Word: gilmour
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...myth? Revisionist historians have recently accused the imperial civil servants of sins ranging from selfishness to incompetence in dealing with famines. Now, British historian David Gilmour has risen to the defense of the ICS with his new book, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj. Gilmour has already written monumental biographies of two of the most controversial figures of the Raj?the writer Rudyard Kipling and the viceroy Lord Curzon. His latest work aims to rebut the revisionist attacks and provide a more flattering group portrait of the men who ruled...
...David Gilmour...
...Gilmour does not spend an excessive amount of the book devoted to the schooling required for the ICS. In fact, the meat of the book explores the intricacies of actually governing India...
With three quarters of the British civilians on active service stationed in the provinces of Bengal, Bombay, and Madras, much of the British experience concerns the frontier, where their Haileybury training did not come in handy. As Gilmour notes, “a raja and his court of noblemen were likely to be less impressed by a taciturn scholar from Oxford than by an ebullient officer who was, like them, a sportsman...
...stories, like Clarke’s, are relatively interesting and Gilmour has a fresh wit about him that is matter-of-factly appropriate...