Half a century ago, one of the courses in Delhi University's MA program was “Constitutional History and the Indian National Movement.” It was boring beyond belief, moving from reform to reform and movement to movement. Our only concern as students was to not confuse the “Morley-Minto” and “Montagu-Chelmsford” reforms, or the Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements.

What a delight then to read David Johnson's New Delhi: The Last Imperial City, in which the narrative moves briskly through a range of themes—the staccato play of international politics, the frenzy of the agitation against the partition of Bengal province, the protest against the transfer of the capital, the verbal duels in the House of Lords, arguments over the positioning of the new government buildings at Delhi, the shadowy figures of speculators, the nervous deference of officials to the vestiges of older Delhis, the swift transformation of rugged slopes and highly cultivated stretches to a geometrically harmonious design of roads and rond-points.

The two decades from 1911 to 1931 are not easy to write about. There are too many players on the Indian stage, too many rabbits pulled out of hats, too many utopian dreams. For Delhi, there is a sort of hole through which the years from 1917 to 1927 slide away. The new capital should have been completed by the beginning of 1916—which became 1929, and the inauguration took place two years later. Between 1916 and 1931, the political map of Europe had changed, as had the constitutional situation in India. While Viceroy Hardinge's maps and dreams had been translated into a city of brick and stone, the “common man” had been swept into the nationalist movement, and the liberals of 1912 had given place to the charismatic Gandhi.

Johnson conveys the sense of urgency very vividly—through the debates on the partition of Bengal, where a decision had to be taken, keeping in mind that the government must not seem to have caved in before pressure, and then the speed with which Hardinge set in motion the work on the choice of site, the acquisition of the villages, the appointment of architects, and the preliminary design. His term would end in 1916, and he was determined to see the capital in place by then. However, delays were caused by the energy and eloquence of Lord Curzon, convinced he knew best; of Fleetwood Wilson, whose wisdom in imperial economics was unparalleled; and of Bradford Leslie, who wanted the capital to create a totally new landscape, one where the river Yamuna would be impounded in a lake, with British Delhi sitting to its right (west) and Indian Delhi to its left (east). The outbreak of war caused further postponements.

Underlying all the discussions was the anxiety to ensure the loyalty of middle-class Indians by conceding some of their political demands while using up India's revenues on building the city. Johnson attributes to the rulers not only the plan to create an iconic capital, but also, in so doing, to promote an empire based on consent. This would account for such an expensive project being pushed through at a time when austerity measures were badly needed. The officials looked forward to a well-adjusted British-Indian middle class bureaucracy governing from Herbert Baker's secretariats, implementing laws passed by the Legislative Council housed in the Viceroy's House. The constitutional reforms of 1919 overtook the completion of that building, and the Legislative Assembly was housed in a building designed by Baker, while over it all presided the benign despot, the viceroy. The participation of the Indians would increase gradually over time, as the country moved towards self-government (which was not a synonym for independence). India would become another dominion, as firmly tied to Britain as were Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. There was the hope that, secure in the empire, Britain's economy would retain its buoyancy despite the increasing competition from Germany and the United States.

It was as well that so much of the work was done by 1914: otherwise the project may well have been shelved.

Roughly half the book deals with the discussion on the location of the new city. This account goes over familiar ground, but two themes are new. First, Johnson contributes the story of a problem area—Paharganj, a densely inhabited neighborhood between the Mughal city and the area marked out for the capital. This neighborhood had grown organically in the previous half century, and it was becoming home to the unacknowledged but vitally necessary domestic staff needed by the sahibs in the new city (157). Second, Johnson offers a very thorough discussion of the acquisition of village land, webbed in a complicated range of tenures, and the relocation of the villagers.

The chief recommendation for Delhi was its historicity. Calcutta was largely a British city; Delhi, by contrast, was scattered with ruined buildings and citadels dating from the twelfth century, and had memories of older ones. A side benefit was that because the government was understandably wary of inadvertently destroying a sacred site, the building activity was paralleled by a remarkably exhaustive listing of all old structures, which has become an invaluable base map. To say the new city made the older monuments just a backdrop and was based on “a gross vulgarisation of the area's history” (7) seems somewhat unfair. This argument could have applied to the northern site, had that been chosen, where the Ridge was a sacred site for the British, a constant reminder of 1857, but not to the southern plain which was selected.