Rumbold, Algernon, Watershed in India, 1914-1922, 1979

“By 1914 the British in India seemed almost Olympian. But a few years later, after constitutional alteration and Gandhi's initial mass civil disobedience campaign, India was on the road to independence. Rumbold explains this remarkable change in terms of modified public opinion, both in Britain and in India; severe economic pressure; "the difficulty of a Western democracy applying to a dependency principles of government alien to its own philosophies"; but, most of all, to timid, weak government in India…. characterizations help weave a spell in which personality clashes serve as ideological standpoints.... He has used India Office documentation extensively, the readily available private papers frequently, recent secondary works selectively, and Indian archival material not at all. As he sets out to analyze ''the management of British policy in India" … the point must be made immediately that Delhi's detailed policy discussions—carried on through notes, minutes, and memoranda—are not nearly so well covered as those in London. The "management," in fact, is heavily London-oriented…. Over-reliance on a single source becomes crucial in Rumbold's delineation of the problem faced in India. For him, the essential requirement was for firm government to assert itself over a rudimentary political movement…. Watershed In India, then, is not a historian's history. But it is one of the most entertaining works available on modern Indian history. Students and general readers could do much worse than read it for atmosphere and ethos before moving to more erudite offerings on the period and its aftermath.” BRIAN SIODDART, in JSTOR: Journal of Asian Studies: Vol. 39, No. 3, p. 63