Raj: The making and Unmaking of British India by James, Lawrence - 1998

St. Martin's Press, NY, 1998. 1st edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. "After a series of emergencies in the eighteenth century transformed a business partnership - the East India Company - into the most formidable war machine in Asia, conquest gathered its own momentum. Fortunes grew, but, alongside them despotism. The result was the formation of a government that balanced firmness with benevolence, and had as its goal the advancement of India. But the Raj, outwardly so monolithic and magnificent, always rested precariously on the goodwill of Indians. In this remarkable exploration of British rule in India, Lawrence James chronicles the astonishing heroism that created it, the mixture of compromise and firmness that characterized it, and the twists and turns of the independence struggle that ended it." [Pub. Info] Superb history of an important period in the life of the British Empire. 1ST US EDITION