Your Life at Every Level of the British Empire

What was life actually like at every level of the British Empire? You begin at the very bottom. Gurdev Singh is an exhausted agricultural labourer in British India, working land he doesn't own and watching his family struggle to survive. Then every level changes your view of the empire. Agricultural Labourer. Railway Worker. Sepoy. Havildar. Subedar. British Lieutenant. District Collector. Commissioner. Provincial Governor. Viceroy. Secretary of State for India. But this isn't just a hierarchy explained. It's one connected story about how the British Empire looked completely different depending on where you stood inside it. At the bottom, empire means rent, wages, food and survival. As a soldier, it becomes orders, uniforms and war. As an administrator, families become petitions and files. As a governor, villages become statistics. And at the very top, millions of people become numbers on reports and lines on maps. The story follows Gurdev, his family and his lifelong friend Yusuf from Punjab in the late 1800s through World War I, the British Indian Army, Jallianwala Bagh, the Indian independence movement, World War II, the Bengal famine, the final years of the British Raj and the Partition of India in 1947. The higher you climb through the British Empire, the more land you can control. And the fewer individual people you can see. This is the British Empire from the bottom to the top. #britishempire #britishindia #history #britishraj #indianhistory #colonialhistory #britishhistory #indianindependence #partitionofindia