About The Book
Tamil Naduations of Colonial rule have been among the core concerns for Historians of modern India, often resulting in very fundamental disagreements over the very tools and sources with which to address the problem. The result has been a diversity of perspectives and a Creative application of different methodologies in the analysis of the economy, Society and culture of colonial India.
Eminent historians have contributed to this volume in Memory of Dharma Kumar, whose intellectual contribution as an economic historian and Editor is undisputed. This collection of outstanding Essays represents this dynamic aspect of the History Writing about the colonial period, with one Eye always trained on its Effects on understanding contemporary India.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam's lucid introduction fulfills the task of 'making Sense of Indian historiography' and its evolving profile. Among the range of areas addressed by these essays, issues relating to South Indian Agrarian history are covered by David Ludden and Tsukasa Mizushima, and the regional Language documentation regarding common lands in Western India by Sumit Gaha. Ravi Ahuja analyses the famine policy of the early East India Company, and John Richards, Tirthankar Roy and, Om Prakash address different aspects of the issue of trade in colonial India. Subrahmanyam uses a set of Biographical instances to Map colonial transitions in South India. Thomas Trautmann's essay looks at early colonial Dictionaries in Madras to better understand the Nature of early colonial Cultural policy. A.R. Venkatachalapathy describes the rise of the 'coffee house' in Tamil Nadu through an engaging combination of social and cultural history. Students of Indian history, scholars with a specific interest in the colonial period as well as the general reader will find these essays engaging and even indispensable.
Contents
1. Introduction : Colonial Transitions and Indian Historiography/Sanjay Subrahmanyam
2. Cooperation and Conflict Among European Traders in the Indian Ocean in the Late Eighteenth Century/Om Prakash
3. The Opium Industry in British India/John F. Richards
4. Claims on the Commons : Political Power and Natural Resources in Pre-Colonial India/Sumit Guha
5. Profiles in Transition : Of adventurers and Administrators in South India, 1750-1810/Sanjay Subrahmanyam
6. State Formation and 'Famine Policy' in Early Colonial South India/Ravi Ahuja
7. Dr. Johnson and the Pandits : Imagining the Perfect Dictionary in Colonial Madras/Thomas R. Trautmann
8. Spectres of Agrarian Territory in Southern India/David Ludden
9. From Mirasidar to Pattadar : South India in the Late Nineteenth Century/Tsukasa Mizushima
10. Madras Handkerchiefs in the Interwar Period/Tirthankar Roy
11. 'In Those Days there was no Coffee' : Coffee - Drinking and Middle - Class Culture in Colonial Tamilnadu/A.R. Venkatachalapathy
List of Contributors
1. Ravi Anuja, is lecturer in history at the South Asia Institute, Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat, Heidelberg. He has worked on the social and economic history of early colonial South India, and on maritime 'a. His doctoral thesis has been published as a monograph : Die Erzeugung kolonialer Staatlichkeit mid das Problem der Arbeit (1999).
2. Sumit Guha, is St. Purandara Das Distinguished Professor of South j History at Brown University, Providence. He has published widely on colonial and pre-colonial Indian history and demography, including a monograph entitled Environment and Ethnicity in India, 1200-1999.
3. David Ludden, is Professor of South Asian History in the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He has published widely on South Indian history, and his most recent works include An Agrarian History of South Asia (1999) and India and South Asia : A short history (2002).
4. Tsukasa Mizushima, is Professor at the Graduate School of Humanities and sociology, University of Tokyo. He has worked extensively on the agrarian and economic history of South India and Southeast Asia. He is the author of Nattar and the Socio-Economic (Change in South India in the 18th-19th Centuries (1986).
5. Om Prakash, is Professor of Economic History at the Delhi School of Economics, and has written extensively on Indian Ocean trade. His recent works include European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India (1998).
6. John Richards, is Professor of History at Duke University, Durham (N.C.). His recent publications include The Mughal Empire (1993), and The Unending Frontier : An Environmental History of the Early Modern India (1998).
7. Tirthankar Roy, is Professor at the Gokhale Institute of Politic and Economics, Pune, and has written extensively on the economic history of colonial India, and economic policy in contemporary India. He is the author most recently of The Economic History of India, 1857-1947 (2000).
8. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, is Professor of Indian History and Culture at Oxford University. He has written on diverse aspects of South Asian and Indian Ocean history, and has published several books including Penumbral Visions (2001).
9. Thomas R. Trautmann, is Mary Fair Croushore Professor of Humanities in the Department of History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has published on various aspects of Indian history and the history of ethnography, including a monograph entitled Aryans and British India (1997).
10. A.R. Venkatachalapathy, is Assistant Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. He has published widely in Tamil and English, on print culture and literary and cultural history in nineteenth-and twentieth century Tamilnadu, and has also edited literary works such as Putumaippittan kataikal (2000).
About the Editors
Sanjay Subrahmanyam is Professor of Indian History and Culture, University of Oxford. He is also the author of Penumbra/Visions : Making Polities in Early Modem South India (OUP 2001), editor of Sinners and Saints : The Successors of Vasco da Gama (OIP 2000), and has edited the collection on maritime history, Maritime India (OUP 2004).