‘When the War Began We Heard of Several Kings’: South Asian Prisoners in World War I Germany

The book is a moving account of about two thousand South Asians mostly sailors and soldiers from villages in Bengal, Nepal, the Northwest Frontier and Punjab, who were held for years in German prison camps. They attracted the close attention of army officers, diplomats and secret agents, of emigrant revolutionaries of India, of German artists, academics and industrialists. The book introduces and makes available rich German archives as yet unknown to the non-German speaking world.