This story began in the 18th century, when a small seafaring island, one tenth the size of the Indian subcontinent, dispatched fragile sailing ships laden with iron, tools and workers over a distance of 12,000 miles on a six-month voyage via the Cape of Good Hope. During the next two centuries, the girders for over 100,000 bridges, 45,000 miles of track, the locomotives and the vast array of machinery required at the outset to build every piece of infrastructure were all made in Britain and loaded onto countless craft and transported on a hazardous journey to the subcontinent where they were assembled according to plans laid by the finest engineers of the time who arrived by the same route. In the end they helped build a new nation.

The sheer audacity and scale of such an endeavour, the courage and enterprise have no parallel in world history. This book is the first to assess in a single volume all aspects of Britain's colonial contribution in providing India with its lasting institutional and physical infrastructure which continues to underpin the world's largest democracy in the 21st century.

This book is a long-overdue recognition of the effort and ingenuity of those courageous pioneers who have so often and so wrongly been derided as no more than corrupt plunderers, bent on pillaging the wealth of the people and land they conquered. Although there were many wrongs committed by the British against India, as widely recognised by the British themselves, there is much that was and remains positive and which the author has illustrated. The detail in the 22 concise chapters will provide ample evidence to bring to light the under-appreciated reality that, in almost every walk of life, Great Britain has made a significant contribution to the making of India.

Introduction. Chronology - 200 events of progress and development; The East India Company (EIC), its foundation, expansion and building of its vessels; Routes to India; Canals and water supplies; Roads: leaving no stone unturned; Ships and shipbuilding; Mail services and the development of telegraphs; Stationary steam engines; Steam road transport, steamrollers and fire engines; Early history and development of railways; Locomotive workshops and the manufacture of rolling stock; Bridge building; Ports, harbours and lighthouses; Electricity power generation; India adopts the tram; Foundries, iron and steel and engineering firms; Extraction industry development (coal, oil, metals etc); Textile and jute industries; Sugar, tea and coffee industries; Early air services; Administrative infrastructure: civil service, police, judiciary, taxation, municipalities; Seats of learning: universities, libraries, engineering and medical colleges and hospitals; Establishing a nation's heritage: India's museums of industrial history and technology. Appendix: The great engineering benefactors for India.

This handsome book will be of immense appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of India and the British Raj, engineering achievements and socio-political history.