--- product_id: 48509232 title: "Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India" price: "110 zł" currency: PLN in_stock: false reviews_count: 7 url: https://www.desertcart.pl/products/48509232-inglorious-empire-what-the-british-did-to-india store_origin: PL region: Poland --- # 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:** 110 zł **Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock ## Summary > 📖 Dive deep, rethink history, and never miss the untold story of empire’s impact. ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India - **How much does it cost?** 110 zł with free shipping - **Is it available?** Currently out of stock - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.pl](https://www.desertcart.pl/products/48509232-inglorious-empire-what-the-british-did-to-india) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## 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. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | 43,189 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) 260 in Business & Economic History 487 in History (Books) 1,899 in Society, Politics & Philosophy | | Customer reviews | 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (2,441) | | Dimensions | 14 x 3.2 x 21.6 cm | | ISBN-10 | 1849048088 | | ISBN-13 | 978-1849048088 | | Item weight | 534 g | | Language | English | | Print length | 288 pages | | Publication date | 2 Mar. 2017 | | Publisher | C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd | ## 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. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review *by J***R on 26 July 2018* The author sets out to argue against the notion that the British presence in India was a good thing. It is a point of view that must be read and considered carefully before any apology for British colonialism is made, with facts and viewpoints often overlooked by those extolling the virtues of empire. Whatever your viewpoint, the argument of the author must be taken into account before you can say your viewpoint is well informed. ## Frequently Bought Together - Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India - An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.pl/products/48509232-inglorious-empire-what-the-british-did-to-india](https://www.desertcart.pl/products/48509232-inglorious-empire-what-the-british-did-to-india) --- *Product available on Desertcart Poland* *Store origin: PL* *Last updated: 2026-06-02*