WICKED WOMEN OF THE RAJ

Except for the odd woman captured by pirates and sold into a Mughal harem, the first European women to enter India owed their presence to the Portuguese, in the 16th century, and later to the East India Company -- in the expectation that they would marry and provide solace to lonely European traders and merchants. During India's cold weather season, women would sail out from England to India to plunder its plentiful storehouse of bachelors, regardless of the dangers of the tropical climate and a culture that bore no resemblance to the one they had known at home. Who were these women? Were they gold-diggers, or hopeless romantics hoping to enact their own Cinderella fairy-tale? Did they live happily ever after? Set against the backdrop of India's independence struggle, Wicked Women of the Raj is an unputdownable factual account with stories of twenty such women who broke society's rules to marry the 'heathen' Indian princes.