Edmund Burke and India is the first thorough treatment of Burke's views on India, even though the affairs of the British Indian empire occupied more of Burke's attention - and occupy more space among his writings and speeches - than any of the other causes to which he devoted himself during his long public career.

Relating Burke's views on India to ideas expressed in his other writings, Whelan offers a comprehensive assessment of Burke's political theory as a whole. Burke appears here as one of the few classic political thinkers in the Western canon to have made a serious and sustained effort to understand a non-European society and culture.