At the tender age of eighteen, Charles Nida signed up for a three-year tour of duty in India. From 1913-1916 he roved the peninsula as a “box-wallah” – a travelling salesman in clothing and general supplies. With little time for the stifling snobbery he encountered among Europeans, Charles Nida’s photographic eye focuses a crisp image of India under British domination as Britain slid into “the war to end all wars”. Generals, ICS controllers, engineers, officers of native regiments and their memsahibs are observed with a ready inchtape and a critical eye, as are numerous sahibs, sirdars, chaprassis and ekka-wallas whose paths he crossed, not to say the odd maharajah.