British parliamentary papers relating to India 1662-1947 Vol.3

Volume 3 : Acts of parliament and command papers

For almost three hundred years, British parliamentary papers, with their reports, statistics and a wealth of supporting documentation, have recorded every facet of British public life, both domestic and international. The acts of parliament have similarly mirrored British life in their case for over seven hundred years. While the information they contain is of enormous value to researchers in numerous academic disciplines, British parliamentary papers are not easy to work with. They run to thousands of volumes, their contents are not arranged according to subject matter, and only a few rudimentary guides to the papers exist.

The present work removes these problems in respect of material about India. It brings together for the first time a complete listing of British parliamentary papers and acts of parliament relating to British involvement on the sub-continent. Together, these documents contain an astonishing range and depth of material on the British raj. They are, in effect, the working papers of Empire, and they offer valuable insights into the thinking of the men who directed that Empire and into the processes by which its Indian policy was developed. Every parliamentary paper is listed, both alphabetically and chronologically. Command papers - the key policy documents of the government of the day - are treated separately, while a fourth section lists all British acts of parliament relating to India from the East India Company Bankruptcy Act of 1662 to the Indian Independence Act of 1947.

This work will serve to make British parliamentary papers more accessible to the researcher and the student and, hopefully, will lead to a greater appreciation of the wealth of material they contain on virtually every policy and operational aspect of British rule in India. As with one of the author's previous books, Documents and Speeches on the Indian Princely States, British Parliamentary Papers Relating to India. 1662-1947 is destined to become a standard reference work on source material for Indian history.