This book belongs in the now centuries-old tradition of English-language histories of India. Initially they were largely addressed to the English-reading public in India and Britain, who were at that time primarily of European stock. As British dominion became a fact on the ground, historical narrative turned to address future policy. The earliest full-length history was published by James Mill in 1817. It was part of an ongoing project sustained by the powerful East India Company (EIC) director, James Grant, for the evangelisation and ‘improvement’ of Indians. Mill was energetically rebutted by English officials with experience in India, but he had powerful support in the London headquarters of the EIC. His History of British India was therefore prescribed for students at the preparatory college for civil service trainees, which moved to the ‘purer’ air of England from Calcutta, where it had been initially established. The book was too large and expensive for general use, however—and ironically fell out of British favour in a few decades because it provided ammunition for Indian nationalist critiques of early company rule. Meanwhile, Mountstuart Elphinstone wrote a shorter but scholarly history aimed at educated Englishmen in India and Britain. Both these streams of thought flowed into shaping the school and college histories produced through the imperial period and thereafter.Footnote ¹ The growth of university education in the West has led several veteran scholars—such as A. L. Basham, Thomas Trautmann, Barbara Metcalf and Thomas Metcalf, Cynthia Talbot, and Catherine Asher—to write learned textbooks designed for university courses.

The present text aims to be read more widely than these. It is aimed at ‘avid and casual readers alike, including those taking their first dive into this fascinating subject’ (p. xi). The author proclaims that it ‘includes a little of everything, including cultural, religious, social, literary, economic, and intellectual histories’ (p. xiii). The book concludes: ‘We need more books that render South Asian history accessible to broader audiences’ (p. 545). That field is, however, already occupied by a number of authors, with William Dalrymple prominent among them.

Audrey Truschke’s book itself has 24 chapters, an afterword, and a ten-page section titled ‘Historiography’. The first chapter covers the Harappan or Indus civilisation. It moves on through the Vedic period, and then several chapters cover the development of the Iron Age societies of the subcontinent. Ashoka and the Maurya empire are addressed in one chapter, and the ancient epic—the Mahabharata—is analysed in another. States and literatures from southern India are more fully presented than is usually the case. One wide-ranging chapter presents the international travels of Indians and their cultures. This includes a fascinating account of little-known inscriptions from the island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean where voyagers left brief graffiti. Another chapter covers ‘Indo-Persian rule’ 1190-1350. The next considers the long fifteenth century after the Central Asian conqueror Timur destroyed Delhi and its sultans. A wide-ranging chapter considers new forms of religious life with biographical vignettes of those who led them. One chapter is devoted to the long reign of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (1658–1707) together with sketches of the major insurgencies that he could not subdue. The eighteenth century is treated largely as a time when regions flourished even as the imperial cities were in ruins. Twin chapters survey the familiar story of the establishment of company rule and of the uprising of 1857 (labelled the ‘Sepoy Rebellion’). Queen Victoria’s Proclamation announcing a partial amnesty and the royal takeover of government in India is printed in full. Four chapters then follow the familiar story of British rule and the independence movements, culminating in decolonisation and the bloody partition of British India into two new countries in 1947. The final chapters are devoted to the successor states and ‘Everyday life in contemporary South Asia’. The book ends by prophesying the future wane of ‘fascism’ in India.

An unusual feature of the book is the inclusion of many long passages from translated primary sources. These are sometimes intended to allow readers to hear the voices of people in India through the millennia. Other quotes apparently illustrate arguments; yet others have no apparent purpose. Few are unknown to specialists, but they serve to substantially lengthen the book.

Disease has been an important historical force for millennia. Truschke introduces it in ad hoc ways, so the decline of the Harappan cities is partly attributed to cholera. Similarly, the retreat of Alexander from India is related to hypothetical outbreaks of disease. These ideas amalgamate Peter Green’s erroneous impression that the monsoon in semi-arid west Panjab was the same as in humid eastern Burma (Myanmar) with Bronkhorst’s incoherent speculation about the effects of Brahmanism and disease in urban history (pp. 14, 52, 554 n. 63). But Truschke adds the claim that it was illnesses among the soldiers that caused Alexander to withdraw from India—an assertion unsupported by the Greco-Roman historians closest to the events—and barely mentioned by her source, Peter Green.

Given its scope, the book naturally draws mainly on secondary and, occasionally, tertiary literature (texts cited in other texts). The quality of the evidence deployed therefore depends considerably on the judicious selection of sources—no single scholar can master all of them, but one expects academics to make discriminating choices. That is not always the case: thus, on the 1857 uprising, Truschke does not use Surendranath Sen’s standard account but borrows from a slapdash history featuring a non-existent ‘Raja of Rohilkhand’ (p. 365).Footnote ² Even reliable sources need to be accurately cited. Truschke’s chapter nine draws heavily from Vidya Dehejia’s The Thief Who Stole My Heart. Dehejia narrates how many concealed Chola bronze icons are still being accidentally discovered in Tamilnadu. Truschke attributes this widespread burial of temple icons to turmoil before 1300 (pp. 178–179). Dehejia, her source, unequivocally gives 1310-1311 and the southern campaign of the Khalji general Malik Kafur as the major event that led to the burial of deities to prevent their desecration. Dehejia also notes that the temple priests who buried them could not come to recover them, so that burial sites were forgotten for centuries.Footnote ³ Similarly, Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s biography of Jawaharlal Nehru is incorrectly read, and as a result Truschke’s book gets the geographic ambit of the Sino-Indian war of 1962 wrong (p. 471).Footnote ⁴

One of the major reasons for renewed interest in India among the educated public nowadays is its rapid economic growth after liberalisation in 1991. One would not understand that transmutation of India’s political economy from Truschke’s book as its economic data are impressionistic. She also succumbs to the touristic banality that a wealthy few share Mumbai with millions living in slums, and she does not consider the politics by which the poor actually manage to occupy and improve their hold on some of the most valuable real estate on the planet (pp. 484–485).Footnote ⁵ The other unusual feature of the Republic of India has been the establishment and maintenance of electoral democracy over 75 years. Truschke rightly points to the erosion of democratic norms across South Asia in recent years, but surely their uneven existence deserves more attention than she bestows.Footnote ⁶ These are strange lacunae for a book that claims to include ‘a little of everything’.