876-1878 volume 1
By William Digby – 1878
It is too soon to write a history of the famine campaign in India of 1876-1878. But it is not a day too soon to gather together the particulars of the various policies adopted in Madras, Bombay, and Mysore, while the facts are still, fresh in men’s memories, and the particulars of policy and administration are available, that these may remain on record to enable the historian to base his judgment upon a trustworthy narrative of facts.
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The famine campaign in Southern India, Madras and Bombay Presidencies and Province of Mysore, 1876-1878 volume 2
By William Digby – 1878
It is too soon to write a history of the famine campaign in India of 1876-1878. But it is not a day too soon to gather together the particulars of the various policies adopted in Madras, Bombay, and Mysore, while the facts are still, fresh in men’s memories, and the particulars of policy and administration are available, that these may remain on record to enable the historian to base his judgment upon a trustworthy narrative of facts.
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The Governors-Generals of India
By Henry Morris – 1894
One lovely summer’s afternoon, as the sun was lighting up the sparkling rivulet that flows through an estate in the west of England, a little boy, about seven years of age, lay dreaming on its grassy bank. His ancestors had owned this beautiful estate ; but, owing to ill-fortune or to poverty, it had slipped from their possession. The idea that he would recover it shed through his childish mind. This was, however, no mere passing dream. The resolve, thus early made, clung to him all through his career, and, in the evening of his life, it became an accomplished fact. He purchased the estate, spent his last years in possession of it, and there his eyes closed in death. The estate was Daylesford in the county of Worcester, and the childish dreamer was Warren Hastings – the first governor general of Bengal.
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The Modern Traveller – India volume 1
By Josiah Conder (1789-1855)
Josiah Conder (17 September 1789 – 27 December 1855), correspondent of Robert Southey and well-connected to Romantic authors of his day, was editor of the British literary magazine The Eclectic Review, the Nonconformist and abolitionist newspaper The Patriot, the author of romantic verses, poetry, and many popular hymns that survive to this day. His most ambitious non-fiction work was the thirty-volume worldwide geographical tome The Modern Traveller. Although Josiah Conder never travelled abroad himself, he compiled all thirty volumes of The Modern Traveller, his non-fiction publishing epic covering the geography of many of countries of the world.
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The Modern Traveller – India volume 2
By Josiah Conder (1789-1855)
Josiah Conder (17 September 1789 – 27 December 1855), correspondent of Robert Southey and well-connected to Romantic authors of his day, was editor of the British literary magazine The Eclectic Review, the Nonconformist and abolitionist newspaper The Patriot, the author of romantic verses, poetry, and many popular hymns that survive to this day. His most ambitious non-fiction work was the thirty-volume worldwide geographical tome The Modern Traveller. Although Josiah Conder never travelled abroad himself, he compiled all thirty volumes of The Modern Traveller, his non-fiction publishing epic covering the geography of many of countries of the world.
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The Modern Traveller – India volume 3
By Josiah Conder (1789-1855)
Josiah Conder (17 September 1789 – 27 December 1855), correspondent of Robert Southey and well-connected to Romantic authors of his day, was editor of the British literary magazine The Eclectic Review, the Nonconformist and abolitionist newspaper The Patriot, the author of romantic verses, poetry, and many popular hymns that survive to this day. His most ambitious non-fiction work was the thirty-volume worldwide geographical tome The Modern Traveller. Although Josiah Conder never travelled abroad himself, he compiled all thirty volumes of The Modern Traveller, his non-fiction publishing epic covering the geography of many of countries of the world.
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The Story of the Telegraph in India
By Walter Kelly Firminger – 1866
This work is by a committee appointed by the authority of the parliament to examine the state of the telegraphic and postal communication between England and her majesty’s eastern possessions.
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The Textile Manufactures and the Costumes of the People of India
By Frobes Watson – 1866
Specimens of all the important Textile Manufactures of India existing in the stores of the India Museum have been collected in eighteen large volumes, of which twenty sets have been prepared, each set being, as nearly as possible, an exact counterpart of all the others. The eighteen volumes, forming one set, contain 700 specimens, illustrating, in a complete and convenient manner, this branch of Indian Manufactures.
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The Truth about Indian Opium
By G. Graham Dixon – 1922
In India, apart from Burma, which will be discussed separately, opium is generally eaten in the form of pills, and in some parts it is dissolved in water and drunk. It is the ordinary domestic medicine o the people, great numbers of whom are unaccustomed to, or beyond the reach of, skilled medical treatment, and it is a medicine of which they could not be deprived without very great suffering. It is largely used in the malarial tracts as a prophylactic against fever, and is a great aid to endurance ; the fisherman swallows his opium pill before entering the water, just as his European brother carries his whisky flask, and the carrier eats opium when on the march.
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Relatinos between the British government and the Nawab Nizam or Bengal, Behar and Orrissa
Indian records with a commercial view of relations – 1870
On whomsoever may devolve the unthankful task of compiling records of any episode in the Government of India, or whatever may be the prejudice with which he commences by exhibiting the severe necessity for unrestricted rule over a people incapable of constitutional institutions, his narrative, whatever its historical pretensions may be, will invariably degenerate into a story beginning with intrigue, continuing in spoliation, and terminating in confiscation. Such, for the most part, is the history of all Indian Princes in connection with the British Government of India, nor is the present work an exception to a rule so general.
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India in the seventeth century as depicted by European travelers
By J N Das Gupta – 1916
On the threshold of the Seventeenth Century stands many an interesting figure like that of the adventurous and resourceful Pyrard to greet the historical student intent on unravelling the story of India’s intercourse with Europe. Similarly with the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, the London East India Company launched out on its fateful career of commercial enterprise which was destined to end in the formation of that wondrous creation of the modern political world, the present British Indian Empire.
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Indika the country and people of India and Ceylon
By John F Hurst – 1891
The object of the following work is to describe India and Ceylon as they are to-day. But to make clear the existing condition of a country, and to account for it. the past must be constantly recognized. Therefore, at every stage of this work the historical antecedents have been summoned, and made to do duty as interpreters of the existing India aim Ceylon. My plan of travel required a journey to nearly all the large play and to many of the more obscure, throughout the empire. Landing in Bombay, and going across the peninsula to Madras. I proceeded to Ceylon, aim went into the interior as far as Kandy, the ancient capital.
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