The Last Years of British India, Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1963. Brief summary.

“There is … a place for such studies as that provided by Michael Edwardes in The Last Years of British Rule, where a knowledgeable writer sets out to provide an interpretative narrative based partly on personal experience and partly on a reworking of already published material. Of the many works Edwardes has written on India, this is probably the one most deserving of the attention of the serious student of Indian affairs. While there is little that is new by way of factual information, the story is clearly told, and an attempt is made to explain the motivation of the various participants in the drama…. Edwardcs concludes with the comment that while the primary response of Asia to western imperialism was to demand the political institutions of the West, the secondary, and more significant, was a demand for economic modernization. Up to 1947, he points out, the struggle in India was between two ekes, a British and an Indian, for control of political power. The victorious Indian elite that inherited the machinery of power is now faced with the necessity of instituting sweeping social change. They are thus committed to a task which the British elite attempted in the 1830's and 1850's but abandoned after what they took to be the warning of 1857.” JSTOR: Journal of Asian Studies: Vol. 24, No. 3, p. 541