This book is a collection of eight essays that bring together Bipan Chandra’s finest writings on colonialism and nationalism in India, spanning two decades. The author in these essays puts forth the core elements of colonialism: the complex integration of the colony with the world capitalist system in a subordinate position; a distinct historical stage which modernised colonial societies without initiating a process of independent economic development; a system which while it continued to subordinate the colonial economy, displayed three distinct phases each characterised by a unique pattern of domination and surplus extraction; a structure where the colonial state was an instrument for subordinating all the social and economic classes of the colony, while it served the interests of the metropolitan bourgeoisie.