Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire
Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire
$127.00
USDThe past twenty years have seen a proliferation of specialist scholarship on the period of India's transition to colonialism. This volume provides a synthesis of some of the most important themes to emerge from recent work and seeks in particular to reassess the role of Indians in the politics and economics of early colonialism. It discusses new views of the 'decline of the Moghuls' and the role of the Indian capitalists in the expansion of the English East Indian Company's trade and urban settlements. Professor Bayly considers the reasons for the inability of indigenous states to withstand the British, but also highlights the relative failure of the Company to transform India into a quiescent and profitable colony. Later chapters deal with changes in India's ecology, social organisation and ideologies in the nineteenth century, and analyse the nature of Indian resistance to colonialism, including the rebellion of 1857.
Reviews & endorsements
"The entire Cambridge series, judging from the quality of these two examples, will prove essential reading for some time to come, for both specialists in Indian history and scholars in related fields. Both authors have clearly demonstated their control over the state of scholarship in their respective areas. These two authors, and the series editors as well, are to be commended for a fine start to what should prove to be a major contribution to the study of Indian history." Michael H. Fisher, Public Affairs
"Bayly packs a wealth of information and comment into the limited compass of his book, and many distinct strands of interest find a place." V.G. Kiernan, Victorian Studies
"The entire Cambridge series, judging from the quality of these two examples, will prove essential reading for some time to come, for both specialists in Indian history and scholars in related fields. Both authors have clearly demonstated their control over the state of scholarship in their respective areas. These two authors, and the series editors as well, are to be commended for a fine start to what should prove to be a major contribution to the study of Indian history." Michael H. Fisher, Public Affairs
"Bayly packs a wealth of information and comment into the limited compass of his book, and many distinct strands of interest find a place." V.G. Kiernan, Victorian Studies
"C.A. Bayly, among the most brilliant younger scholars in the field, has produced a book of wonderful intricacy and sophistication. Broad in scope and grand in conception, his study is a masterly synthesis of recent scholarship and amazingly complex interpretations of India's past." American Historical Review
Product details
April 1988Hardback
9780521250924
248 pages
235 × 160 × 21 mm
0.485kg
1 b/w illus. 5 maps
Available
Table of Contents
- List of maps
- General editor's preface
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1. India in the eighteenth century: the formation of states and social groups
- 2. Indian capital and the emergence of colonial society
- 3. The crisis of the Indian state, 1780–1820
- 4. The consolidation and failure of the East India Company's state, 1818–57
- 5. Peasant and Brahmin: consolidating 'traditional' society
- 6. Rebellion and reconstruction
- Conclusion: the first age of colonialism in India
- Glossary of Indian terms
- Bibliography
- Index.
