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Politics of Patronage and Protest
"Studies on state-formation in India rarely focus on the agency of subordinate groups. Questioning the dominant narratives on state - subordinate interactions, Sahai provides a unique account of state-formation in early modern Rajasthan. She also engages with larger debates on state-formation and popular protest in early modern India by demonstrating the role of a subaltern group." "Politics of Patronage and Protest explores the process of state-formation 'from below' through the prism of artisanal experience. Focusing on the multidimensional interface of the Jodhpur state with resident artisans, the author highlights the political culture of the period."--BOOK JACKET.
Rethinking a Millennium
This book is a collection of essays by eminent historians exploring a millennium of India s history between the eighth and the eighteenth century, conventionally understood as early medieval and medieval India. Though these terms are subjected to critical
Making the 'Woman'
The book examines the representation of women, their agency and subjectivity and gender relations in 18th- and 19th-century India. The chapters in the volume interrogate notions and discourses of ‘women’ and ‘gender’ during the period, historically shaped by multiple and even competing actors, practices and institutions. They highlight the ‘making of the woman’ across a wide spectrum of subject areas, regions and roles and attempt to understand the contradictions and differences in social experiences and identity formations of women. The volume also deals with prevalent notions of masculinity and femininity, normative and non-conformist expressions of gender and sexual identity and epistemological concerns of gender, especially in its intersectional interplay with other axes of caste, class, race, region and empire. Presenting unique understandings of our gendered pasts, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, gender studies and South Asian studies.
Paper, Performance, and the State : Social Change and Political Culture in Mughal India
Looking at the political processes in early modern South Asia as shaped by state formation from below, this work argues that, outside the imperial and trans-regional contexts, the Mughal state subsisted on the mutually-empowering relations with the elites and common people.
Between Household and State
"For decades, scholars have examined the Mughal Empire, South Asia's largest and most powerful pre-colonial empire, to measure the greatness of its political, ideological, and cultural institutions. Between Household and State departs from dynastic narrations of the Mughal past to highlight the role of elite households and familial networks in shaping imperial power, particularly in peninsular India, the only region of the subcontinent never fully incorporated into the imperial realm. Drawing upon rare documentary and literary materials in Persian and Urdu alongside the Dutch East India Company's archives, the book takes us on a journey from military forts and regional courts in the Deccan to the weaving villages of the Coromandel Coast to examine how regional elite alliances, feuds, and material exchanges intersected with imperial institutions to create new forms of affinity, belonging, and social exclusion. Between Household and State brings attention to the importance of ghar-or home-as an analytical framework for the creation of mobile forms of sovereignty that anchored the Mughal frontier across the variable geography of peninsular India in the seventeenth century"--
The Voice of the Indian Mona Lisa
The 'Indian Mona Lisa' is an eighteenth-century portrait of the goddess Radha from the Kishangarh school of Rajput Painting. It was purportedly modelled after a young enslaved woman and court-performer, Banī-ṭhanī, who became a concubine of the patron of the painting, crown-prince Savant Singh. Tracing her career, Heidi Pauwels recovers her role as a composer of devotional songs in multiple registers of Classical Hindi and shows how she was a conduit for trend-setting styles from Delhi, including the new vogue of Urdu. Through a combination of literary, historical, and art-historical analysis, she brings to life the vibrant cultural production center of Kishangarh in the eighteenth century by reconstructing how Banī-ṭhanī came to be acclaimed as the devotional poetess Rasikbihārī and as 'India's Mona Lisa'. This major new study conveys important new insights in the history of Hindi literature and devotion, the family, palace women and the social mobility of the enslaved.
Slaves and Slave Agency in the Ottoman Empire
Slaves and Slave Agency in the Ottoman Empire offers a new contribution to slavery studies relating to the Ottoman Empire. Given the fact that the classical binary of 'slavery' and 'freedom' derives from the transatlantic experience, this volume presents an alternative approach by examining the strong asymmetric relationships of dependency documented in the Ottoman Empire. A closer look at the Ottoman social order discloses manifold and ambiguous conditions involving enslavement practices, rather than a single universal pattern. The authors examine various forms of enslavement and dependency with a particular focus on agency, i. e. the room for maneuver, which the enslaved could secure for themselves, or else the available options for action in situations of extreme individual or group dependencies.
An Economic History of Early Modern India
The death of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1707 until the annexation of Maratha territories by the British East India Company in 1818 was a period of transition for the economy of India. This book focuses on these transitions, and shows how a study of this period of Indian history contributes to a deeper understanding of the long-run patterns of economic change in India. Momentous changes occurred in business and politics in India during the eighteenth century - the expansion of trade with Europe and the collapse of the Mughal Empire, resulting in the formation of a number of independent states. This book analyses how these two forces were interrelated, and how they went on to change livelihoods and material wellbeing in the region. Using detailed studies of markets, institutions, rural and urban livelihoods, and the standard of living, it develops a new perspective on the history of eighteenth century India, one that places business at the centre, rather than the transition to colonial rule. This book is the first systematic account of the economic history of early modern India, and an essential reference for students and scholars of Economics and South Asian History.
The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism: Volume 1, Patterns and Trajectories over the Longue Durée
This major new reference work with contributions from an international team of scholars provides a comprehensive account of ideas and practices of nationhood and nationalism from antiquity to the present. It considers both continuities and discontinuities, engaging critically and analytically with the scholarly literature in the field. Volume I starts with a series of case studies of classical civilizations. It then explores a wide range of pivotal moments and turning points in the history of identity politics during the age of globalization, from 1500 through to the twentieth century. This overview is truly global, covering countries in East and South Asia as well as Europe and the Americas.
Nomadic Narratives
The Thar Desert, which is today divided by an international boundary, has historically been a frontier region connecting Punjab, Multan, Sindh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. This book looks at the Desert as an historical region shaped through the mobility of its inhabitants - warriors, pastoralists, traders, ascetics and bards, often in overlapping capacities. It challenges the frames of Mughal-Rajput relationships generally employed to explore the histories of the Thar, arguing that Rajputana remains an inadequate category to explore polities located in this frontier region, where along with Rajputs, a range of groups, such as Charans, Bhils, Meenas, Soomras and Pathans controlled circulation, and with whom the Rajput states had to constantly negotiate. Sifting through a wide range of Rajasthani written and oral narratives, travelogues of British administrators, and vernacular as well as English records, the book explores long-term relationships between mobility, martiality, memory and identity in the desert expanses of the Thar.
