The history of what is now India stretches back thousands of years, further than that of nearly any other region on Earth. Yet, observes historian John Keay, most historical work on India concentrates on the period after the arrival of Europeans, with predictable biases, distortions and misapprehensions. One, for example, is the tendency to locate the source of social conflict in India's many religions--to which Keay retorts, "Historically, it was Europe, not India, which consistently made religion grounds for war".

Taking the longest possible view, Keay surveys what is both provable and invented in the historical record. His narrative begins in 3000 B.C. with the complex, and little understood, Harappan period, a time of state formation and the development of agriculture and trade networks. This period coincides with the arrival of Indo-European invaders, the so-called Aryans, whose name, of course, has been put to bad use at many points since. Keay traces the growth of subsequent states and kingdoms throughout antiquity and the medieval period, suggesting that the lack of unified government made the job of the European conquerors somewhat easier--but by no means inevitable. He continues to the modern day, his narrative ending with Indian-Pakistani conflicts in 1998.

Fluently told and well documented, Keay's narrative history is of much value to students and general readers with an interest in India's past and present. --Gregory McNamee

2007-08-11 Very detailed but hard work

There is a staggering amount of detail in this book and the scope, in terms of time period and subject matter covered (e.g. religion, politics etc), is huge. The text in both the hardback and paperback is, as a consequence, rather small.

Unfortunately, I found much of the content rather uninteresting, as it extensively recounts the history of dynasty after dynasty that I was not particularly interested in. There is a good deal of complexity to a number of the topics covered, e.g. development of the Hindu religion, and the authors style is not at all suited to this. Keay's writing is, at times, unnecessarily convoluted and verbose. Some may appreciate the challenge of interpreting this, but I felt that it was rather pretentious. When faced with such difficult subject matter the last thing I wanted was to have to re-read sentences in an attempt to decipher material that could easily have been delivered in a more straightforward fashion.

My interests were far better catered for by the superb 'India after Gandhi' by Ramachandra Guha, but if the history of the subcontinent from the beginning is what you're after then this is probably the book for you. Just bear in mind that it is no small undertaking.