Customer Reviews

Simla: A Hill Station in British India

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The principal attraction of this large format book (8" x 11") are some 60 19th century photographs of the hill station of Simla in the foothills of the Himalayas. The photos illustrate the town, the British Viceroys and their minions, British and Indian, and the scenery.

Simla, at a high cool 7,000 feet elevation, was the summer capital of the Raj of India from about 1830 until Indian independence in 1947. Here, the Viceroy and British civil servants and military spent the summer months when the heat on the Indian plains was unbearable. Simla was a place "where the elite and aspirants met and participated in established social rituals." By 1904, some 7,000 British recreated (that seems the appropriate word) in the town during the season.

Pat Barr's text of 40 pages gives a history of Simla in the 19th century, up until the first railroad was completed to the town in 1904. For the homesick colonials, Simla was England away from England. The text and photos illustrate a vanished world that was immensely appealing in its day for those on the higher rungs of British society.

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