Raj Chandavarkar offers a powerful revisionist analysis of the relationship between class and politics in India between the Mutiny and Independence. He rejects the "Orientalist" view of Indian social and economic development as somehow exceptional, and reasserts the critical role of the working classes in shaping the pattern of Indian capitalist development. This work represents a major contribution not only to the history of the Indian working classes, but to the history of industrial capitalism and colonialism as a whole.