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Author: David Gilmour

Format: Audiobook (Narrator: Michael Page)

The British in India is, specifically, a social history of British people (i.e. white people) in India during the colonial period. It provides a lengthy discussion of the types of Britons who decided to make their way to the Empire’s largest colony, how they traveled there, what they did as work, how they lived, etc. Overall, the book is a fairly insightful discussion of the imperial perspective and imperial daily life in India, with plenty (some would say an excessive amount) of detail (it runs >23 hours on audiobook, ~650 pages in a physical copy).

The core of each section of the book is a series of anecdotes related to the subtopic being discussed that are used to tie into a central point; unfortunately, at least as an auditory experience, so many examples fly at the reader that each individual one can be a little difficult to parse and put together into an entirely coherent story. Many of these anecdotes feature people who, in all likelihood, are “better known for other work” - Orwell, Churchill, Johan Zoffany, etc. - which highlight just how important the Raj was to the British Empire as a whole (Orwell and Churchill are pretty famous for being in India independently, but still). At the same time, Gilmour makes sure to emphasize just how little many of the British people individually cared about India if it did not directly impact their lives, which seems pretty par for the course for imperial politics.

As suggested, the book is inherently from the British / imperial perspective, which is fine enough as a focused subject of study. That said, the utter lack of any non-British perspective is a bit jarring - even some brief asides comparing Indian and British life in India during the colonial period would have been nice to have, or even just the perspective of the various native servants etc. frequently discussed in the context of working for British administrators. It’s hard, given this lack of context, to even get a good sense of just how limiting the British perspective truly was and contextualize some of the discussion of personal hardship etc. In the least charitable perspective, the book can even come off as rather complimentary towards the British presence in India, which adds a very different flavour to how the book could have been presented.