The British in India is one of the most extraordinary encounters in modern history. For 200 years a small, highly advanced European state ruled a vast, ancient and complex civilization, until one day, Aug. 15, 1947, the British went home, leaving behind the English language, parliamentary democracy and cricket, among other things. They took a good deal from India as well, in taxes, loot and the exploitation of a protected market. But that was the normal colonial experience. What made India different was its civilizational scale and complexity -- and the ambitions of the colonizer.

As Lawrence James's breezy "Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India" shows, from the start the British ruled India with two very different aims: plunder and civilization. The first is well expressed by a London pamphleteer in 1773, by which time the East India Company had established itself as the rising military force in India: "Indians tortured to disclose their treasure; cities, towns and villages ransacked and destroyed, jaghires and provinces purloined; Nabobs dethroned, and murdered, {these} have found the delights and constituted the religions of the Directors and their servants."

That same year the House of Commons chided the company for what a Whig leader called "rapine and oppression" and asked that it administer its territories with "the principles and spirit of the British constitution." It also established an independent supreme court in Calcutta and made illegal the personal bribery and corruption that had characterized British methods until then (and that, nevertheless, continued for almost another century).

The early years of British rule were marked by frontier battles and constant politicking. The men who conquered India were wily adventurers who bullied, bribed and beat up their foes. They also looted, pillaged and plundered, a source of great embarrassment to many statesmen at home, who wished to see British rule as benign, even enlightened.

These two impulses struggled with one another for much of Britain's 200-year reign over India. They also provided competing explanations of events. British histories of India, written mostly before its independence in 1947, were usually stories of civilization. Indian histories of the Raj, on the other hand, mostly written after 1947, have been tales of plunder. Mr. James has written his book with a view to correct the imbalance. The result is a good read; a comprehensive, well-written account that handles masses of material ably -- though the book has an irritatingly bad index. Its British -- even pro-British -- perspective is intriguing and refreshing, but it does not add much by way of original analysis.

Perfect Timing

How, in the first place, did an army of less than 250,000 conquer a continent of 150 million? Mr. James gives a thorough and fascinating account of the establishment of British rule in India, with an easy command of military history (which is his forte). Britain arrived on the scene at the perfect time, as the Mughal Empire was languishing in its own decadence. It used its army efficiently and with logistical skill, usually defeating larger Indian forces.

Early and spectacular military success produced "lessons" that were repeated and exaggerated for two centuries. First, while British pluck and daring certainly helped, in the army's mythology this became the crucial -- and essentially racial -- explanation for its success. More important, it became a mantra that Britain had gained its dominion in India by force and could maintain it only by force. This was not actually true. The key to Britain's initial success in India had been its ability to get -- mostly through bribery -- Indian allies and collaborators at every level of society, from princes to foot soldiers. Once established, British rule similarly rested on a patchwork of alliances and treaties. All of this required bullying, appeasing, cajoling and bribing, in other words, diplomacy of a very high order. But in a colonial venture, military concerns always dominate.

By the middle of the 19th century, India had become the jewel in the crown of Great Britain. It had also become the greatest social engineering experiment of its time. For liberals, like Thomas Macaulay, British rule in India was one of the highest achievements of English civilization. Macaulay wanted Britain to bring science, Christianity and enlightenment to India. This meant outlawing many traditional practices, encouraging religious conversion and contesting ancient superstitions.

Opposition to these ideas came from British conservatives, who -- especially after the French Revolution -- looked with suspicion on efforts to remake an organic society on rational principles. Burke had argued for a gentle form of rule in India. Wellington had even opposed the abolition of slavery in that country. When the Mutiny of 1857 broke out, Benjamin Disraeli argued that it was the result of policies that had tried to transform India too much and too fast, overturning ancient customs and offending religious sensibilities.

Visions of Greatness

But conservative imperialism could never become the ruling ideology for the Raj because few Britons actually believed it. By the late 19th century, Britain was the richest and most technologically sophisticated country in the world, swelling with visions of its own greatness. How could it look upon a poor, rural peasant society like India's and maintain some kind of civilizational "neutrality"?

As Britain towered over the world, another shift in the political landscape defined the rest of its rule -- the rise of Indian nationalism. Schooled in English liberal ideals, Indians began asking for more individual liberty and a greater voice in their own affairs. They also began to think of themselves as Indians rather than Marathas, Rajputs or Brahmins. The Raj had created national unity, and European ideas about nationalism breathed life into this creature. The British never really came to grips with this development and for its last half-century the Raj was about neither plunder nor civilization but rather survival.

Conservatives abandoned their advocacy of soft-imperialism and became ultra-hawks, their views put in extreme form in the fulminations of Winston Churchill. Liberals were dismayed that every concession only fueled the fires of Indian nationalism. The accommodating spirit of the founders of British India gave way to a hard, military-bureaucratic logic. Mr. James hints at several missed opportunities to reshape the Raj. After World War I, in which all Indian political parties supported the war effort, London could have given India dominion status -- already granted to Canada and Australia -- and history might have taken a very different and less bloody course. But in the end, Britain could not abide the notion that Indians could be like Australians. They were, after all, "niggers."

In the most intriguing book written by an Indian after independence, Nirad C. Chaudhuri's "Autobiography of an Unknown Indian," the author argues that the problem with the British in India was not that they were too arrogant but rather that they were not arrogant enough. They never really believed in their civilizing mission. They never fully thought of themselves as the new Romans, who could create a new civilized world made up of different castes and creeds. Instead they quickly fell into a petty arrogance of race, retreating into their army cantonments and all-white clubs with signs that read "Indians and Dogs Not Allowed." Looking back at what they achieved, one can only wonder what India (and the world) would have looked like if, at their prime, the British had been truly imperial.

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