ISBN : 9780198794615
South Asian History has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance over the past thirty years. Its historians are not only producing new ways of thinking about the imperial impact and legacy on South Asia, but also helping to reshape the study of imperial history in general. The essays in this collection address a number of these important developments, delineating not only the complicated interplay between imperial rulers and their subjects in India, but also illuminating the economic, political, environmental, social, cultural, ideological, and intellectual contexts which informed, and were in turn informed by, these interactions. Particular attention is paid to a cluster of binary oppositions that have hitherto framed South Asian history, namely colonizer/colonized, imperialism/nationalism, and modernity/tradition, and how new analytical frameworks are emerging which enable us to think beyond the constraints imposed by these binaries. Closer attention to regional dynamics as well as to wider global forces has enriched our understanding of the history of South Asia within a wider imperial matrix. Previous impressions of all-powerful imperialism, with the capacity to reshape all before it, for good or ill, are rejected in favour of a much more nuanced image of imperialism in India that acknowledges the impact as well as the intentions of colonialism, but within a much more complicated historical landscape where other processes are at work.
1 Douglas M. Peers and Nandini Gooptu: Introduction
2 Douglas M. Peers: State, Power, and Colonialism
3 David Washbrook: The Indian Economy and the British Empire
4 Norbert Peabody: Knowledge Formation in Colonial India
5 Rosalind O'Hanlon: Colonialism and Social Identities in Flux: Class, Caste, and Religious Community
6 Sumit Sarkar: Nationalisms in India
7 Sandra den Otter: Law, Authority, and Colonial Rule
8 Mark Harrison: Networks of Knowledge: Science and Medicine in Early Colonial India, c.1750-1820
9 Mahesh Rangarajan: Environment and Ecology under British Rule
10 Christopher Pinney: Material and Visual Culture of British India
11 Javed Majeed: Literary Modernity in South Asia
12 Tanika Sarkar: Gendering of Public and Private Selves in Colonial Times
13 Vijay Prashad: The Desi Diaspora: Politics, Protest, and Nationalism
14 Nandini Gooptu: The Political Legacy of Colonialism in South Asia