The Works of WSC
A guide to the Churchill canon
The CanonIn the general election of October 1929 the Conservative government was defeated. Ramsey MacDonald returned to the premiership and Churchill, after five years as Chancellor of the Exchequer, not only returned to opposition but also began his journey into the political wilderness he was to occupy for the next ten years. Baldwin had brought Churchill back into the party fold and placed him in high office partly in order to keep him under control. It was a strategy that worked in power but which could not survive the stresses of opposition.
Although Churchill squandered much of his political credibility with his unquestioning support for Edward during the abdication crisis, and alienated a large section of the Conservative party with his unceasing attacks on appeasement and calls for aggressive rearmament levels it was, however, his uncompromising position over India which started the process. In October 1929 the Viceroy, Lord Irwin (later Lord Halifax), pre-empted the Simon Commission and announced support for Dominion status. Churchill's opposition was immediate, vehement and widely condemned for its intemperance.
In his superb introduction to the first American edition Manfred Weidhorn does much to clarify the apparent contradictions between Churchill the saviour of liberty and Churchill the opponent of self-determination. "... Machiavelli sheds light on Churchill. The Italian notes that virtues and vices are often symbiotic rather than antithetical. Thus people say, 'Hannibal was a great general - too bad he was cruel', when the likelihood is that Hannibal was great in part because he was cruel. So here we have to consider the probability that Churchill was great in 1940 in part because he was too pugnacious, stubborn, deluded, and conservative (in the deepest sense) to be able to adjust to the New Order in Europe - traits he had shown in the matter of India".
India consists of an introduction and ten articles and speeches, mostly dating between November 1929 and March 1931. The first edition was published by Thornton Butterworth in May 1931 in both Wrappers and Hardback editions, priced respectively at one and two shillings. A second printing of the wrappers edition was issued in the same month. It is easily distinguished by its green, as opposed to orange binding. To my mind there is an element of mystery about this second impression. Martin Gilbert points out in a footnote in Volume V Companion Volume 2 of the official biography that "By 21 November 1931, the hardcover edition had sold 738 copies, and the paperback 3,287 copies (out of a total first printing of 5,108 copies)". This would indicate that as November almost 20% of the edition still remained unsold. It is difficult to understand the need for a second printing as early as May.
Post-war, when the demand for reprints of Churchill's works were in high demand, he was in no hurry to re-issue India and it joined Mr. Brodrick's Army and For Free Trade on the list of the almost unobtainable volumes. In 1990 Richard Langworth and Dragonwyck Publishing came to the rescue with the first American edition. In content it is similar to the Churchilliana reissue of the rarities, in that it combines a facsimile of the first wrappers edition and a new preface into a facsimile of the first hardcover binding. The dust jacket is entirely original to this edition.
While still far from being one of the better known works in the canon India is still well worth finding and reading, even if only for the reasons cited by Weidhorn. As he concludes in his preface: "Genius exacts its high price. If we like the way 1940 turned out, we have to comprehend 1931".
India has never been issued in translation.
