A Concise History of British Presence in India: Establishing and Withdrawing an Empire

This book provides a linear history beginning at the time of the East India Company's arrival, with its near 250 year struggle to the formation of the British Raj, and the withdrawal of the Raj in the 90 years following, highlighting how the EIC rode to power and its administration replaced the Mughal's system, while describing how the Indian intellectual middle class developed. This work then describes how the Indian National Congress was established as a platform for nationalism and opposed British ambitions. This work emphasizes the events of about the last fifty years of the Raj which survived with domestic pressure and two great wars. It is a complicated political history of conflicts between nationalists and Imperialists surrounding communal agendas of the Muslim League, and interprets how two great wars consumed the resources of Britain as well as caused the decline of the Indian economy, and how the British trajectory tended to swing towards its withdrawal. The last chapter describes how Lord Mountbatten endeavored to effectuate the transfer of power which was constrained due to communal passion.