General

This is a study of the Indian National Congress, the first political association to approach the government of India at an all-India level. The Congress became the most important national party in twentieth century India, and the whole history of the...

In a penetrating account of the evolution of British intelligence gathering in India, C. A. Bayly shows how networks of Indian spies were recruited by the British to secure military, political and social information about their subjects. He also examines...

In a sensitive and compelling account of the lives of those at the very bottom of Indian society, Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany explore the construction of the Untouchables as a social and political category, the historical background which led...

Claude Markovits tells the story of two groups of Hindu merchants from the towns of Shikarpur and Hyderabad in the province of Sind. Basing his account on previously neglected archival sources, the author charts the development of these communities, from...

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This book examines the politics and culture of landholding in eastern India. Professor McLane explores the dual and sometimes conflicting roles of the zamindars, the landed chiefs, in eighteenth-century western Bengal during the decline of the Mughal...

From 1400 to 1750, Asian capital cities were often ruled in such a way that they became symbols of the power and influence their emperors extended over their states at large. These 'sovereign cities' became the empire in miniature. Shahjahanabad is the...

At the end of the First World War, Government of India officials and Indian nationalist politicians began to recognise the need for an organized communications network that could reach out to a large and diverse Indian population. The challenge for...

The Politics of India since Independence provides a comprehensive study of the major political, cultural, and economic changes in India since gaining independence. Paul Brass focuses on the consequences of the centralising drives of the national...

The political history of Pakistan is characterised by incomplete constitution-making, a process which has placed the burden of constitutional interpretation on state instruments ranging from the bureaucracy to the military to the judiciary. In a...

The Delhi Sultanate was the first Islamic state to be established in India. In a broad-ranging, accessible narrative, Peter Jackson traces the history of the Sultanate from its foundation in 1210 to its demise in 1400 at the sack of Delhi by the Central...

Colonial Justice in British India describes and examines the lesser-known history of white violence in colonial India. By foregrounding crimes committed by a mostly forgotten cast of European characters - planters, paupers, soldiers and sailors -...

In a revised edition of his original book, J. S. Grewal brings the history of the Sikhs from its beginnings in the time of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, right up to the present day. Against the background of the history of the Punjab, the volume...

In this book, Dr Stewart Gordon presents a comprehensive history of one of the most colourful and least-understood kingdoms of India: the Maratha Empire. The empire was founded by Shivaji in the mid-seventeenth century, spread across most of India during...

This book is a critical work of synthesis and interpretation on one of the central themes in modern Indian history - agrarian change under British colonial rule. Sugata Bose analyses the relationships between demography, commercialization, class...

In this fascinating account of one of the least known parts of South Asia, Eaton recounts the history of the Deccan plateau in southern India from the fourteenth century to the rise of European colonialism. He does so, vividly, through the lives of eight...

The past twenty years have seen a proliferation of specialist scholarship on the period of India's transition to colonialism. This volume provides a synthesis of some of the most important themes to emerge from recent work and seeks in particular to...

Even today, six decades after his assassination in January 1948, Mahatma Gandhi is still revered as the father of the Indian nation. His intellectual and moral legacy, and the example of his life and politics, serve as an inspiration to human rights and...

This book examines India's export performance and export policies in the 1960s. The author analyses the causal factors underlying the trends in exports and evaluates the government policies which affected them. This authoritative work will be of interest...

Mahatma Gandhi's lengthy Indian career was of central importance in the development of Indian politics and the changing relationship of the British raj and its subjects. But the extent of his political influence and his role varied considerably at...

Dr Hardy has attempted a general history of British India's Muslims with a deeper perspective. He shows how the interplay of memories of past Muslim supremacy, Islamic religious aspirations and modern Muslim social and economic anxieties with the...

The Swatantra Party, founded in 1959 to provide a right-wing opposition to the ruling Congress Party, has since become the leading opposition in the Indian national parliament. Dr Erdman examines the background, emergence and growth of Swatantra within...

Samita Sen's history of labouring women in Calcutta in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries considers how social constructions of gender shaped their lives. Dr Sen demonstrates how - in contrast to the experience of their male counterparts -...

Ian Copland's comprehensive and fascinating study of the role played by the Indian princes, the maharajas and nawabs of South Asia, in the devolution of British colonial power is long overdue. By rehabilitating the princes as subjects of serious...

Drawing on a rich collection of sources, Sumit Guha's 1999 book reconstructs the history of the forest communities in western India to explore questions of tribal identity and the environment. In so doing, he demonstrates how the ideology of indigenous...

The 1930s was a critical decade in Indian politics. It saw the Congress Party begin its rise to political dominance, while Indian 'big business' strengthened its position in the economy. This book seeks to analyse the response of India's most important...

The society of traditional India is frequently characterized as static and dominated by caste. This study challenges older interpretations, arguing that medieval India was actually a time of dynamic change and fluid social identities. Using records of...

The political history of Pakistan is characterised by incomplete constitution-making, a process which has placed the burden of constitutional interpretation on state instruments ranging from the bureaucracy to the military to the judiciary. In a...

In a fascinating and innovative study, first published in 2005, Ruby Lal explores domestic life and the place of women in the Mughal court of the sixteenth century. Challenging traditional, orientalist interpretations of the haram that have portrayed a...

Scholars have long studied classical Sanskrit culture in almost total isolation from its courtly context. This book focuses exclusively on the royal court as a social and cultural institution. Using both literary and inscriptional sources, it begins with...

This is one of the first single-author comparisons of different South Asian states around the theme of religious conflict. Based on new research and syntheses of the literature on 'communalism', it argues that religious conflict in this region in the...

The Vijayanagara rajas ruled a substantial part of the southern peninsula of India for over three hundred years, beginning in the mid-fourteenth century, and during this epoch the region was transformed from its medieval past towards a modern colonial...

The majority of workers in South Asia are employed in industries that rely on manual labour and craft skills. Some of these industries have existed for centuries and survived great changes in consumption and technology over the last 150 years. In earlier...

This book is a detailed historical study of agriculture and agrarian society in a major province of British India, the Bombay presidency. Its objective is to examine the impact of British rule on the Indian peasantry, and the changes it brought. Among...

In this book, Dr Sarah Ansari examines the system of political control constructed by the British in Sind between 1843 and 1947. In particular, she explores the part of the local Muslim elite, the pirs or hereditary sufi saints. Using a wealth of...

Although the princes of India have been caricatured as oriental despots and British stooges, Barbara Ramusack's study argues that the British did not create the princes. On the contrary, many were consummate politicians who exercised considerable degrees...

The phenomenon of caste has probably aroused more controversy than any other aspect of Indian life and thought. Susan Bayly's cogent and sophisticated analysis explores the emergence of the ideas, experiences and practices which gave rise to the...

This 1971 volume brings together a number of tracts on problems of India's economic development, particularly in relation to the changes taking place in her international trade. The first half of the nineteenth century was a period of important economic...

Bishop Heber's Journal was first published in 1828, edited by his wife from material in the form of notes and letters which he wrote to her during his tour. It is from the first edition that the passages in this 1971 edition have been taken. Dr. Laird...

How and how far foreign aid has affected Pakistan's industrial performance is the fundamental question of this study. It examines the history of aid flows to Pakistan; their interaction with economic growth and planning in the country; the role of...