Meena Bhargava – författare

Did modernity arrive in South Asia with British colonialism? Or was South Asia already modern by then? What might have that modernity looked like? The Early Modern in South Asia engages with these questions. It brings together ten chapters, which collectively trace the contours of South Asia's early modernity between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. They do this by examining the nature of historical change in various domains, including philosophy, warfare, law, environment, politics, violence, religion, and society. The chapters argue that in all these fields, there were noticeable developments during this period, marking a shift from the medieval to the early modern. The introductory chapter contextualizes this by analysing the politics of periodization in history-writing across the world. It discusses the meanings of the relatively new concept of early modernity and the implications of its use for how we understand historical change and continuity in South Asia.

This book provides a new perspective on the history of the United States from the eighteenth to the middle of the twenty-first century. It brings together fifteen chapters that engage with the changing contour of the United States, its changing political culture, its internal and international politics, and provides a critique of its democracy. It focuses on the marginalized social groups – indigenous tribes, indentured labor, slaves and immigrants – to understand their role and contributions in the making of the United States. The book examines gender roles, class, race, ethnicity and movement for rights that heralded the beginning of a new political agenda, viz. mobilization of African-Americans, the Civil Rights Movement, the Feminist Movement and New Environmentalism. It also adds to the discussion on major phases of Black history – enslavement, bondage and emancipation, sharecropping and tenancy and the initiation of Black Movement, led and influenced by the political ideology of its leaders and institutions like Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and NAACP.Providing an in-depth study and critique of American capitalism and imperialism and its impact on global environment, the book will be of interest to academics, will equips university teachers and students with new methodologies of teaching-learning and pedagogical strategies, as well as readers keen to delve into the history of the United States.