G.B. Malleson's The Decisive Battles of India From 1746 to 1849 is a comprehensive history of a critical period of history when the British controlled India as a colonial possession, and the fighting against domestic and foreign opponents in their efforts to maintain the colony. From the preface: "This volume contains the story of the conquest of the several races of India by our countrymen. To this purpose are devoted eleven out of the twelve chapters of which it is composed. The remaining chapter, the first in order in the book, is the key to all others; for it records an event, but for the occurrence of which the battles which follow might have been indefinitely postponed. It was the victory of Paradis on the Adyar, over the army of the native ruler of the Karnatak, which inverted the position of the Europeans on the eastern coast and the children of the soil. The battles which illustrate the story were all, in the truest sense of the term, decisive battles. It cannot be denied that some of them showed a small list of casualties, and, in many, the numbers on one side at all events were few. If I may judge from some criticisms which have appeared, this fact alone would be held to be sufficient to remove those battles from the category I claim for them. There are some critics who judge of the importance of a battle solely by the amount of the slaughter produced on both sides."