List price: $20.00 (that's 30% off!)
List price: $18.95 (that's 30% off!)
The only setback is that it is awkwardly expensive. Many potential buyers would be enticed by cheaper alternatives: there are lots of them out there.
Clive was given a number of military commands when England had a number of small outposts on the Indian Coast. The armies were for protection mainly against the French who were also competing in the area. India at that time was broken into a number of independent states which each had vast armies far outnumbering the English.
The men commanded by Clive were armed with smooth bore muskets and some cannon. The muskets had a slow firing rate and had a very short range. The armies he fought had some artillery. In each battle Clive was outnumbered by huge amounts. It was common for him to face odds of over ten to one in each battle. Despite the fact that he had no marked technological superiority over his opponents as later imperialists did Clive won each battle and conquered a country that was bigger than France. This book does not really explain how except to suggest that the armies he faced were not efficient combat units. Something which would in the face of what happened seem obvious.
Despite the continual mystery of why Clive kept winning the book follows his campaigns and his problems with the English government. The reality is that Clive allowed the English to recover from the loss of the American Colonies and to recover as an Imperial Power. His victories unlike that of Napoleon did not fade away after a short time but allowed England to dominate India for two hundred years. He clearly was one of the most important figures of his age. Whilst readable the biography tends not to scratch the surface and give us the nuts and bolts of the process.
This book is a good introduction to the life of Clive and the beginnings of the British Raj, but I was left with several important questions unanswered. Clive's lfe was so action-packed that condensing it into under 400 pages means that inevitably rounded analysis has to give way to mere descriptions of events. For example, why did Governor Saunders of Fort St David agree to Clive's request to strip the garrison of all but 100 men to give Clive men to attack Arcot when the plan was "irresponsible in the extreme"? And what evidence had the author for stating that Warren Hastings "was, like Clive, incredibly popular among the Indian population in his lifetime"?
This exposes another weakness of this account - the Indian viewpoint is never really examined (apart from the Bengal famine, the effect of British policies on ordinary Indians is never alluded to, and the Indian Nawabs are portrayed either as unbalanced despotic bogeymen or pawns on the Europeans' chess table). What was interesting was the ambiguity of the British political establishment to Clive, although one got the feeling that they were more disturbed about the methods than the results.
I short, this book is a good introduction to Clive's life, but I felt the need to read more widely on the British Raj to get a more balanced view.
This is a wonderful book, both for Jefferson fans and gardeners. Since I'm both, it is doubly wonderful. You can read Jefferson's records of what he planted when, his observations about all sorts of garden topics, his letters to friends and family about gardening, and see the voluminous records he kept about all things horticultural.