My final years at secondary school in Pune (then Poona) coincided with the first overhaul of history, the official revision which the successful (the word “victorious” seems triumphalist in the face of the Partition) Indian Independence Movement sought to impose as soon as it turned its mind to second-ranking issues such as the content of

school texts. In very general terms, the history of the British in India was revised to rid the texts of the notion that the British were, in the words of Roderick Matthews’ introductory chapter, “a superior and visionary race who gave India what she lacked — honest government, and what she wanted — strong rulers”.
The texts extolling this mission were replaced with fairly “objective” history books but our rabidly or refreshingly nationalist history teacher, an Indian Christian who carried on a running battle with the imperialist-minded Anglo-Indian establishment of the school, introduced some of us to the more new histories characterised now by Matthews as books which “claimed that the British cheated and dissembled their way across the subcontinent in search of plunder, that they were simply more violent and perfidious than any other visitor to India — ever — and were only able to defeat the native population with the help of traitors who engineered a series of betrayals”.
The definition of historical objectivity is subject to constant change. It is commonly said that victors write histories. The revision of history, even with regime-changes as democratic or routine as the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party to replace a Congress government in Delhi, occasions revisionism. Sauce for the goose becomes source for propaganda.
In The Flaws in the Jewel, we have a history of British India which rejects both the white man’s burden and the planned plunder theses. Matthews is an English historian who starts from scratch having travelled and worked in India (albeit on projects unrelated to historical writing, such as recording music with a Mumbai girl-band) and witnessed all the clichés about and boasts of the country in the 21st century: that India is a nuclear power, a robust if messy democracy, an economy on the verge of superpower status, a software valley of achievement — and all the rest. It doesn’t escape his notice that there are still vast disparities between the rich and poor, some of whose origins can be traced back in time. The progress of India, democratically and economically, since Independence is proof enough for Matthews that the pre-Second World War myths about Indians being unable to govern themselves should be dismissed as shameful nonsense.
The Flaws in the Jewel sets out to determine, from this fresh perspective, how a very small trading nation became an imperial power dominating a subcontinent. What did the “British” (he points out that the Act of Union which created the nation called Britain came about a century after the East India Company ventured out) think about what they were doing? To what extent did they “run” the country? How did British rule change India?
Matthews sets out to write and brilliantly presents an analytical rather than a detailed narrative history of British rule. The origins of European arrival in India may be well known but here, in a few pages, Matthews sums up the events of Anglo-French rivalry in India and then in an insightful and fresh analysis sums up why the French under Dupleix and Bussy did not succeed in achieving what Robert Clive achieved for the East Indian Company.
Bussy’s forces were put to the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad and fought his enemies for him. Bussy relegated himself to the role of loyal courtier whereas Clive first defeated Siraj-ud-Daula and then relinquished titular power but was able to command real and revenue-gathering authority.
Another factor was the difference between the centrality to Bengal of Calcutta and the marginal value of the French settlement of Pondicherry to Hyderabad. And then, as Matthews regularly alludes to events and changes in Britain and Europe to point out and give substance to their effect on India’s fortunes, the Napoleonic conquests in Europe caused the British to strengthen their sea power and blockade the ports and military mobility of France.
The Flaws in the Jewel, in an accessible and unique analysis, divides the British sojourn in India into four periods: Greed, Scorn, Fear and Indifference. The case for such a division is skilfully argued — from the fact that the East India Company set out to sell anything that Indians would buy and, by the time Clive forced his way into history, realised that woollen blankets were not going to make them a fortune and the fastest way to get money was to take it through the taxation of the client state of Bengal — protection money. Conquest and the dependency of Indian states and rulers led to the period of Scorn and the age of the Nabobs and Memsahibs; replaced by Fear when the Company Bahadur’s own mercenaries mutinied in 1857.
In writing about Partition, around which myths and a miasma of conjecture and conspiracy have grown, Matthews with no axe to grind but with a will and an intellectual weed-killer, gives us a succinct summary and analysis of events.
If there is one flaw in The Flaws in the Jewel, it is the assumption that the reader has already, in some previous account of events, met the players and protagonists, the captains and the kings. That being said it is very refreshing to have an English historian concentrate on facts, analysis, personalities (there is a compelling chapter on George Nathaniel Curzon) and the sweep of events rather than on reproducing a mawkish amalgam of fact and fiction decorated with tattle about cuisine and concubinage.
In its penultimate chapter, The Flaws in the Jewel plays the game of historical “what if?” Matthews poses questions such as, “What if Clive had succeeded at his first attempt at suicide?” The game is not frivolous or fictional but fits well into the analysis that The Flaws in the Jewel gives us of the balances of personalities, power and probability.
The conclusions the book presents us with are well borne out by the arguments that precede. Here’s just one of them: “The double standards and hypocrisies of imperial thinking were real enough, and powerful enough, to dazzle and bemuse the Empire’s servants as well as its subjects. Weak though it was, the Raj had the power to fool Lord Curzon into believing its own myths about beneficence, omnipotence and permanence. But the British would never have submitted to the sort of government they meted out to Indians. This is the essential asymmetry at the heart of imperialism, and why it could never go further than it did”.