Heart Like a Fakir: General Sir James Abbott and the Fall of the East India Company - Paperback

by Chris Mason (Author)

This book explores the last years of the British East India Company using the life of General Sir James Abbott--explorer, guerilla, district officer, and possible inspiration for Mr. Kurtz in Heart of Darkness--as a thread to reexamine the social and sexual relationships between Britons and Indians and chronicle the collapse of their social contract.

Author Biography

Chris Mason is professor of national security affairs and director of the Study of Internal Conflict (SOIC) at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he researches, writes, and teaches on civil wars, insurgencies, and modern and historical India. He has published extensively on South Asia, focusing on Afghanistan, India, and the nineteenth and twentieth century borderlands between the two countries. Dr. Mason is a retired foreign service officer with a PhD in imperial and colonial history from the George Washington University in Washington, DC.