3 Review(s)

About The Book : The Nizam is “the greatest Mahommedan power in India.” Yet any information of this power is not only fragmentary, but is scattered through works many of which are questionable for accuracy in various respects, if not utterly unreliable from the prejudiced channel of communication. Mount Stuart Elphinstone’s India, and Grant Duff’s History of the Mahrattas, are about the most liberal, certainly the very best authorities; but these largely repeat, or represent accurately, what had previously been published, with, of course, not a little additional information. It were well now to inquire, as Sir Henry Russell did in his evidence before a Select Committee of the House of Commons on the 19th April, 1832,—“In what character, and for what purpose, do we appear in India? ”Sir Henry himself gives the reply: “If we are to act as mere philanthropiste, and to consider only how we cart best improve the moral and political condition of the Indian population, we may govern them as we would govern one another, and the sooner we can make them wise enough and strong enough to expel us from the country, the greater will have been our success. If we go as subjects of England, for the extension of English power and the improvement of English interests, a different course must be pursued. About The Author : Henry George Briggs (1824–1872) was an English merchant, traveller, and orientalist. Henry George Briggs, son of Henry Briggs, was born in Bombay on 20 October 1824. He travelled in South Africa in 1843; in China in 1845; and settled in Bombay in 1846, in the office of Briggs & Co. He served in the Bombay Secretariat. He went to Karachi: edited, in 1854, the Sindian, and, in 1855, the Sind Kossid, both long since defunct. He became, in 1856, Assistant Secretary at Bombay to the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. He was Secretary to the Bombay Municipality, 1860–2. He was a merchant and agent at Bombay and Hingolee in 1863. His firm failed in the share mania of 1865; he travelled in Gujarat, and settled in Calcutta, entering the Public Works Department there. In May 1872, he went again to Bombay; he died there on 4 July 1872. Works: Cities of Gujdrashtra (1849), a book of travel in Gujarat, containing curious information gleaned from travellers in India: of whose rare works he made an extensive collection.The Parsis or Modern Zardushtians (1852), a work which had been superseded by 1906.The Nizam, His History and Relations with the British Government (1861), a valuable work containing special information.