Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia

A bold and sweeping history of modern South Asia, told through the five partitions that reshaped it.

As recently as 1928, a vast swath of Asia stretching from the Red Sea to the borders of Thailand was bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the “Indian Empire” or, more simply, as the Raj. It was the British Empire's crown jewel, home to a quarter of the world's population. In the span of just fifty years, that empire shattered. Five partitions tore it ap...