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Michael Wood’s “10,000-year epic” reaches the time of the British occupation of India — the Raj — and India’s struggle for freedom.
Michael Wood's "10,000-year epic" reaches the time of the British
occupation of India - the Raj - and India's struggle for freedom.
Wood begins in South India, where viewers learn how the forerunner
of modern multinational corporations, the British East India
Company, used private armies to control much of the Indian
subcontinent. In Calcutta, he traces the beginnings of a world
economy and describes an 18th-century British general who "went
native" and adopted Hinduism. He samples the magical culture - and
food - of the city of Lucknow and outlines its terrible fate in
India's great rebellion against the British in 1857. He recounts
the story of the enigmatic Briton, "the rebel in the Raj," who
helped found the Indian freedom movement. After the First World
War, the Amritsar massacre helped speed the rise of Gandhi and
Nehru and the fateful events that led to the partition of India in
1947 - an episode whose repercussions are felt to this day. The
series ends as India rises again to be the global giant she has
been for most of her amazing history.