Focusing on the heyday of the East India Company, when traders looking to get rich quick found themselves ruling Bengal by accident, this lively and entertaining book is peopled with colourful characters brought to life through diaries and contemporary accounts. The free and easy world of 18th Century India uncovered here flies in the face of almost every Raj-inspired assumption we have inherited.

An Indian Affair lifts the veil cast by the Raj, and seeks to dispel the imperial myths we grew up with. First, Britain and the East India Company did not set out to conquer or build an empire, but got involved in Indian politics with the active support of powerful Indian allies who used them to mount coups against their unpopular rulers. Neither did Britain civilize India, as the early traders discovered India to be a richer and more sophisticated land than their own. The love for India inspired some, like “Hindoo Stewart”, to ‘go native’, converting to Islam or Hinduism and fully adopting Indian dress, customs and traditions.

It wasn’t all one way traffic – while Britons went East, the first Indian tourists came to Britain, and wrote with astonishment and amusement at the strange habits of the smelly and uncouth natives here. Some settled in Britain, setting up the first curry houses and introducing high society to the joys of bathing. A vogue for all things Indian meant ladies of fashion wore turbans, swapped recipes for curry and vied for dates with the visiting Indian celeb.

The story of these adventurous wideboys and their Indian business and sexual partners was deliberately wiped from history by the Victorian imperialists. Archie Baron’s anecdotes of the fast-living, heavy drinking Brits for whom bribery and corruption were an acceptable way of life provides a rich and often very funny hidden social history. The book ends by charting how the mutual love affair of two sophisticated cultures soured in the first half of the 19th century, as British respect for India turned to contempt, culminating in the Indian Mutiny, the end of Company Rule and the birth of the Raj.

Synopsis
A fresh perspective on Britain's relationship with India, this work suggest that far from being an imperialist objective, it seems the footholds on which india was established as a colony happened by accident rather than by design. This book examines India both before the Raj and throughout. It attempts to show that the British were actually more influenced by India and their traditions than the other way around.