The unravelling of the former, seemingly impregnable, colonial empires must be accounted one of the principal sagas of the twentieth century. Aside from some residual episodes the generation of powerful indigenous nationalist forces was almost invariably central to this. Their growth has frequently been described. A good deal of attention has been given too to the courses adopted by the imperial powers. The heart of the whole story lay, however, in the multiplicity of interactive struggles between the one and the other. In many instances these have not had the close attention which they warrant.

The character which these struggles displayed varied greatly. On the one hand they amounted to little more than robust and determined elite negotiation. On the other they could relapse into bloody and implacable colonial war. In each instance the form which the conflict took, so it is argued here, principally derived from a notably close and symbiotic relationship between the nationalist thrust involved and the particular imperial posture which it then confronted.

This book is designed to cast a sharper beam of light on arguably the most momentous of all these struggles, in India against the British. In general its characteristics fell somewhere near the middle of the range of alternatives which can be traced. Since in a way that has not been widely appreciated it was contemporaneous with three other nationalist-imperialist struggles elsewhere in Asia which displayed some very different characteristics, not only does its consideration in this wider context pose a number of comparative questions, but to an altogether new degree serves to highlight its distinctive nature.