Oxford in India Readings: Themes in Indian History – serie

This book is a collection of essays, extracts, memoirs and a short story, outlining the events during the decade preceding India's partition which culminated in the making of Pakistan and the division of India and the situation thereafter. This is a paperback reprint of the earlier hardback edition, published in 1993.

This volume of essays, spanning some twenty-five years of research and writing, focuses on the issues of historiography and Indo-Islamic civilization. The former deals with how historians structure and answer the questions they choose to ask of the past, the latter covers case studies of particular historical communities in India.

The Mughal state has, since the time of its existence, exercised a compelling effect on observers. A rich historiography in Indian and European languages has long existed, and in the present century debates have raged concerning its character, and the implications for the longer-term trajectory of the subcontinent. This book brings together some of the key interventions in that debate, while its detailed introduction surveys the main positions, and outlines possibilities for future research. It is the outcome of the collaboration of two scholars, one a leading specialist on Mughal studies, the other a social and economic historian of the early modern Indian Ocean world and southern India.

Provides a key to rethinking some of the questions related to the 18th century. The Telegraphthis volume is a commendable attempt to bring out essential aspects [of eighteenth century] --The Statesman... useful compilation of the material on the political and economic history of India in the eighteenth century --The Book ReviewThe eighteenth century the era of the fall of the Mughals, the rise of regional successor states, and the beginnings of British domination has been a topic of intense academic debate. Can these events be understood as revolutionary, involving the fall of a great Asian imperial system and the emergence of British colonial rule with entirely different priorities? Or, were there underlying continuities between the Mughals, their Indian successors, and the early British, which produced a more evolutionary pattern of change?This volume pulls together some of the best essays on a subject with a wide-ranging introduction and exhausti ve bibliography. Part of the prestigious Themes in Indian History series, it will be useful for teachers, researchers, and students of Mughal and Modern Indian history, economic history, and those interested in the establishment of colonial rule in South Asia.