Last King in India

Last King in India PDF Author: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849045356
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
The Last King in India is the story of an extraordinary man whose memory still divides opinion sharply today. Was he, as the British described him, a debauched ruler who spent his time with "fiddlers, eunuchs and women' instead of running the kingdom? Or, as most Indians believe, a gifted poet whose works are still quoted today, and who was robbed of his throne by the East India Company? Somewhere in between the two extremes lies a complex character: a man who married over 350 women, directed theatrical events lasting a month, and built a fairytale palace in Lucknow. Wajid Ali Shah was written out of the history books after his kingdom was annexed in 1856. Some even thought he had been killed during the mutiny the following year. But he lived on in Calcutta where he spent the last thirty years of his life trying to recreate his lost paradise. He remained a constant problem for the government of India, with his extravagance, his menagerie and his wives-in that order. For the first time his story is told here using original documents from Indian and British archives and meetings with his descendants.

Last King in India

Last King in India PDF Author: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849045356
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book

Book Description
The Last King in India is the story of an extraordinary man whose memory still divides opinion sharply today. Was he, as the British described him, a debauched ruler who spent his time with "fiddlers, eunuchs and women' instead of running the kingdom? Or, as most Indians believe, a gifted poet whose works are still quoted today, and who was robbed of his throne by the East India Company? Somewhere in between the two extremes lies a complex character: a man who married over 350 women, directed theatrical events lasting a month, and built a fairytale palace in Lucknow. Wajid Ali Shah was written out of the history books after his kingdom was annexed in 1856. Some even thought he had been killed during the mutiny the following year. But he lived on in Calcutta where he spent the last thirty years of his life trying to recreate his lost paradise. He remained a constant problem for the government of India, with his extravagance, his menagerie and his wives-in that order. For the first time his story is told here using original documents from Indian and British archives and meetings with his descendants.

The Last King in India

The Last King in India PDF Author: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones
Publisher: Random House India
ISBN: 8184006306
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
The thousands of mourners who lined Wajid Ali Shah’s funeral route on 21 September, 1887, with their loud wailing and shouted prayers, were not only marking the passing of the last king but also the passing of an intangible connection to old India, before the Europeans came. This is the story of a man whose memory continues to divide opinion today. Was Wajid Ali Shah, as the British believed, a debauched ruler who spent his time with fiddlers, eunuchs and fairies, when he should have been running his kingdom? Or, as a few Indians remember him, a talented poet whose songs are still sung today, and who was robbed of his throne by the English East India Company? Somewhere between these two extremes lies a gifted, but difficult, character; a man who married more women than there are days in the year; who directed theatrical extravaganzas that took over a month to perform, and who built a fairytale palace in Lucknow, which was inhabited for less than a decade. He remained a constant thorn in the side of the ruling British government with his extravagance, his menagerie and his wives. Even so, there was something rather heroic about a man who refused to bow to changing times, and who single-handedly endeavoured to preserve the etiquette and customs of the great Mughals well into the period of the British Raj. India’s last king Wajid Ali Shah was written out of the history books when Awadh was annexed by the Company in February 1856. After long years of painstaking research, noted historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones revives his memory and returns him his rightful place as one of India’s last great rulers.

The Last King in India

The Last King in India PDF Author: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849044082
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Story of Wajid 'Ali Shah, King of the Indian state of Oudh, who was characterized by the British as a debauched ruler who focused on his pleasures rather than ruling, but is seen by Indians as a gifted poet who was robbed of his throne by the East India Company in 1856.

The Last Mughal

The Last Mughal PDF Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408806886
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE DUFF COOPER MEMORIAL PRIZE | LONGLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 'Indispensable reading on both India and the Empire' Daily Telegraph 'Brims with life, colour and complexity . . . outstanding' Evening Standard 'A compulsively readable masterpiece' Brian Urquhart, The New York Review of Books A stunning and bloody history of nineteenth-century India and the reign of the Last Mughal. In May 1857 India's flourishing capital became the centre of the bloodiest rebellion the British Empire had ever faced. Once a city of cultural brilliance and learning, Delhi was reduced to a battered, empty ruin, and its ruler – Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last of the Great Mughals – was thrown into exile. The Siege of Delhi was the Raj's Stalingrad: a fight to the death between two powers, neither of whom could retreat. The Last Mughal tells the story of the doomed Mughal capital, its tragic destruction, and the individuals caught up in one of the most terrible upheavals in history, as an army mutiny was transformed into the largest anti-colonial uprising to take place anywhere in the world in the entire course of the nineteenth century.

The Last King of America

The Last King of America PDF Author: Andrew Roberts
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984879278
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1033

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Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Churchill and Napoleon The last king of America, George III, has been ridiculed as a complete disaster who frittered away the colonies and went mad in his old age. The truth is much more nuanced and fascinating--and will completely change the way readers and historians view his reign and legacy. Most Americans dismiss George III as a buffoon--a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities. The best-known modern interpretation of him is Jonathan Groff's preening, spitting, and pompous take in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway masterpiece. But this deeply unflattering characterization is rooted in the prejudiced and brilliantly persuasive opinions of eighteenth-century revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who needed to make the king appear evil in order to achieve their own political aims. After combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence, award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has uncovered the truth: George III was in fact a wise, humane, and even enlightened monarch who was beset by talented enemies, debilitating mental illness, incompetent ministers, and disastrous luck. In The Last King of America, Roberts paints a deft and nuanced portrait of the much-maligned monarch and outlines his accomplishments, which have been almost universally forgotten. Two hundred and forty-five years after the end of George III's American rule, it is time for Americans to look back on their last king with greater understanding: to see him as he was and to come to terms with the last time they were ruled by a monarch.

The Last King of Earth

The Last King of Earth PDF Author: Andreas A Paris
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1504939395
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Alien thieves planned to use our world to transfer stolen gold powder from a parallel world through teleportation since they could not break through the parallel world’s defense. Their test failed, and four found themselves in a world free of diseases, religions, wars, and reach in gold. They appeared in the middle of a great conspiracy that, unavoidable, stroked against them too. Jason Park, a writer with several critical books against religions, believed that the new world was the world we would have had we not been manipulated with religious doctrines. He is also hoping to find some evidence supporting his theories about the history of gods and men. Martin Cane, a famous solicitor, wishes to know everything about the new world as he found the woman, responsible for their security, very attractive. Suzan Cohen, also a solicitor, beside worrying and missing her husband and her little son, William, wishes to see as much as possible hoping to be able to do some shopping. Reverent Paul Garner, at the St. Michael Church in the little city of Micropolis, wishes to return home, away from that ungodly world. Their education and experience led them into different paths of interests. Their appearance, however, becomes a problem for them as well as for the world government. Agents and murderers are chasing them, and they have no idea about who are friends or enemies. The alien gods were interested in the gold of earth using human slaves to dig it. Today, they use dogmatic religions in order to exercise dominion over the human race. This manuscript is a result of research about the origins of man, history, religions, and mythology.

The Last Kings of Shanghai

The Last Kings of Shanghai PDF Author: Jonathan Kaufman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735224439
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
"In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.

The Last Hindu Emperor

The Last Hindu Emperor PDF Author: Cynthia Talbot
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107118565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
This book traces the genealogy and historical memory of the twelfth-century ruler Prithviraj Chauhan, remembered as the 'last Hindu Emperor of India'.

The Last Raja of West Pakistan

The Last Raja of West Pakistan PDF Author: Debsarkar
Publisher: Quintus
ISBN: 9789383868162
Category : Ambassadors
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
THE LAST RAJA OF WEST PAKISTAN is primarily about the role, policies, politics and decisions of Raja Tridiv Roy, the monarch of the Chakma tribe of Chittagong area, now located in Bangladesh. Covering the period beginning with his coronation as king in 1953 up to the independence of Bangladesh in 1971-72 this book evaluates his decision to stay loyal to Pakistan till the end and contextualizes the political relationship between East and West Pakistan at that time.

The King In Exile

The King In Exile PDF Author: Sudha Shah
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9350295989
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
'An absorbing read. Exhaustively researched and gracefully written, The King in Exile tells a story of compelling human interest, filled with drama, pathos and tragedy... [It] heralds the arrival of a writer of non-fiction who is both uncommonly talented and exceptionally diligent...One of the great merits of [the book] is that it is completely free of jargon and theorizing. It is in essence a family story, centred on five women whose lives were waylaid by history' - Amitav Ghosh in his blog 'The captivity of Burma's last king and the fall of the Konbaung dynasty: a compelling new account' In 1879, as the king of Burma lay dying, one of his queens schemed for his forty-first son, Thibaw, to supersede his half brothers to the throne. For seven years, King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat ruled from the resplendent, intrigue-infused Golden Palace in Mandalay, where they were treated as demi-gods. After a war against Britain in 1885, their kingdom was lost, and the family exiled to the secluded town of Ratnagiri in British-occupied India. Here they lived, closely guarded, for over thirty-one years. The king's four daughters received almost no education, and their social interaction was restricted mainly to their staff. As the princesses grew, so did their hopes and frustrations. Two of them fell in love with 'highly inappropriate' men. In 1916, the heartbroken king died. Queen Supayalat and her daughters were permitted to return to Rangoon in 1919. In Burma, the old queen regained some of her feisty spirit as visitors came by daily to pay their respects. All the princesses, however, had to make numerous adjustments in a world they had no knowledge of. The impact of the deposition and exile echoed forever in each of their lives, as it did in the lives of their children. Written after years of meticulous research, and richly supplemented with photographs and illustrations, The King in Exile is an engrossing human-interest story of this forgotten but fascinating family.