http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/s ... aj/5558625
I am currently working my way through this publication.
This is a re-edit of 'Sword Fighters of British India'. I do not know what changes were made for this edition, nor why the title was changed. This publication has a sequel, titled 'Sword Fighters of the British Empire' (accessable though going to the author's 'store front' in Lulu), which I purchased at the same time, but have not looked at yet. I ordered paperbacks of both and found shopping through Lulu.com very easy, postage was reasonably priced, and the items reached me in 2 days - quicker than items I ordered from Amazon at the same time. The books themselves, although ordered in dollars, were actually printed and shipped within the UK, so no problems with shipping duties, VAT etc.
The purpose of 'Swordsmen of the Raj' is to look at first hand contemporary accounts from primary sources of events involving hand to hand combat in India and primary sources talking about hand weapons, their merits and their use. Most of these accounts are from the Napoleonic era, Sikh Wars of the 1840's and Indian Mutiny of the 1850's. These were of course the eras witnessing some of the most ferocious fighting in India during the 19thC, and due to the nature of these wars, there was a much more frequent occurrence of hand to hand fighting than was seen in most other wars of the period - especially more than seen in European wars.
The books themselves are quite nicely produced, with only one complaint - the resolutions of the images are poor, which is particularly disappointing because of the great number of pages in the book devoted to images. Many of these images are fantastic sources if viewed in good resultion. The images on the front covers are of frankly laughable resolution, like something from a website of circa 1990.
The author's choice of images is for the most part good, but sometimes eroneous. The author has made extensive use of images from out-of-copyright 19thC books, but sadly some of these are a little irrelevant or show things which would require explanation for most readers. For example, the author has included an image from Colonel Marey's treatise on swords, but with none of the explanation which makes sense of the image in Colonel Marey's book. On another page taken from Marey's book three French swords are shown, which of course are fairly irrelevant to a book about the British Raj.
I would say that the author should have cited where the many images come from - some are famous works of art now residing in famous art galleries, whilst others are taken from books which readers may want to learn more about. As it is, unless they know where the images are from, then the reader is incapacitated in this regard and further research is made difficult.
The text is good. The author has for the most part stuck to cutting and pasting from a vast array of original sources. I can not fault this approach - for most of us the original text will be of most use and interest. The author has arranged the source material quite well, showing that contrasting and contradictory views were held then just as now - and in some cases that two witnesses to an event reported very different happenings. Here and there the author has added some of their own knowledge and opinions, which is for the most part adequate, but occasionally slightly wrong. This does not detract greatly from the work if you have a solid background knowledge, but could lead to some readers becoming wrongly informed. It is fairly clear that the author does not have a great knowledge of weapons or fencing, but if this work is viewed primarily as a collation of original sources, then I am happy to overlook that. Caution must be used by readers though, in distinguishing between what the author writes and what the original sources actually say.
Citation of the sources seems to be adequate, though quite minimal. After each quote the author gives the source for the information in brackets, though as of yet I have not investigated any of these citations to see if the quotes are accurate, taken in context and that the citation given is enough to identify the original source - page numbers and publish dates are not given, for example).
All in all, and bearing in mind that I am currently still reading the book, I would say that this is a great resource, full of fascinating and inspiring original source material, and definitely worth the money for anyone interested in hand to hand combat in this period. I would also say that people with a strong background knowledge will gain much more from the book and be able to use the information in the book more judiciously. This book is clearly not up to regular publishing standards (being an amateur Lulu publication), as it needs better images, better editing and fuller citations, but is still a good and valuable piece of work, which is especially worthy of commendation for the fact that nobody else has thought to write this book before! Already I have learned many new things from the source material contained, and have several ideas for new lines of research.
I highly recommend it therefore, with the cautions noted above.