India
The South Asian core of Hindu Civilization; jewel of the British Empire 1858–1947
Also known as: India, Indian, Indians
The South Asian core of Hindu Civilization, jewel of the British Empire from 1858 to 1947, and a major running case in Tragedy and Hope (T&H 15).
Quigley's Framing
Quigley treats India along two lines: as the civilizational core of Hindu Civilization in The Evolution of Civilizations, and as the operational center of the British imperial system from the late eighteenth century onward. The Raj is read as a system in which a small British administrative elite governed a subcontinent of several hundred million through indirect rule, ICS-administered districts, and a princely-state architecture — a system the The Milner Group regarded as the laboratory for all imperial governance.
Strategic Role
The Indian independence process from 1919 to 1947 is one of T&H's set pieces. Quigley reads the partition as a tragedy of both Anglo-American diplomacy and Indian elite politics, and he gives unusual attention to the Round Table reforms, the Government of India Acts, and the wartime negotiations. Post-independence India under Nehru is treated as the leading neutralist state of the early Cold War — neither in the Western camp nor in the Soviet, but with structural ties to the British Commonwealth that the Anglo-American architects worked hard to preserve.
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 15 Quigley
India, the South Asian core of Hindu Civilization, jewel of the British Empire from 1858 to 1947.
- anglo-american-establishment Quigley
The Round Table reforms and the Government of India Acts were the Milner Group's chief Indian project.