One of the world's greatest historians shows how Indians appropriated liberalism to argue for rights, representation and a better society.

Preface; Introduction: the meanings of liberalism in colonial India; 1. The social and intellectual contexts of early Indian liberalism, c.1750¿1840; 2. The advent of liberal thought in India: constitutions, revolutions and juries; 3. The advent of liberal thought in India and beyond: civil society and the press; 4. After Rammohan: benign sociology and statistical liberalism; 5. Living as liberals: Bengal and Bombay c.1840¿1880; 6. Thinking as liberals: historicism, race, society and economy, c.1840¿1848; 7. Giants with feet of clay: Asian critics and Victorian sages to 1914; 8. Liberals in the Desh: North Indian Hindus and the Muslim Dilemma; 9. 'Communitarianism': Indian liberalism transformed, c.1890¿1916; 10. Inter-war: Indian discourse and controversy 1919¿1935; 11. Anti-liberalism, 'counter-liberalism' and liberalism's afterlife, 1920¿1950; Conclusion: lineages of liberalism in India; Bibliography.

Professor Sir Christopher Bayly, KB, LittD, FBA, is Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catherine's College. He is currently Director of the Centre of South Asian Studies at Cambridge. He has published works on the history of the city of Allahabad in north India, Indian merchant communities, empire and information in India and the origin of nationality in South Asia. Professor Bayly was awarded the Wolfson Prize in History for 'lifetime achievement' in 2006 and the Royal Asiatic Society's medal in 2008. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Historical Society. He became a trustee of the British Museum in 2008.