Empire made : my search for an outlaw uncle who vanished in British India /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Lost in time for generations, the story of a 19th-century English gentleman in British India--a family mystery of love found and loyalties abandoned, finally brought to light



In 1841, twenty-year-old Nigel Halleck set out for Calcutta as a clerk in the East India Company. He went on to serve in the colonial administration for eight years before abruptly leaving the company under a cloud and disappearing in the mountain kingdom of Nepal, never to be heard from again. While most traces of his life were destroyed in the bombing of his hometown during World War II, Nigel was never quite forgotten--the myth of the man who headed East would reverberate throughgenerations of his family.



Kief Hillsbery, Nigel's nephew many times removed, embarked on his own expedition, spending decades researching and traveling through India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nepal in the footsteps of his long-lost relation. In uncovering the remarkable story of Nigel's life, Hillsbery beautifully renders a moment in time when the arms of the British Empire extended around the world. Both a powerful history and a personal journey, Empire Made weaves together a clash of civilizations, the quest to discover one's own identity, and the moving tale of one man against an empire.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Map: Nigel Halleck's India, 1845 (p. x)
• Timeline (p. xii)
• Prologue (p. xv)
• Part I
• 1 An Empire (p. 3)
• 2 An Education (p. 11)
• 3 Margalla Pass (p. 21)
• 4 A Passage (p. 29)
• 5 A Griffin (p. 36)
• 6 Ghazipur (p. 50)
• 7 A Safe and Prudent Distance (p. 55)
• 8 A Mosque (p. 65)
• 9 An Asiatic Rome (p. 73)
• 10 Patna (p. 81)
• 11 A Folly (p. 85)
• 12 A Policeman (p. 92)
• 13 A Christian Soldier (p. 101)
• 14 Gulzarbagh (p. 108)
• 15 A Conquest (p. 112)
• 16 A Peace (p. 122)
• 17 Bankipore (p. 133)
• 18 A War (p. 137)
• 19 A Giant (p. 143)
• 20 A Crossing (p. 150)
• Part II
• 21 Chandragiri (p. 159)
• 22 A Maharaja (p. 163)
• 23 Kathmandu (p. 172)
• 24 A Prince (p. 184)
• 25 A Welcome (p. 188)
• 26 A Showcase (p. 193)
• 27 Tipling (p. 197)
• 28 A Lark (p. 203)
• 29 A Mutiny (p. 209)
• Part III
• 30 Rosi Bagh (p. 219)
• 31 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (p. 223)
• 32 Lal Durbar (p. 230)
• 33 Now is the Waiting (p. 239)
• 34 Stars of Tears (p. 247)
• A Note on Sources and Further Reading (p. 254)
• Acknowledgments (p. 260)

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

PART 1 1 An Empire The dawn of the nineteenth century, in the second year of his reign over more of humanity than any Englishman had ever ruled before him, Richard Wellesley decided to found a school for imperialists. It was the forerunner of the institution that prepared Nigel for his career in India. None of Wellesley's predecessors as governors general of India would have thought of such a thing. They contented themselves with shoring up "John Company's" trade monopolies in tea and silk and opium ?-- ?attaining sovereignty over Bengal and the Carnatic region, surrounding Madras, through smooth talk, bribery, and, when all else failed, force of arms. For forty years, since the Company's army defeated the troops of the last nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey, its territorial holdings had fluctuated. But the trend, when Wellesley took up residence at Government House in Calcutta in 1798, was toward contraction. It seemed likely that the British footprint in India would be reduced to the environs of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. This prospect delighted the Company's Court of Directors. They had always seen their business as business, not empire building. Looming over them when they met round a horseshoe table at their headquarters in the City of London was an ornate marble chimneypiece adorned with a bas-relief panel, Britannia Receiving the Riches of the East. Yet territorial conquest had brought the Company to the verge of bankruptcy. A loan of £1.5 million from the Treasury kept it afloat, but by no means would it suffice to finance further military adventure. Before Wellesley set sail for India, he was told in no uncertain terms that he must hew most strictly to a policy of non-intervention. Wellesley, a great-great-great-grandfather of Elizabeth II whose portrait hangs today in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace, had other ideas. With the tacit support of Henry Dundas, war secretary under Prime Minister William Pitt, his goal was nothing less than subjection of the entire subcontinent. It was a daunting task, to be sure, one that had proved the undoing of no less a personage than Alexander the Great. But Wellesley seems never to have doubted that he was up to it. He was a haughty Old Etonian whose excessive vanity caused him to wear his medals and decorations even in bed. History, moreover, proved that unification of India into one state was possible. Chandragupta Maurya, a native of Patna, on the river Ganges, had managed it in 322 b.c., founding an empire that lasted for five hundred years and extended beyond the Indus to encompass much of what is now Afghanistan and southeast Iran. A millennium and change later, a Turko-Mongol named Babur ?-- ?who claimed descent from Genghis Khan on his father's side and Tamerlane on his mother's ?-- ?swept down from Central Asia to pick up the pieces; though his Mughal Empire had largely disintegrated by 1750, it lived on in the vicinity of Delhi under an emperor looking for British protection to preserve his dynasty. Less than two years after Wellesley's arrival, he was well on his way to emulating his imperial predecessors. He had already waged three wars on his own initiative, destroying the last pockets of French influence in Mysore and Hyderabad. Most of the subcontinent south of the fifteenth parallel was in British hands, along with Bengal, the lower Ganges, and Bombay. Much of the rest was ripe for the taking. It was largely a matter of securing the loyalty of native princes, who were promised protection from their enemies. Once British troops were stationed near their seats of power, Wellesley bullied the nobles into adopting policies of provincial administration dictated by Calcutta. The East India Company became ruler in all but name. As word of his conquests filtered back to London, the outraged directors issued orders forbidding further expansion. Since these directives were transmitted by sailing ship around the Cape of Good Hope and took as long as four months to reach Government House, they tended to arrive in the afterglow of highly successful campaigns, and Wellesley felt safe in dismissing them as moot. With his brother Arthur ?-- ?later created Duke of Wellington after commanding the armies that defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 ?-- ?he plotted the subjugation of the Maratha Confederacy, a network of Hindu chiefs who had taken advantage of Mughal weakness to gain control of a wide swath of central India, from near Goa, on the Arabian Sea, to Delhi, on the Gangetic Plain. At the same time, in an end run around the Court of Directors, he dispatched another brother, Henry, to London to explain his policies and lobby Parliament for a free hand in pursuing them. For the first time at Westminster, the British presence in India was referred to as "the empire." Among those who liked the sound of it was Prime Minister Pitt, who had come to power in the aftermath of the American War of Independence and saw an opportunity to offset the loss of the thirteen colonies. Lord Grenville, the foreign secretary, also voiced support for Wellesley. But the Court of Directors had friends in high places, too. One was the Prince of Wales, certain to be empowered sooner or later as prince regent, owing to the mental incapacity of his father, George III. He endorsed the Company's position that Wellesley's ambitions could not be realized without the astronomical expense of maintaining what would necessarily constitute the world's largest standing army. Given Bonaparte's seizure of power in France in November 1799, the future king located the more pressing need for military expenditure closer to home. On paper, Henry Wellesley's mission failed. As a matter of form, it was bound to ?-- ?under the terms of the Company's charter, the governor general answered to the Court of Directors, not Parliament. The directors dispatched to Calcutta what Richard Wellesley bitterly termed "a peremptory order to reduce the military strength of the empire." Complaining that he had authorized the buildup of the Company's army only "after consulting all the most experienced officers in India," he threatened to resign. Pure bluster. He had made an empire; he had no intention of letting it go. His Indian campaigns ultimately would annex more territory than all of Napoleon's conquests in Europe. Wellesley was no merchant. He was an aristocrat, and money barely interested him at all. What he wanted was power ?-- ?for himself and for Britain. Acquiring and maintaining power over so many by so few required impressive shows of force. But Wellesley understood the need for effective civil administration as the everyday instrument of power's exercise. As long as the British saw themselves primarily as traders, they had little vested interest in the functioning of law courts or the assessment and collection of taxes or the suppression of religious practices that created unrest in a multi-ethnic society. Once they made the transition to rulers, those things mattered. After deeming "mercantile knowledge" an unnecessary qualification for Company service, Wellesley outlined the enormity of the task ahead: "To dispense justice to millions of people of various languages, manners, usages, and religions; to administer a vast and complicated system of revenue throughout districts equal in extent to some of the most considerable kingdoms in Europe; to maintain civil order in one of the most populous and litigious regions of the world; to discharge the functions of magistrates, judges, ambassadors, and governors of provinces; these are now the duties of the larger proportion of the civil servants of the Company." Excerpted from Empire Made: My Search for an Outlaw Uncle Who Vanished in British India by Kief Hillsbery All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Hillsbery (War Boy) offers a compelling microhistory, personal memoir, and incredibly vivid account of the British Raj and the tumultuous events of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 in this enlightening book. Tracking the life of Nigel Halleck, the author's distant ancestor and a Victorian gentleman from Coventry, England, who "goes out to India," never to return, Hillsbery sets out on a journey in search of his relative's grave, marking the known towns and cities that Nigel inhabited. The narrative moves back and forth between the author's own experiences and a beautifully rich account of Nigel's quest, reconstructed through letters and extensive historical research. In discovering India through Nigel's eyes and later his own, Hillsbery provides readers with a glimpse of his own journey of self-discovery. VERDICT A compelling narrative of the social and spiritual life of 19th-century India. This book can also serve as a resource for anyone researching the themes of homosexuality, the East India Company, the Victorian era, and the Rana dynasty of -Nepal.-Priyanka Sharma, Li Ka Shing Lib., Singapore © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Hillsbery explores the 19th-century disappearance of his distant relative, a man named Nigel Halleck. Born in England, Halleck moved to British Colonial India in 1841 at the age of 20 to work for the powerful East India Company, but left his post and disappeared into the remote reaches of Nepal. Reader Cameron Stewart provides a strong delivery throughout, as the story shifts back and forth between Hillsbery's modern travels and the complex historical narrative detailing the social and political shifts in colonial life during Halleck's era. His upper-crust British accent is a proper match for the subject matter and time period. The weight of the background historical information does require patience and attention on the part of the listener, but Cameron Stewart doesn't miss a beat. When initial hints surrounding the possibility of Nigel's homosexuality build into something more substantive, the author starts to connect to his distant relative on a more personal level, and Cameron Stewart conveys this by loosening his voice to sound more relaxed and personable. Cameron Stewart proves he's a dynamic voice actor with this performance, as he is aptly voices the history, memoir, and adventure components of this multifaceted story. A Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Hillsbery's exploration of what happened to his British uncle who went to India in 1841, never to return, makes achingly vivid how difficult it was to escape one's preordained class and societal expectations in Victorian England. Hillsbery's family didn't talk about Nigel Halleck, (or was talked about in the don't ask any more way people have of referring to families' black sheep). All Hillsbery had was an old brooch Uncle Nigel sent his mother from India and the fact, grudgingly given, that he had gone native and lived out his days in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. There are two narratives here, that of Hillsbery's tracking down clues about what happened over intermittent trips to India spanning decades, and the story of Halleck, who came to Calcutta at 20 years old to serve as a clerk for the East India Company. The latter is written from Halleck's point of view, based on his letters and copious letters and records from contemporaries. Great details abound, both from historical accounts and from Hillsbery's own trips. For example, the young women who did the season in India without finding husbands were called Returned Empties when they arrived back in the UK. Marvelous insights into the British in India, along with a glimpse into gay life. This has a narrative sweep reminiscent of Christopher Hibbert's social histories.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2017 Booklist

Author notes provided by Syndetics

KIEF HILLSBERY is the author of the critically acclaimed novel War Boy . He is a former contributing editor and columnist for Outside magazine and a former writer for Rolling Stone. He lives in Arizona.