Satia, Priya Time's Monster: How History Makes History.

• Author: Hirsch, Michael L.

Satia, Priya Time's Monster: How History Makes History. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020. 363. Softcover, $19.95.

I've long been a student of history. I was captured by the phenomenon of revolution in my undergraduate studies leading to a master's thesis on the Cuban Revolution. Mid-career I served as the Mayor of Fayette, Missouri. To better govern and promote the community, I studied its published histories. Recently I have researched Indo-Pak reconciliation, which involves reading biographies, histories, and memoirs. Reading history is a favorite pass time. Because of my interest in history, I was excited to review this book.

In Time's Monster: How History Makes History, Priya Satia examines the ways in which history, particularly British history, contributes to and/or sustains individual and collective action. It is a "twinned history of empire and the history of history" (p. 2). For Satia, British historians presented the conquest and exploitation of India as liberal imperialism. The work pairs an examination of the evolution of history with evolving conceptions of agency and self.

In her chapter "The Progress of War," Satia outlines how war became accepted as a tool to advance civilization. History vindicated action. History was "liner" (p. 18) and Christian thought envisioned history as progressive. Capitalism was understood as an expression of Protestant calling. Marx's historical materialism and Social Darwinism make British imperial enterprises inevitable if not acceptable, the latter "quieted qualms about the annihilation of a particular people in the name of evolutionary progress" (p. 53). Historians creating narratives of their times "... engage in a political act that makes history itself (p. 59).

In the chapter "Progress as Penance, Satia examines how narratives of liberal empire spoke of "The idea of selflessly liberating people in bondage" (p. 68). Here the West represents freedom and the East despotism. For John Stuart Mills, the British are "the custodians of international morality (p. 79). Policy makers and historians "twisted (British) violence into a moral sacrifice" (p 85). British errors were "strivings after good" (p 103). "Progress meant eradication of the weak and those meant to be subjugated" (p. 106).

In "Progress of Elimination," Satia explores how the British narrative changes in face of Indian rebellion and acts of resistance. Indians no longer possess the same capacity as...