Shattered Lands
Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia
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- 179,00 kr
Publisher Description
** THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER **
A Best Book of 2025 for the Financial Times, The Week, Spectator, BBC History Magazine, NPR, History Today, Waterstones and Daunts
'Remarkable … The prose is vivid, the storytelling cinematic' GUARDIAN
A history of modern South Asia told through five partitions that reshaped it.
As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the ‘Indian Empire’, or more simply as the Raj.
It was the British Empire’s crown jewel, a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population and encompassing the largest Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian communities on the planet. Its people used the Indian rupee, were issued passports stamped ‘Indian Empire’, and were guarded by armies garrisoned in forts from the Bab el-Mandeb to the Himalayas
And then, in the space of just fifty years, the Indian Empire shattered. Five partitions tore it apart, carving out new nations, redrawing maps, and leaving behind a legacy of war, exile and division.
Shattered Lands, for the first time, presents the whole story of how the Indian Empire was unmade. How a single, sprawling dominion became twelve modern nations. How maps were redrawn in boardrooms and on battlefields, by politicians in London and revolutionaries in Delhi, by kings in remote palaces and soldiers in trenches.
Its legacies include civil war in Burma and ongoing insurgencies in Kashmir, Baluchistan and Northeast India, and the Rohingya genocide. It is a history of ambition and betrayal, of forgotten wars and unlikely alliances, of borders carved with ink and fire. And, above all, it is the story of how the map of modern Asia was made.
Sam Dalrymple’s stunning history is based on deep archival research, previously untranslated private memoirs, and interviews in English, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Konyak, Arabic and Burmese. From portraits of the key political players to accounts of those swept up in these wars and mass migrations, Shattered Lands is vivid, compelling, thought-provoking history at its best.
** Shattered Lands is being translated into four languages (Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam and Hindi), and was shortlisted for the Eastern Eye Award for History, the Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman and Atta Galatta prizes. **
‘A stunning achievement. Shattered Lands reframes the story of South Asia with rare empathy and elegance, breathing life into the legacies of the partitions that shape a quarter of our world today’ THANT MYINT-U
‘This richly researched, vividly written book tells the story of how a colossal and powerful Empire was broken up into many distinct nation-states…An impressive debut by a gifted and very energetic young writer’ RAMACHANDRA GUHA
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Dalyrmple debuts with an immersive chronicle of the final days of the British Raj that explores how a region previously connected by trade and culture—including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and much of what is now considered the Middle East and Southeast Asia—ended up fractured into starkly divided countries, dashing the dream of a united "Asiatic federation" held by some independence movements. As the British withdrew, they established new borders that formalized major divisions of religion and ethnicity, cutting through minority communities and further exacerbating tensions; in particular, they supported Hindus over Muslims on racist grounds, favoring a Hindu-led Indian National Congress. Dalyrmple illustrates the Raj's administrative disarray ahead of the Great Partition, including many delays, with definitive plans released only after independence to "divert odium from the British." Firsthand accounts illustrate a whirlwind of political stumbles and scandals, ranging from the absurd, as when British troops abandoned an Arab state in modern-day Yemen by feigning dinner plans and a beach day, to the unsettling, such as the founder of the Indian National Army courting Nazi support. Most affecting are accounts from survivors of partition's chaotic violence, such as a Hindu student kept alive during the Great Calcutta Killings by Muslim neighbors who themselves "murdered an innocent passer-by in broad daylight." The result is a compassionate and gripping look at the far-reaching consequences and human costs of partition.
