Chartist General

<p>General Charles James Napier was sent to confront the tens of thousands of Chartist protestors marching through the cities of the North of England in the late 1830s. A well-known leftist who agreed with the Chartist demands for democracy Napier managed to keep the peace. In South Asia the same man would later provoke a war and conquer Sind. In this first-ever scholarly biography of Napier Edward Beasley asks how the conventional depictions of the man as a peacemaker in England and a warmonger in Asia can be reconciled. Employing deep archival research and close readings of Napier's published books (ignored by prior scholars) this well-written volume demonstrates that Napier was a liberal imperialist who believed that if freedom was right for the people of England it was right for the people of Sind -- even if freedom had to be imposed by military force. Napier also confronted the messy aftermath of Western conquest carrying out nation-building with mixed success trying to end the honour killing of women and eventually discovering the limits of imperial interference.</p>