---
product_id: 48509232
title: "Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India"
price: "5032 som"
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---

# India's economy shrank from 27% to 3% global share 30+ pages of meticulous notes & references Indian soldiers made up 25% of Commonwealth forces in WWI & WWII Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India

**Price:** 5032 som
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## Summary

> 📖 Dive deep, rethink history, and never miss the untold story of empire’s impact.

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- **What is this?** Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India
- **How much does it cost?** 5032 som with free shipping
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## Key Features

- • **Economic Shockwaves:** Reveals how British rule slashed India’s share of the global economy from 27% to 3%.
- • **Meticulously Researched:** Over 30 pages of detailed notes and references ensure authoritative insight.
- • **Military Sacrifice Unveiled:** Highlights the crucial yet overlooked role of Indian soldiers in two world wars.
- • **Unmasking Empire’s Dark Side:** Exposes famines, massacres, and systemic exploitation rarely discussed in mainstream history.
- • **Essential Reading for Modern Minds:** A must-have for professionals seeking to understand colonial legacies shaping today’s global dynamics.

## Overview

Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor is a rigorously researched, passionately argued book that dismantles the myths of British colonialism in India. It documents the devastating economic decline, the exploitation and suffering under British rule, and the significant yet underappreciated contributions of Indian soldiers in global conflicts. With over 30 pages of notes and references, this book is a compelling must-read for anyone eager to understand the true legacy of empire beyond sanitized history.

## Description

Buy Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Tharoor, Shashi (ISBN: 9781849048088) from desertcart's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

Review: What’s not to love about a passionate polemic? - Historians bemoan a lack a balance in books. They desire to be an emotionless onlooker give cold hard facts. Tharoor rips up the banal rule book and gives us a fantastic read. As an Irishman I can see the parallels of empire on every page. A common statement in Ireland is that if it weren’t for the nice English buildings we would have no nice buildings at all. They ruled the country for 800 years. An Irishman didn’t have the money to build a home, let alone a palace. Such are the parrallels in India. The British ripped up the age of disconnected village feudalism and brought something much worse the India. Collectivism. Collective poverty. Tharoor starts off with the most striking chapter. The looting of India. If you take anything from this book, it is this line “when the British arrived in India in the 1700s, India was 27 percent of the global economy. When they left in 1948 it was 3%”. People will state the world moved on without India but frankly India was chained to the floor. The British were not there to help. The trains, as Tharoor describes, and as is detailed further in the incredible book Empire of Cotton, were there to speed up the looting, the transfer of Cotton to the ships. The trains were also to be used mainly by the British people and furthermore by their Soldiers. The trains would quickly speed them to point of any mutiny. Tharoors gives details on Indian involvement in WW1 and WW2 where Indian soldiers accounted for up to one quarter of Commonwealth forces. Though not detailed in this book, Indian soldiers were often sent in first. At Gallipoli their bodies became human sandbags. Indeed in WW2, it was the British who declared war on Germany on India’s behalf without consulting the Indian hierarchy. Other shameful aspects of Empire in India are expanded upon. Murder (Amritsar and others) and famine. Of course the Bengal famine, not to mention the almost 100 million Indians who died from starvation during the course of British rule. Famines are not a natural phenomenon. The bibliography of the book is substantial enough (5 pages) to be awarded a credible work of history. No doubt Thatoor is guilty of a slightly one sided argument and choosing the facts in line with the mood of the book. But guess what, British history books for the last 300 years have done something similar so here is the balance historians are looking for.
Review: Man’s inhumanity to man - As an educator in a previous life I would like to see this book made required reading in all British secondary schools. Why? Because it offers the perfect object-lesson in why it is always, yes always, wrong to march into another country under the pretence of a civilising mission. And, just as importantly, it shows why national myth-making leads unsuspecting citizens into very dangerous intellectual and emotional territory. Let’s start with the few quibbles that can be raised in order to discredit the value of this book. It verges occasionally, but only occasionally, on a quasi-rant against the evils of colonialism and the utter iniquities of British rule. It also slips into an emotional use of language, sometimes through unnecessary repetition, in its desire to make a point. The index is woefully inadequate, but it shares this failing with many another work of non-fiction. However, Tharoor has produced a meticulously researched book with thirty pages of notes and references in addition to footnotes (but don’t let that put you off) which comprehensively deals with the British involvement in India as well as many a backward glance to what the country was like before the British government decided it had to intervene in order to support the activities of the East India Company. In that year, 1600, England produced just 1.8 per cent of the world’s GDP in contrast to India’s 23 per cent. India had a flourishing manufacturing industry, especially in textiles, and one of its celebrated universities, Nalanda, had already predated the foundation of Oxford and Cambridge by centuries. When the British finally left, having systematically expropriated as much as they could, literacy rates and life expectancy rates were amongst the lowest in the Third World. Tea was grown solely for the satisfaction of consumers in Blighty, wild animals were slaughtered for the benefit of trophy-hunters, whole forests were cut down to provide railway sleepers and exotic furniture back home, the economy was turned into a largely agrarian base, taxes were extracted to finance colonial overlords and their staff while denying the native population any say in how they were governed. In modern times there has never been a famine in India; throughout British rule there were several. Even today there are British historians who continue to peddle the myths of the huge civilising influence the mother country exercised in the swathes of world territory it once ruled. Read Tharoor and you will be disabused of such fanciful notions. You will also be shocked to read how brutally and inhumanely the native Indian population was treated. It is one of the absurdities advanced by adherents to the Brexit cause that they imagine the Indians of today are falling over backwards to do all kinds of major trade deals with the erstwhile mother country. It betrays a total lack of historical understanding by such modern myth-makers that they indulge their fantasies of a Global Britain keen to resurrect the supposed glories of the past. Amongst the debunking of dangerous national myths is the historical evidence that Tharoor presents to show what an incorrigible racist Churchill was. I suspect that one reason why historians on the right have done all they can to discredit this book is because of the many uncomfortable instances of the great man’s bigotry and racial superiority. Equally unsettling is the history of British withdrawal in the wake of the Second World War. Divide and rule was always the British approach previously, but the fact that they largely stood back while Hindus and Moslems massacred each other while still retaining overall responsibility for the running of the country is an utterly shameful comment on the alleged superiority of the British civilising influence. Read this book in order to understand how shockingly and shamefully human beings behave towards others under their control and how national myths continue to be perpetuated despite all evidence to the contrary.

## Features

- New Store Stock

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | 48,064 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) 301 in Business & Economic History 1,427 in History (Books) 5,366 in Society, Politics & Philosophy |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,438 Reviews |

## Images

![Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71NRnYfy+gL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ What’s not to love about a passionate polemic?
*by L***R on 7 January 2019*

Historians bemoan a lack a balance in books. They desire to be an emotionless onlooker give cold hard facts. Tharoor rips up the banal rule book and gives us a fantastic read. As an Irishman I can see the parallels of empire on every page. A common statement in Ireland is that if it weren’t for the nice English buildings we would have no nice buildings at all. They ruled the country for 800 years. An Irishman didn’t have the money to build a home, let alone a palace. Such are the parrallels in India. The British ripped up the age of disconnected village feudalism and brought something much worse the India. Collectivism. Collective poverty. Tharoor starts off with the most striking chapter. The looting of India. If you take anything from this book, it is this line “when the British arrived in India in the 1700s, India was 27 percent of the global economy. When they left in 1948 it was 3%”. People will state the world moved on without India but frankly India was chained to the floor. The British were not there to help. The trains, as Tharoor describes, and as is detailed further in the incredible book Empire of Cotton, were there to speed up the looting, the transfer of Cotton to the ships. The trains were also to be used mainly by the British people and furthermore by their Soldiers. The trains would quickly speed them to point of any mutiny. Tharoors gives details on Indian involvement in WW1 and WW2 where Indian soldiers accounted for up to one quarter of Commonwealth forces. Though not detailed in this book, Indian soldiers were often sent in first. At Gallipoli their bodies became human sandbags. Indeed in WW2, it was the British who declared war on Germany on India’s behalf without consulting the Indian hierarchy. Other shameful aspects of Empire in India are expanded upon. Murder (Amritsar and others) and famine. Of course the Bengal famine, not to mention the almost 100 million Indians who died from starvation during the course of British rule. Famines are not a natural phenomenon. The bibliography of the book is substantial enough (5 pages) to be awarded a credible work of history. No doubt Thatoor is guilty of a slightly one sided argument and choosing the facts in line with the mood of the book. But guess what, British history books for the last 300 years have done something similar so here is the balance historians are looking for.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Man’s inhumanity to man
*by A***R on 21 July 2019*

As an educator in a previous life I would like to see this book made required reading in all British secondary schools. Why? Because it offers the perfect object-lesson in why it is always, yes always, wrong to march into another country under the pretence of a civilising mission. And, just as importantly, it shows why national myth-making leads unsuspecting citizens into very dangerous intellectual and emotional territory. Let’s start with the few quibbles that can be raised in order to discredit the value of this book. It verges occasionally, but only occasionally, on a quasi-rant against the evils of colonialism and the utter iniquities of British rule. It also slips into an emotional use of language, sometimes through unnecessary repetition, in its desire to make a point. The index is woefully inadequate, but it shares this failing with many another work of non-fiction. However, Tharoor has produced a meticulously researched book with thirty pages of notes and references in addition to footnotes (but don’t let that put you off) which comprehensively deals with the British involvement in India as well as many a backward glance to what the country was like before the British government decided it had to intervene in order to support the activities of the East India Company. In that year, 1600, England produced just 1.8 per cent of the world’s GDP in contrast to India’s 23 per cent. India had a flourishing manufacturing industry, especially in textiles, and one of its celebrated universities, Nalanda, had already predated the foundation of Oxford and Cambridge by centuries. When the British finally left, having systematically expropriated as much as they could, literacy rates and life expectancy rates were amongst the lowest in the Third World. Tea was grown solely for the satisfaction of consumers in Blighty, wild animals were slaughtered for the benefit of trophy-hunters, whole forests were cut down to provide railway sleepers and exotic furniture back home, the economy was turned into a largely agrarian base, taxes were extracted to finance colonial overlords and their staff while denying the native population any say in how they were governed. In modern times there has never been a famine in India; throughout British rule there were several. Even today there are British historians who continue to peddle the myths of the huge civilising influence the mother country exercised in the swathes of world territory it once ruled. Read Tharoor and you will be disabused of such fanciful notions. You will also be shocked to read how brutally and inhumanely the native Indian population was treated. It is one of the absurdities advanced by adherents to the Brexit cause that they imagine the Indians of today are falling over backwards to do all kinds of major trade deals with the erstwhile mother country. It betrays a total lack of historical understanding by such modern myth-makers that they indulge their fantasies of a Global Britain keen to resurrect the supposed glories of the past. Amongst the debunking of dangerous national myths is the historical evidence that Tharoor presents to show what an incorrigible racist Churchill was. I suspect that one reason why historians on the right have done all they can to discredit this book is because of the many uncomfortable instances of the great man’s bigotry and racial superiority. Equally unsettling is the history of British withdrawal in the wake of the Second World War. Divide and rule was always the British approach previously, but the fact that they largely stood back while Hindus and Moslems massacred each other while still retaining overall responsibility for the running of the country is an utterly shameful comment on the alleged superiority of the British civilising influence. Read this book in order to understand how shockingly and shamefully human beings behave towards others under their control and how national myths continue to be perpetuated despite all evidence to the contrary.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Thought provoking . . .
*by M***A on 8 September 2021*

On the whole, the author makes a very compelling case about the injustices the Raj perpetuated upon India and its people; together with the massive drain and looting of India's resources during the Raj. The reservations I hold however about this work are many. This book reads as a poltical treatise that at times leans far too heavily on the Two-Nation theory of Indian High Politics. The author also glorifies his idol Gandhi far too much, which the record shows, did not represent all of India's interests or views. Lastly, this work ultimately reads as a review and criticism of Niall Fergusson's Empire, which too have its merits and flaws, but is still an interesting read, if nothing more than his imbalanced views. Whilst both Tharoor and Fergusson examine the merits and shortcomings of the Raj, I will concede that Tharoor does well to refute Fergusson's thesis. However, Tharoor plays far too much emphasis on the 'What Ifs' scenarios that could have played out, flirting with an alternate history that may have panned out, had the Raj not exisited. The debate and legacy of Empire and Colonialism should continue, but it would be encouraging to see authors pay more attention to subaltern experiences; together with that of minorities that do not fit neatly into their cental arguments. For me this is what was more disappointing about Tharoor's approach, for he focused too much of the 'national' experience, whilst glossing over the differing regional, cultural, and economic experiences of minorities and the subaltern in British India. His emphasis on Congress history, Gandhi, and the Big Names of the Independence movement is what made this feel a bit unbalanced. That being said, the author has made a good effort in providing a thought provoking account of how we perceive the British Empire and the Raj. A commendable read.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India
- An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

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*Last updated: 2026-01-23*