The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 (Vintage)

William Dalrymple has done it again and I thank my friend, Mairead, who first introduced me to his writing. This book describes in amazing detail the events leading up to, during and then following the Delhi uprising of 1857. Of all the books I have read by this author, this one has left me the most changed. Shattered. Written by one who loves India as we can sense from some of his other books, this one documents the bad decisions, arrogant attitudes and blind stupidity that set the stage for an uprising by people who had truly been "trashed" by Empire building individuals. The detail of this book is incredible and the references at the back of the book are massive in number. The personal details of those English who did and did not escape the traumas of the uprising are moving, in the extreme. As are the details of those who suffered as the British returned to punish all and sundry who happened to be in their way as they fought back to take Delhi and change it forever. One cannot read this book without holding a different view of "the Mother Country" which I have loved for decades, but now hold at a little more arms length! To think of where the wealth of the conqueror has come from is truly confronting and for the first time in my life I start to see the value of my own country moving to Republic status. The author does help salvage some respect for Justice and truth in those who were left or sent to mop up after the total bloodbath that was Britain's revenge for the uprising. Having visited India several times I can see positives that have been embraced from the time Britain spent as conquering rulers. This book has set me a goal of visiting Delhi with a friend of mine from India as I want to stand where thousands stood and were massacred as a result of bad government and strong ideological differences. COVID permitting that will be next year. This is not a book for the faint hearted. It is a book that will change you. It is a masterpiece.

Neither William Dalrymple nor 'The Last Mughal' need another positive review after all the prior accolades they have received. This 2006 work continues the amazing metamorphosis of a travel writer into a historian. The writing seems effortless, although a tremendous amount of research has been done. Perhaps this is partly due to the author's passion for the world of which he writes, but it also must be more than that. Greatness is sometimes easy to recognize and yet difficult to describe. The book tells of the last emperor at the time of the Indian rebellion of 1857. In the final days of the dynasty real power had been ceded to the British, but the emperor was allowed to remain as a figurehead. In preceding centuries the descendants of Islamic conquerors ruled partly by consensus, and a degree of religious freedom existed between Muslims and Hindus. The empire and its court were responsible for a great body of architecture and literature that flourished up to the time of its demise. Many earlier British settlers had adapted to local customs and culture, intermarrying and in some cases converting to Islam. In the mid 19th century a wave of Christian evangelism became prevalent, and efforts were made to promote the conversion of native religions. This culminated in a military rebellion when indigenous troops under British command were ordered to trespass religious taboos, such as traveling overseas, mixing castes and breaking dietary restrictions. The religious underpinnings of the rebellion were exacerbated by an untimely British decision to end the Mughal line of succession. The ensuing war was the greatest challenge to colonial power since the American Revolution and ultimately resulted in the transfer of East India Company rule to the British crown. After Shah Jafar was captured he was tried for aiding the rebellion, and exiled to live out his remaining years under house arrest in Rangoon, British Burma. This pivotal period of history is delivered in a scholarly but not overly academic manner. It only covers Delhi, the epicenter of the rebellion. Events in Lucknow and Kanpur must be read about elsewhere. The story is told through eyewitness accounts by British and Indian participants. Many of the sources are new, culled from rediscovered archives written in Farsi and Urdu. The research is greatly complemented by the superb storytelling abilities of the author.

For nearly 300 years the Mughals ruled India in addition to what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh but by the 1850s their rule was in a terminal decline. The British East India Company and other colonial forces had eaten away at their power and local governors were virtually independent. The increasingly ambitious British were making plans for remake India in their image and the Mughals were not a part of the plan. In this book William Dalrymple tells the story of Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor as he finds himself thrust into the largest anti-colonial war of the 19th Century the Indian Mutiny/Uprising of 1857. It's a grim story with atrocities and stupidity on both sites. This is not a light read. It is probably the definitive account of of the war drawing on British, Indian and Pakistani records, some never translated before. Diaries, letters and other personal accounts provide a vivid first-hand account. Dalrymple's writing also does not make things easy for the reader, he never says washerman when he can say 'dhobi' , never says police station if he can say 'thana'. He's usually good at defining the Urdu words in context and the Kindle dictionary or his glossary cover most of the rest but the use of Indian terms plus the Victorian terms from many of the accounts make this a bit of a chore to read sometimes. The publisher also put no effort into creating the ebook. For example photos in the print version are, of necessity, in their own section on special paper. But in an ebook there's no reason they can't be placed among the text where they belong in context. Instead they just suddenly appear as a block in the middle of a chapter interrupting the text. I also find it hard to flip to the maps and glossary on an ebook, I might have enjoyed this more on paper. Finally I found the conclusion a bit abrupt. Yes, ending 'The Last Mughal' with the death of the last Mughal makes sense, but another chapter covering the transition from the British East India Company to the British Raj would be help finish the story. Instead there's some overly simplified conclusions mourning the loss of the Mughal's cosmopolitan rule and trying to link the uprising to the rise of Al Qaeda and the September 11th attacks 150 years later. All that being said, this was a great read, an incredible work of scholarship and storytelling and anyone with an interest in India will enjoy it.

Love this narrative of India’s history with colonization Great author

Few can match the literary flair of Dalrymple. His books are always engaging and thoroughly-researched. There is none of the condescending bara-sahib style we usually find in the writings on the Raj. Dalrymple is accurate, balanced, and unbiased. It is always a pleasure to read his works and this book was no exception.

Too crinkly!

This is not, as the title might suggest, a biography of the last Mughal emperor Zafar. It is the story of this Indian King Lear's demise and of the end of Delhi as a great city. It is the story of the end of a dynasty, the Timurids, who had their peak during the time of the tautologically called Akbar the Great, with his tolerant Renaissance style court, and their low point during the time of terrorist Aurangzeb, who ruined the Hindu - Muslim relation for good in India. By the time that this book is about, the Mughals had no real power any more and Delhi was already more a place of the past than a real center of India. British colonial power was fast expanding through military conquests and diplomacy. At the same time colonial power was more and more accompanied by Evangelism. The 'mutiny' started over irritations in the army; native soldiers, mostly Hindus, started a rebellion against their officers. The movement grew to incorporate Muslim jihadists. The movement chose the aging Zafar as their figure head, a role which he filled only reluctantly. It was an odd sort of religious war. A Muslim 'emperor' gets pressed by Hindu soldiers into a rebellion against Christian oppressors. Cohesiveness of the rebellion is broken by the joining of large crowds of Muslim jihadists. The British forces lose large parts of their Hindu manpower as deserters to the rebellion, and make up for it by additional forces recruited among Sikhs and Muslims from the Punjab as well as Pathans and Gurkhas. In the end, 33% of British officer casualties would be classified as 'natives', and 82 % of 'other ranks'! There are no clear distinctive religious or regional front lines between the two sides of the war, which was Britain's largest anti-colonial challenge in the 19th century. Why did the rebels lose the war despite their overwhelming superiority in head count and despite the initial leadership trouble of the British, wich took them to the brink of defeat? Essentially, the rebels had no uniform leadership, no strategy, no concept of logistics, no system of intelligence. Victory was within reach and they did not know it. The book is not the definitive history of the 'Great Mutiny'. I believe Dalrymple is working at that and will need a few decades more. It is a well told story of a part of the larger picture, focused on Delhi and on Zafar. It is based on vast archives from the time, using newspapers, memoirs, diaries, letters, and official documents from British as well as local sources. There is no doubt that Dalrymple is not hiding his anti-colonial and anti-evangelical attitude, as some reviewers here have complained. Well, that is ok for me, I share WD's values if I understand him right.

I read this book with much anticipation. Indeed, I learned quite a bit from this book about the atmosphere in the Indian subcontinent around the time of the 1857 mutiny. The author has done a commendable job of painting a highly sympathetic view of Bahadur Shah Zafar (BSZ), the last Mughal emperor of India. Growing up, I recall reading about the exile of BSZ in Burma, and how prominent Indian freedon fighters, including Subhas Bose, regarded BSZ as the symbol of Indian humiliation under English occupation. To think that the progeny of Akbar, one of the most remarkable rulers in the murky history of monarchy, could be so treated and purposefully humiliated (even if his own imperial power was highly diminished), is to have a glimpse into the deeply racist framework of European colonialism. The stories about the petty British army officials getting "busy hanging your cooks", and other forms of ghastly barbarity, simply echo many other instances of the ability of European colonists to calmly and with grim determination, commit the most cruel and inhuman acts of mass murder and war crimes. The extermination of 14 out of 16 of BSZ's children fills me with deep sorrow for the poet and Sufi devotee that the cruelly deposed emperor really was. The history of the non-European world is chock-full of such acts and worse. Where I am truly disappointed with Mr. Dalrymple's book is his minimization (something the British and their WW2 allies have practised non-stop since August, 1945) of Subhas Bose (India's beloved Netaji), even when the context required, even begged, mention of his name. Thus, he minimally mentions there being an Indian independence army division named after the valiant Rani of Jhansi, Laxmibai. The fact that this division was part of the remarkable Indian National Army (INA), built up almost single-handedly by Subhas Chandra Bose, and, more than exemplifying his astonishing courage and power of leadership, showed him as a visionary leader who valued true ideas of democracy (the ideals of a true, secular state that honored women, minorities, and all faiths)- Mr. Dalrymple chooses to bypass any of this, much the same way that Richard Attenborough did in the film, Gandhi, thirty years ago.