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b i o g r a p h y & l e t t e r s did they go wrong? A large part of the outcome, O’Shaughnessy argues, lay in the fact that they undertook an impossible task. Political leaders in 1775 at first underestimated the military challenge. Early fighting dispelled the notion that British regulars could suppress American resistance with ease. The Battle of Bunker Hill, though a victory, showed that the colonists were more than the ragtag mob many in London had assumed. After Washington’s siege of Boston forced William Howe to evacuate the city by sea, the British lost their only mainland colonial foothold. Defeating the rebellion now involved the much larger task of conquering America rather than just defending territory and suppressing unrest. Britain never had the ground or naval forces required to conquer and hold America. Politicians and generals tried to accomplish too much with too little, gambling on a quick victory through seaborne mobility and the skill of trained regulars. Howe won successive victories, starting with his attack on New York in 1776, but fell short of destroying Washington’s army and compelling Americans to accept terms. Burgoyne, in his campaign the following year, tried to break the stalemate by dividing New England from the other colonies, but that ended with defeat at Saratoga. Howe’s Pennsylvania campaign only extended British lines and kept him from aiding Burgoyne. French intervention in 1778 sparked a wider conflict that drew resources from America into a contest for imperial survival largely fought elsewhere. Neither the government nor its commanders bridged the gap between ends and means, but the final outcome fell short of catastrophe. Yorktown decided the contest in America, but Rodney’s naval victories in the Caribbean salvaged Britain’s position in the West Indies. Losing America left Britain’s global interests largely intact, despite political upheaval at home during the early 1780s. Unmaking one empire freed Britain to form another over the coming decades. O’Shaughnessy challenges entrenched stereotypes while capturing the war from various British perspectives. He also underlines the accomplishment of Washington and other Americans in their victory. Greatness, after all, hardly lies in achieving the inevitable. To order this book for £24, see the Literary Review Bookshop on page 10 c h a r l e s a l l e n Dancing Queen Farzana: The Tempestuous Life and Times of Begum Sumru By Julia Keay (HarperCollins India 328pp £13.18 Kindle) One of the Indian subcontinent’s many paradoxes is that its menfolk still tend to regard the female sex as subservient to them while at the same time idolising women who refuse to play second fiddle. It explains the extraordinary hold that some women politicians have over the popular electorate, from Sonia Gandhi to Mamata Banerjee in Bengal, Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh and Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu – all strongminded, determined women who brook no nonsense from those who touch their feet as quasi-goddesses. The subject of this book was one such woman, Farzana, better known as the Begum Sumru. Among the titles bestowed on her by the Mogul emperor were ‘Jewel among Women’, ‘Most Beloved Daughter’ and ‘Pillar of the State’. Granted, Mogul emperors tended to dish out honorifics as a host might hand round canapés at a drinks party – particularly in hard times, when titles cost nothing – but Begum Sumru certainly deserved her share. She was a temptress in her youth, a warrior queen in her widowhood, seemingly a witch in her old age, but, above all, a fighter and survivor. Two hundred years ago Delhi and its surrounds were in a mess. For six centuries the city and the ruler at its heart had been the axle around which India turned. But the death in 1707 of Emperor Aurangzeb, last of the Mogul strongmen, created a vacuum at the centre into which successive waves of Persian, Afghan, Sikh, Maratha and Pindari warlords poured, together with all their hangers-on, every man believing himself a king in the making or a kingmaker. Northern India was turned into ‘one enormous battlefield’, as one of Julia Keay’s refreshingly diverse contemporary sources puts it: ‘As soon as the season permits warfare, more than fifty armies launch campaigns to defend or attack, or sometimes just to pillage, friends and enemies alike.’ Delhi was always the prize and in consequence it was reduced to a charnel house, its nominal ruler a pathetic, blinded creature who clung to a throne robbed of all its jewels as a shipwrecked mariner might cling to a rudderless raft. At the same time France failed in its bid to match the British East India Company with its own Compagnie des Indes Orientales in south India, releasing large numbers of seasoned military men onto the freelance market. The best of them had come through the latest European wars and their leadership skills were eagerly sought after by one or other of the many contending powers. One such freelance was Walter Reinhardt of Alsace, who changed his name to Somers – probably to make himself more acceptable to his new employers in Calcutta. Like so many of his fellow mercenaries, Reinhardt had about as much integrity as George MacDonald Fraser’s delightfully appalling Harry Flashman. One early act of duplicity was to switch sides and invite some forty British prisoners of war to dine with him before having them slaughtered, so earning for himself the sobriquet ‘the butcher of Patna’, and possibly the darker title of ‘Sombre’, the name by which he became best known. In 1765 Reinhardt offered his brigade of renegades to a Jat ruler intent on plundering Delhi. Like Flashman, he had an eye for a dangerous woman and in Delhi he found exactly that in the form of a 15-year-old dancing girl. Born in about 1750 to a concubine forced to fend for herself after the death of her master, Farzana had likewise to fight for her life. She became a nautch girl, nominally a dancing girl but with the usual ‘extras’, of which she evidently offered plenty. Reinhardt fell for her, paid for her in gold and installed her in his palace at Sardhana, outside Agra, where she very quickly worked her way to the top of his harem’s pecking order. But that is only the opening chapter of Begum Sumru’s story. She was faithful Literary Review | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 4 12
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b i o g r a p h y & l e t t e r s to her brutish, elderly husband for the 13 years of their marriage, but when he died of a ‘neglected head-cold’, bequeathing everything to a feeble-minded son by a previous relationship and leaving her unprovided for, she acted with commendable acuity by attaching herself to her late husband’s second-in-command. He and all his officers then petitioned her to take charge of their army, which suggests she had a lot more than just allure to commend her. ‘Beneath the muslin lurked stays of steel’, writes Keay, and there is no doubt that Farzana was steely in her resolve and ruthless if need be. Two of her slave girls accused of setting fire to her Delhi town house and making off with some property were caught, whipped until senseless and then buried alive in a pit outside her tent. But the fact is that Farzana played what few cards she held with Machiavellian skill. She went on to become a minor but significant political force in northern India, confidante of the Mogul emperor, ruler of a small but remarkably progressive principality, and, after some cunningly executed twists and turns, faithful ally of the new power in the land, the East India Company. She was also, by some accounts, a witch. It is a complicated tale but a good one, well told by an author with a lightness of touch that makes it a delight to read. Julia and John Keay were partners in history and biography for over three decades, and one of their joint strengths was their ability to set down sometimes unpalatable facts without the bias that mars much of South Asian historiography today. Another was their shared affection for the Indian subcontinent and its fascinating, vexatious past and present. Alas, that partnership is now ended, since Julia Keay never lived to see this book into print. I can do no better than to quote from the closing lines of William Dalrymple’s characteristically engaging introduction: ‘This book, about an amazing woman, now stands as a fitting memorial to another. Julia will be greatly missed, and this book shows what an enjoyable writer we have lost.’ r l e s l i e m i t c h e l l Wit and Whiggery One Hundred Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper Edited by Richard Davenport-Hines & Adam Sisman (Oxford University Press 447pp £25) For Hugh Trevor-Roper the writing of a letter was part entertainment, part lecture and part therapy. He was clear that ‘if one never writes real letters one can never acquire the art of expressing one’s self, and at times it is such a relief to do so’. It was a form that allowed people to write of serious things inconsequentially and of inconsequential things seriously. For the scholar, normally constrained by the bounds of evidence, there was ‘the pleasure of total vacancy’. He hoped that he would not be judged by his letters, because, in them, he had felt ‘licensed to be free and irresponsible’. What better way, then, to celebrate the centenary of Trevor-Roper’s birth than to treat the reading public to a hundred of his letters? Here he is, off-guard, intimate, giving full rein to an amused view of life. The older he became and the more history he read and wrote, the more he became convinced that, although there were very general rules that governed human behaviour, beneath them was a rich and infinite jumble which might loosely be called la comédie humaine. As he himself put it, ‘I used to think that historical events always had deep economic causes: I now believe that pure farce covers a far greater field of history, and that Gibbon is a more reliable guide to that subject than Marx.’ The role of the historian, as far as the evidence allowed, was to record the triumphs and failures of humankind, dignifying the account with style and wit. Great historians, he insisted, ‘all had style … It goes with the character, as the bouquet goes with the wine.’ Letters and books had to be crafted productions, satisfyingly honed and polished. Of course, given the extraordinary experiences of his life, Trevor-Roper’s eye had a fascinating galère of characters on which to fix its gaze. Academic life in his day allowed space for the eccentric and time to pursue controversy and vendettas. If a letter wanted a little colour, there was always an opportunity to tweak the oh-so-tweakable tail of Leslie Rowse. The appointment to a major chair or university office was matter for a ten-page letter describing the assembling of votes, electors being struck down by heart attacks in medias res and final victory or defeat. Above all, the fellows of Peterhouse provided endless copy. The Trevor-Ropers: domestic bliss As master of that college, Trevor-Roper’s blood pressure was regulated by daily humiliations and triumphs. His historical colleagues, in particular, were ‘a gaggle of muddle-headed muffaroos bumbling and fumbling after each other in broken circles’. When offered an audience with John Paul II, Trevor-Roper was hugely amused to discover that the pope only wanted to discuss the politics of Peterhouse. A good letter writer must appreciate the colour in villains as well as saints, and Trevor-Roper had no qualms in admitting f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 4 | Literary Review 13

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b i o g r a p h y & l e t t e r s did they go wrong? A large part of the outcome, O’Shaughnessy argues, lay in the fact that they undertook an impossible task. Political leaders in 1775 at first underestimated the military challenge. Early fighting dispelled the notion that British regulars could suppress American resistance with ease. The Battle of Bunker Hill, though a victory, showed that the colonists were more than the ragtag mob many in London had assumed. After Washington’s siege of Boston forced William Howe to evacuate the city by sea, the British lost their only mainland colonial foothold. Defeating the rebellion now involved the much larger task of conquering America rather than just defending territory and suppressing unrest.

Britain never had the ground or naval forces required to conquer and hold America. Politicians and generals tried to accomplish too much with too little, gambling on a quick victory through seaborne mobility and the skill of trained regulars. Howe won successive victories, starting with his attack on New York in 1776, but fell short of destroying Washington’s army and compelling Americans to accept terms. Burgoyne, in his campaign the following year, tried to break the stalemate by dividing New England from the other colonies, but that ended with defeat at Saratoga. Howe’s Pennsylvania campaign only extended British lines and kept him from aiding Burgoyne. French intervention in 1778 sparked a wider conflict that drew resources from America into a contest for imperial survival largely fought elsewhere.

Neither the government nor its commanders bridged the gap between ends and means, but the final outcome fell short of catastrophe. Yorktown decided the contest in America, but Rodney’s naval victories in the Caribbean salvaged Britain’s position in the West Indies. Losing America left Britain’s global interests largely intact, despite political upheaval at home during the early 1780s. Unmaking one empire freed Britain to form another over the coming decades. O’Shaughnessy challenges entrenched stereotypes while capturing the war from various British perspectives. He also underlines the accomplishment of Washington and other Americans in their victory. Greatness, after all, hardly lies in achieving the inevitable. To order this book for £24, see the Literary Review Bookshop on page 10

c h a r l e s a l l e n

Dancing Queen Farzana: The Tempestuous Life and Times of Begum Sumru

By Julia Keay (HarperCollins India 328pp £13.18 Kindle)

One of the Indian subcontinent’s many paradoxes is that its menfolk still tend to regard the female sex as subservient to them while at the same time idolising women who refuse to play second fiddle. It explains the extraordinary hold that some women politicians have over the popular electorate, from Sonia Gandhi to Mamata Banerjee in Bengal, Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh and Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu – all strongminded, determined women who brook no nonsense from those who touch their feet as quasi-goddesses.

The subject of this book was one such woman, Farzana, better known as the Begum Sumru. Among the titles bestowed on her by the Mogul emperor were ‘Jewel among Women’, ‘Most Beloved Daughter’ and ‘Pillar of the State’. Granted, Mogul emperors tended to dish out honorifics as a host might hand round canapés at a drinks party – particularly in hard times, when titles cost nothing – but Begum Sumru certainly deserved her share. She was a temptress in her youth, a warrior queen in her widowhood, seemingly a witch in her old age, but, above all, a fighter and survivor.

Two hundred years ago Delhi and its surrounds were in a mess. For six centuries the city and the ruler at its heart had been the axle around which India turned. But the death in 1707 of Emperor Aurangzeb, last of the Mogul strongmen, created a vacuum at the centre into which successive waves of Persian, Afghan, Sikh, Maratha and Pindari warlords poured, together with all their hangers-on, every man believing himself a king in the making or a kingmaker. Northern India was turned into ‘one enormous battlefield’, as one of Julia Keay’s refreshingly diverse contemporary sources puts it: ‘As soon as the season permits warfare, more than fifty armies launch campaigns to defend or attack, or sometimes just to pillage, friends and enemies alike.’ Delhi was always the prize and in consequence it was reduced to a charnel house, its nominal ruler a pathetic, blinded creature who clung to a throne robbed of all its jewels as a shipwrecked mariner might cling to a rudderless raft.

At the same time France failed in its bid to match the British East India Company with its own Compagnie des Indes Orientales in south India, releasing large numbers of seasoned military men onto the freelance market. The best of them had come through the latest European wars and their leadership skills were eagerly sought after by one or other of the many contending powers. One such freelance was Walter Reinhardt of Alsace, who changed his name to Somers – probably to make himself more acceptable to his new employers in Calcutta. Like so many of his fellow mercenaries, Reinhardt had about as much integrity as George MacDonald Fraser’s delightfully appalling Harry Flashman. One early act of duplicity was to switch sides and invite some forty British prisoners of war to dine with him before having them slaughtered, so earning for himself the sobriquet ‘the butcher of Patna’, and possibly the darker title of ‘Sombre’, the name by which he became best known.

In 1765 Reinhardt offered his brigade of renegades to a Jat ruler intent on plundering Delhi. Like Flashman, he had an eye for a dangerous woman and in Delhi he found exactly that in the form of a 15-year-old dancing girl. Born in about 1750 to a concubine forced to fend for herself after the death of her master, Farzana had likewise to fight for her life. She became a nautch girl, nominally a dancing girl but with the usual ‘extras’, of which she evidently offered plenty. Reinhardt fell for her, paid for her in gold and installed her in his palace at Sardhana, outside Agra, where she very quickly worked her way to the top of his harem’s pecking order.

But that is only the opening chapter of Begum Sumru’s story. She was faithful

Literary Review | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 4 12

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