Sam Dalrymple, "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia" (HarperCollins UK, 2025)

Jul 2, 2025

Sam Dalrymple, author of *Shattered Lands*, unpacks the dramatic disintegration of the Indian Empire into modern nations like India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. He highlights the intricate ties between past partitions and ongoing conflicts, such as the identity struggles in Kashmir and the Rohingya crisis. Dalrymple explores the tumultuous 1930s in Rangoon, revealing the political tensions that shaped modern identities, and discusses how British colonial policies contributed to the chaos that continues to affect South Asia today.

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INSIGHT

Scope and Impact of Indian Empire

The British Indian Empire once united vast parts of Asia under one rule, encompassing diverse peoples and religions.
Its dissolution through five partitions shaped modern Asia's nations and ongoing conflicts.

INSIGHT

1920s Indian National Identity

Burma and Arabian regions once considered part of the greater Indian identity in the 1920s.
People across these regions began identifying as part of a future Indian nation, showing a forgotten expansive Indian nationalism.

INSIGHT

Burma's Complex Separation

Burma thrived economically as part of India but mass immigration alienated locals.
Separation debates fueled diverse political and identity conflicts, culminating in early anti-immigrant laws and ethnic classifications.

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As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – were 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, a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population and encompassing the largest Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian communities on the planet. Its people used the Indian rupee, were issued passports stamped ‘Indian Empire’, and were guarded by armies garrisoned in forts from the Bab el-Mandeb to the Himalayas.

And then, in the space of just fifty years, the Indian Empire shattered. Five partitions tore it apart, carving out new nations, redrawing maps, and leaving behind a legacy of war, exile and division.

Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (William Collins and HarperCollins India, 2025) by Sam Dalrymple, for the first time, presents the whole story of how the Indian Empire was unmade. How a single, sprawling dominion became twelve modern nations. How maps were redrawn in boardrooms and on battlefields, by politicians in London and revolutionaries in Delhi, by kings in remote palaces and soldiers in trenches.

Its legacies include civil war in Burma and ongoing insurgencies in Kashmir, Baluchistan and Northeast India, and the Rohingya genocide. It is a history of ambition and betrayal, of forgotten wars and unlikely alliances, of borders carved with ink and fire. And, above all, it is the story of how the map of modern Asia was made.

Dalrymple’s stunning history is based on deep archival research, previously untranslated private memoirs, and interviews in English, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Konyak, Arabic and Burmese. From portraits of the key political players to accounts of those swept up in these wars and mass migrations, Shattered Lands is vivid, compelling, thought-provoking history at its best.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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