Morris Rossabi

Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China: Crossley, Pamela Kyle, Helen Siu, and Donald Sutton, eds.: Berkeley: University of California Press, 378 pp., Publication Date: January 2006

Nigel Collett, who studied history at Oxford University, and as a professional soldier commanded a Gurkha regiment, has written a splendid biography of General Reginald Dyer and his role in the Amritsar Massacre that took place in the Punjab province of India on April 13, 1919. Collett’s account of Dyer’s life is a much more objective account than the only other biography on Dyer (written by Ian Colvin), which was heavily influenced by Dyer’s wife. General Reginald Dyer, who was himself born in the Punjab, held a condescending view of the Indian population that was typical of the British in India at that time. The post–World War I years in India did not meet India’s expectations politically or economically. This was particularly true of the Punjab province, which contained 7 percent of the population, but had contributed 50 percent of the Indian troops that served in World War I. After the war, the British civil servants, who had left their posts to join the army, returned to oust the Indian subordinates who had replaced them, and carried on as if nothing had happened. The Indians who had served in the military during World War I and been hailed as heroes returned home to find themselves once again relegated to the status of natives. It should have come as no surprise that the violence that shook postwar India was centered in Punjab province. The violence was triggered by the passage of the Rowlatt Acts. These acts were passed by the British to deal with potential terrorism, granting provincial governors the power to intern potential terrorists for an indefinite period of time. The passage of these acts was unnecessary because terrorism was on the decline. Following the victorious conclusion of a war in which India had supported the British, Indian leaders viewed this autocratic legislation as treachery and duplicity and a betrayal of the British promise of reform. On April 10, 1919, in Amritsar in Punjab province, two Indian leaders, Kichloo and Satyapal, were arrested and deported from the district by deputy commissioner Miles Irving. When their followers attempted to gain their release, they were fired on by British troops. Several of their number were killed or wounded, and the enraged mob stormed through Amritsar’s old city, burning British property, murdering several Englishmen, and attacking two Englishwomen. General Reginald Dyer was sent with troops from Jullundur to restore order. Dyer marched fifty soldiers into the Jallianwallah Bagh, a marketplace and garden surrounded by high walls, and ordered them to open fire on a protest meeting consisting of approximately ten thousand unarmed men, women and children without giving any warning. Dyer’s troops continued firing for about ten minutes, until his troops had fired some 1,650 rounds of ammunition into the crowd, leaving approximately 379 identified dead and hundreds more wounded. Dyer was relieved of his command, but when he returned to England many considered him a hero and savior of the Punjab. The Amritsar Massacre turned millions of moderate and loyal Indians into national revolutionaries who would never trust the British Raj again. This pleasant and easy to read book will not only satisfy scholars in the field, but will appeal to a general audience.

The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia: A History of the Struggle for Great Power Among Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese During the Early Middle Ages . By Christopher I. Beckwith. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. xxii, 269 pp.

This narrative history of the Tibetan Empire in Central Asia from about A.D. 600 to 866 depicts the struggles of the great Tibetan, Turkic, Arab, and Chinese powers for dominance over the Silk Road lands that connected Europe and East Asia. It shows the importance of overland contacts between East and West in the Early Middle Ages and elucidates Tibets role in the conflict over Central Asia.