Concise History of India

Review
"With an informative,scholarly text enhanced with illustrations and quotations....[this book] is recommended for academic reading lists and reference collections as well as the non-specialist general reader with an interest in understanding India's contemporary political and economic relationships with the community of nations..." Library Bookwatch

"Lucid comprehensive and up-to-date, this book will surely establish itself as essential reading for all undergraduate and graduate courses on South Asian history..." C.A. Bayly, Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, University of Cambridge


Book Description
In a challenging new history of modern India, the authors explore the imaginative and institutional structures that have changed and sustained the country. While previous histories have been composed as handmaids of British nationalism or as products of emerging nationalist identities, this book challenges the notion that a continuous meaning can be applied to social categories such as "caste," "Hindu," "Muslim," or even "India,". An initial chapter focuses on the period of Muslim dynasties that preceded colonial conquest, while the final chapter analyzes the dramatic recent events of the 1990s, including economic change, religious nationalism and India's emergence as a nuclear power. Illustrations and quotations from historical sources are integral to the narrative. Thomas R. Metcalf is Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley. His previous books inlcude An Imperial Vision (California, 1989) and Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge, 1997). Barbara Metcalf is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. She is the editor of Making Muslim Space in North America (University of California Press, 1996).


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Barbara Metcalf and Thomas Metcalf come together to write a concise history of modern India. While early histories were often composed as handmaids of British imperialism or as products of emerging nationalist identities, this book challenges the notion that a continuous meaning can be applied to social categories such as 'caste', 'Hindu', 'Muslim' or even 'India'. The narrative focuses on the fundamentally political theme of the imaginative and institutional structures that successively changed and sustained both colonial and independent India. It also documents the social changes and the rich cultural life that were constituted in interaction with that political structure and vision. Earlier chapters focus on the period of Muslim dynasties that preceded colonial conquest, and the book concludes with the dramatic recent events of the 1990s, including economic change, religious nationalism and India's emergence as a nuclear power. Illustrations and quotations from historical sources are integral to the narrative.


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