In The Angrezi Raj

SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003).

As expected, the text continues to be full of (to me) unfamiliar terms like "Dogras..." (p. 18) but I have stopped googling every one because this would slow the reading to a snail's pace. In fact, encountering the word, "...Deniers..." (p. 20), I thought this was another such term until I realized that, despite the capital letter, it simply meant "deniers," in other words "those who '...refused the Truth...' (p. 21), i.e., unbelievers, infidels, heretics etc. (What I would call "disagreers.")

Yasmini, contemplating her extra-temporal visions, uses the terms "...time lines..." (p. 27) and "...world lines..." (p. 38). As readers of hard sf, we are familiar with such phrases but would they be in her vocabulary?

Since history diverged in 1878, Rudyard Kipling lived into the alternative history and therefore wrote alternative poetry. For example, in the Exodus Cantos of his epic Lament For The Lost Homeland, he described the burning dome of St Paul's:

"'...stark flame against a sleet-filled August sky...'" (p. 25)

Neat.

Not only that but the artist Leighton, inspired by Kipling's epic, included the burning dome in the background of his painting, Martyrdom of St. Disraeli (p. 24). (That's Benjamin Disraeli to you and me.)

Even neater. Alternative history incorporates alternative politics, poetry and painting, a notion worthy of Poul Anderson. In fact, we have definitely found a successor of Anderson. (I write "a successor," not "the successor," because I am not sufficiently familiar with more recent sf. And, of course, a worthy successor is an original, not a mere imitator.)

The Appendices summarize information about:

the Fall;
the Exodus;
the New Empire;
Languages;
Technology and Economy.

Such appendices could have been presented as written in the alternative history which they describe or as written by an observer of alternative histories. Instead, in this case, they are simply the author addressing his readers as we realize when we read that 10,000 rupees is approximately equivalent to $125, 000 US dollars in 2000 values. (p. 473) That's our 2000, not theirs.

SM Stirling writes in his own distinctive style but I think that this paragraph reads a bit like Anderson:

"By the late twentieth century an exuberant mercantile and industrial capitalism was reemerging, wheeling and dealing, disrupting ancient patterns as men and women began to trickle from the countryside into the growing cities. Knowledge increased, in a civilization where the sciences and their practical application had high respect and much official support." (p. 480)

Dynamic economies, social change and respect for knowledge are recognizable aspects of fictional societies described by Anderson. In particular:

"Under such conditions, an exuberant capitalism was bound to arise."
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 146.