There is no dearth of literature on US policy toward India and South Asia. A number of historians have dealt with specific epochs, former diplomats have written narrative accounts, and journalists have discussed ties during particular administrations. If the extant literature had a lacuna it was the absence of a sweeping history of American involvement in the subcontinent. That gap has now been effectively addressed with Srinath Raghavan's The Most Dangerous Place: A History of the United States in South Asia.
Despite minor matters about which one can cavil, this is an impressive book. Raghavan's work is based upon extensive use of archives in multiple countries, it encompasses over two hundred years of history, and it reveals a number of hitherto mostly unknown episodes in American policy toward the region. The book can genuinely be seen as a benchmark for any future scholarship on American foreign policy toward...
