#Sanjay Subrahmanyam

[dipnotski]

Kolektif – 19. Yüzyılın Sonundan 1945’e Modern Asya Entelektüel Tarihi (2023)

Bu kitap Türkiye’deki tarih okurlarının pek aşina olmadığı birçok isme ve olaya yakından bakarak modern Asya entelektüel tarihinin temel meselelerini ele alıyor. Hem Batı-merkezci hem de onunla aynı ölçüde sorunlu Asya-merkezci bakış açılarının ötesine geçebilmek adına dikkatle seçilen makalelerle Asya’nın kolonyal geçmişine ve postkolonyal bugününe ilişkin yeni pencereler açıyor. Kitapta Michael…

[somerabbitholes]

Hii! Appearing again to say I love your blog, and maybe also asking for some recommendations for books about Indian art or just cultural history, history that is more about the common life😊🥰

hi! thank you! here are a few books i like —

Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Muzaffar Alam: about the culture of travel between the Mughal and Persian empire; really interesting take on how geographical discovery worked and was thought of

Wanderers, Kings and Merchants by Peggy Mohan: a linguistic history of the subcontinent told through stories of how languages travelled and how linguistic cultures developed

False Allies by Manu Pillai: about princely states in British India and their cultural and political relationship with nationalism and the mainstream national movement

Everyday Lives, Everyday History by Uma Chakravarty: I think this is about ancient India; but anyhoo: it looks at how the histories of common people are and can be told and how we do that in practice with ancient India

Cricket Country by Prashant Kidambi: how the sport took root in India and interacted with existing faultlines, told through the story of how the first cricket team was put together

House But No Garden by Nikhil Rao: about the development of suburbs in Bombay in the early 21st century, how colonial town planning interacted with native communities and the cultures that developed therein

also, some more on indian art

I hope you find something you like!

[denofdreams-writerblr]

As someone studying history for my major, I'm so tired of people talking shit like, "mughals are colonisers"

People can be clueless about a dynasty from 16th century, but before commenting value-laden terms like colonisation please read up. And not just random articles floating on the internet, real books, real articles, real work by academicians. Coincidently, most people who talk shit like this are fascists, right-wingers hindu nationalists whose thinly veiled Islamophobia is more telling than not. They perceive all Muslims as "the other", and if you ask them they'd say they'd learn it from "primary sources". They never cite any primary sources by the way, although I suppose they would be referring to "Maasir i alamgiri" or the imperialist Eliot and Dowson series (the later is ironically in fact not a primary source but translated, many times incorrectly, excerpts of primary sources) all without understanding the rhetoric or historical consciousness or literally anything. They have never read Akbarnama or Ain i Akbari, they don't know about any primary sources in language other than Persian. They don't know or care about non-official contemporary sources, they don't know about inscriptions, they don't know how to extract information from the primary sources itself. But if you try to tell them they would automatically pull up random internet article with obvious propaganda and least historical consciousness. They have no idea what rhetoric is, what historiography is, what historical distance is. And how can they? They belittle actual historians, students, researchers, people who have spent years studying this niche of academia.

Speaking to them is like talking to the walls, but for those who wish to learn more on the Mughals I'll leave a few readings:

The Mughal State (1526-1750) : Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Formation of the Mughal Empire: Douglas Streusand

The Mughals of India: Harbans Mukhia

I've picked out the easiest readings, considering that people are of course living in a fast-moving world, for a quick read, the Introduction of The Mughal State and Formation of the Mughal Empire are great, and the 1st chapter of The Mughals of India. All three are available in lib.gen. If someone wishes to dive deeper, to read the official court chronicles, some like Ain i Akbari, Akbarnama, Jahangirnama etc are all available in archive.org.

[whencyclopedia]

Empires Between Islam and Christianity, 1500-1800

'Empire' is a common concept in the field of world history. Historians often specialize in one specific empire, such as the British Empire, the Russian Empire, or the Chinese dynasties. Going beyond this unidirectional approach, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Distinguished Professor of History & Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggests an insightful 'inter-empire' lens. In Empires Between Islam and Christianity, 1500-1800, Subrahmanyam uses the Portuguese, Ottoman, Mughal, Habsburg, and British Empires as launching points to derive a global history network that breaks intellectual borders set by stereotypes or exceptionalist thoughts.

Continue reading...

[edisonblog]

Laura de Mello e Souza is the first woman and researcher from the Americas to receive the International History Prize.

Retired professor from the History Department of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at USP.

A historian, she is recognized for her intellectual trajectory that allowed dialogue between different cultures and trained generations of researchers.

The award aims to honor historians who have stood out for their work, publications and teaching in the field of History and who have contributed to the development of knowledge in the area.

The names of the candidates are indicated by the committee members themselves, therefore, there are no individual registrations.

Created in 2015, it has already been awarded to three researchers: Serge Gruzinski, French historian from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), in 2015; Gábor Klaniczay, Hungarian researcher at Central European University, in 2016 and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Indian historian at the University of California, in 2022.

The award will be presented in Tokyo, on October 27, 2024, during a solemn ceremony that will mark the General Assembly of the International Committee for Historical Sciences, in the presence of delegates from ICHS member committees and commissions from around the world.

About the International Committee of Historical Sciences (ICHS)

Founded in Geneva, on May 15, 1926, the Committee was born from the idea that occurred in Brussels, during the fifth International Congress of Historical Sciences, in 1923, of a permanent organization that would unite and organize intellectuals in the historical sciences from all over the world. world to promote personal contact and exchange.

Since 1900, international congresses of historians have been held at sporadic intervals. However, after the First World War, it became necessary to replace these dispersed meetings with more regular meetings, organized by a stable institution that allowed historians to present their methods and results of their research.

At first, in 1926, the Committee included only 19 countries, all European or North American. After World War II, the ICHS reorganized at the Paris International Congress in 1950, and its influence now extends to Asia, Africa and South America. Currently, the organization includes a total of 53 countries.

source: https://www.fflch.usp.br/159254 Renan Braz

edisonmariotti @edisonblog

.br

Laura de Mello e Souza é a primeira mulher e pesquisadora das Américas a receber o Prêmio Internacional de História.

Docente aposentada do Departamento de História da Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH) da USP.

Historiadora é reconhecida por sua trajetória intelectual que permitiu o diálogo entre diferentes culturas e formou gerações de pesquisador.

O prêmio tem como objetivo homenagear historiadores que tenham se destacado por seus trabalhos, publicações e ensino no campo da História e que contribuíram para o desenvolvimento do conhecimento na área.

Os nomes dos candidatos são indicados pelos próprios membros dos comitês, portanto, não há inscrições individuais.

Criado em 2015, ele já foi concedido a tr��s pesquisadores: Serge Gruzinski, historiador francês da École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales e do Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), em 2015; Gábor Klaniczay, pesquisador húngaro do Central European University, em 2016 e Sanjay Subrahmanyam, historiador indiano da University of California, em 2022.

O prêmio será entregue em Tóquio, no dia 27 de outubro de 2024, durante uma cerimônia solene que marcará a Assembleia Geral do Comitê Internacional de Ciências Históricas, na presença dos delegados dos comitês e comissões membros do ICHS de todo o mundo.

Sobre o International Commitee of Historical Sciences (ICHS)

Fundado em Genebra, em 15 de maio de 1926, o Comitê nasceu da ideia ocorrida em Bruxelas, durante o quinto Congresso Internacional de Ciências Históricas, em 1923, de uma organização permanente que iria unir e dar organização a intelectuais das ciências históricas de todo o mundo para promover o contato e o intercâmbio pessoal.

Desde 1900, os congressos internacionais de historiadores foram realizados em intervalos esporádicos. Porém, após a Primeira Guerra Mundial, tornou-se necessário substituir esses encontros dispersos por reuniões mais regulares, organizadas por uma instituição estável e que permitisse aos historiadores apresentarem seus métodos e resultados de suas pesquisas.

No início, em 1926, o Comitê incluía apenas 19 países, todos europeus ou norte-americanos. Após a Segunda Guerra Mundial, o ICHS se reorganizou no Congresso Internacional de Paris, em 1950, e sua influência agora se estende à Ásia, África e América do Sul. Atualmente, a organização inclui um total de 53 países.

[mughal-e-qalam]

^^^^ everything said above!

I know in more details about Mughals, so here's my two cents:

Also, if you'd like to read more about the nature and legitimization of the Mughal state, you can look these up:

Emergence of the Mughal Empire: Douglas Streusand

The Mughals of India: Harbans Mukhia

The Mughal State: Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam

These three deal with the historiographical trends regarding Mughal history. For a short intro, you could read the introduction of 1. and 3. and chapter 1 of 2.

Also, so glad someone brought up the Malabar trade thing! In fact, there's an inscription found in Bikrampur that give grant to a "vihara" dedicated to Allah (they were probably unfamiliar with the word 'masjid'). ((This was pointed out in a fascinating lecture by Ranveer Chakroborty on Indian Ocean trade, in which i attended))

Also on a sidenote, the Mughals wanted to potray themselves as a welfare state. If you read Akbarnama, you'd see how Abul Fazl stresses on this particular aspect. Even Aurangzeb was aware of this notion as is evident from his insha literature (a genre of literature compiled of letters).

Edit: corrected the information about Bikrampur inscription thanks to @kutputli

now that i have been on your blog for sometime, im glad it helped me correct my views regarding hindutva (ahem). i had a question, is it true that muslims colonized India? i have heard this so many times and you seem to be the only person i could go for an answer :) feel free to ignore if it made you uncomfortable!

short answer: no they didn't, and saying this doesn't mean you think they were Good™ really they were just your average invaders that like every other empire did their bad things but they were not part of a colonial machine

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

The ’formation’ of the Mughal state

Having set out, at some length, the received wisdom on a variety of issues concerning the study of the Mughal state, let us consider how recent western writings part company with it. A major issue is clearly chronology, or proposition no. 1, as we have set it out above. It is certainly worth considering that the pre-Akbar period may have had a greater significance than usually given to it. It. could be argued, for example, following the lead of Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui and more recently Mohibbul Hasan, that the period of Lodi rule, running into the reign of Babur, already showed signs of a new dynamic where the state-building process was concerned; In the case of Douglas Streusand The Formation of the Mughal Empire, the title .. itself gives a clue to his views on the matter. For him the ’formation of the Mughal empire’ took place under Akbar, and the earlier period can be dealt with quite summarily (Babur and Humayun merit only a few paragraphs, pp. 36-37). Again, for Stephen Blake, the pre-Shahjahanabad history of Delhi (including Humayun’s use of the centre for his court) can equally be given short shrift, and the significance of the fact that the site was repeatedly used, with intervals, is thus lost sight of. In so doing, both writers implicitly suggest that the real history of the Mughal state began with Akbar.

Why were the reigns of Babur and Humayun, as indeed of the Afghan Sher Shah (who though not Mughal, dynastically speaking, does form a part of the epoch considered to be ’Mughal’ in north Indian history) so unimportant? As articulated by Iqtidar Alam Khan in a brief, but rather well-known, article, the principal reason for this lay in the realm of state structure and the internal balance of power. He argued, against an earlier interpretation by R.P. Tripathi, that just as the Afghan states in northern India had contained an inbuilt tendency to fragmentation, so too the Timurid polity discouraged centralisation on account of its ’Mongol characteristics’. These characteristics manifested themselves above all in terms of the relations between the Timurid royalty and the nobility, which was governed by customary laws derived from Chinggis Khan (yasa-yi Chingezi or türa-yi Chingezil. According to these traditions, it is argued, sovereignty was a shared attribute of the lineage, rather than exclusively held by a single ruler. Succession therefore led inevitably to appanage formation, which thus prevented the emergence of a strong ruler. Equally, the absence of a substantive bureaucratic tradition among the Timurids is also seen as setting sharp limits to the possibilities of centralisation. This, then, is the background as to why Humayun faced challenges from his nobility and siblings (especially Mirza Kamran) in 1538-41 and 1545-53. In turn, only Akbar, rejecting Mongol traditions and embracing more ’the traditions and practice evolved under Turkish rulers of the thirteenth and fourteenth century’, managed ’the transformation of the Mughal Empire into a highly sophisticated despotism’. 

Such an argument, which is accepted in substance (with some minor modifications) by Streusand, could in fact be reconsidered from various perspectives. First, even though Timur’s empire fragmented after his death, there now appears to be a consensus that he did manage a significant transition from the relatively loose structure of the Chaghatay Khanate to a far more centralised and autocratic structure. This he did , because in part he claimed to combine Chinggis Khanid tradition with divine sanction; thus, he declared as early as 1361 that what underpinned his rule was ’the Celestial Decree and Chinggis Khanid law’ (yarli~h-i dsamdni wa türa-yi Chingïzkhänï), and the former could presumably be used to overrule the latter at times.’ Second, as Streusand too points out, the bureaucratic tradition was by no means absent among Timur and the Timurids, who made extensive use of bureaucrats steeped in Persian culture (including, not least of all, their chroniclers); But most serious of all is the neglect of a major struggle that was fought out between the 1560s and the mid-1580s, which could be used to test this theory of a significant transition between Humayun and Akbar. Here, I refer to Akbar’s relations with his half-brother Mirza Muhammad Hakim (1554-85), which receive but cursory attention from Streusand, as they have from earlier writers.

Mirza Hakim was born relatively late in Humayun’s life, his mother being Mah Chuchak Begam. Through most of his life, he remained associated with a particular region of what had been Humayun’s domain, namely the area around Kabul. This fact itself is not devoid of significance; Mirza Kamran had operated in much the same area, and as such it remained poorly incorporated into Mughal territories. Now, unfortunately, we have few sources that portray his struggle with Akbar from his perspective. From the viewpoint of Akbar’s court, he was an embarrassment that had to be explained away or glossed over. On two occasions, once in the late 1560s and again in the early 1580s, the latter strategy was not possible: these were moments when he came to be allied with rebels within Akbar’s domains, who had the khutba read in Mirza Hakim’s name in the course of rebellions. On both occasions, Akbar had to move against him, but although defeated, he was never set aside. Implicitly, then, Mirza Hakim’s hereditary right to rule over Kabul was not challenged, and he appears to have had a relatively free hand in organising revenue-assignments in the region, as well as in conducting negotiations with the Abulkhairi Uzbek state of Mavarannahr, with the Safavids (who treated him as a sovereign ruler) and with another Timurid potentate, Mirza Sulaiman. The latter, also a neglected figure of the same epoch, was the ruler of Badakhshan, as well as Mirza Hakim’s father-in-law; he eventually lost his territories to the Uzbeks and become a mansabdar with the rank of 5,000 under Akbar, dying in Lahore in 1589.

Now, even though Akbar’s chroniclers (and especially Abu’l Fazl) go to some lengths to portray Mirza Hakim as an unruly subordinate of Akbar, it is evident that his position was more complex. First, we may note that he is never treated, even retrospectively, as a Mughal amir; his biography is thus absent from Shahnawaz Khan’s Ma’asir ul-Umard, unlike that of Mirza Sulaiman. There is also no clear evidence that he ever held a mansab; on the contrary, several prominent mansabdars are described as men who had come over to Akbar’s service after his half-brother’s death. In more senses than one, therefore, Mirza Hakim represented an alternative power centre, and an alternative focus of authority and patronage to Akbar; and even if the challenge from him did not wholly mature, we cannot dismiss it out of hand. The very fact that Abu’l Fazl himself reports a discussion in Akbar’s court in the early 1580s. of a proposal to assassinate Mirza Hakim, and thus end the threat from him once and for all, is highly suggestive. It is therefore rather surprising that while devoting some attention to the abortive challenge posed to Akbar by the other Mirzas, Streusand wholly ignores the significance of Mirza Hakim’s challenge. In particular, given his claims to posing Mughal history in a wider context, it would have been of interest to examine more closely the perception of Akbar in western and central Asia vis-a-vis his brother, through an examination of such texts as the celebrated Uzbek chronicle of Tanish al-Bukhari, ’Abdullah Näma (or Sharaf Ninw-yi Shähl), as well as the diplomatic correspondence with the Safavids.

The issue of appanaging is, of course, only one dimension of the problem of ’centralisation’. What were the major institutional novelties, which permit us to assert that the Mughal state of Akbar, unlike that under his predecessors, showed an ’extreme systematisation of administration’ (as argued by Athar Ali, for example)? This would require us to consider in some detail the extent to which the jagir as instituted by Akbar diverged in reality from the wajh assignment under the Lodi Sultans, or the tuylil as used by Babur and Humayun. We would also have to re-examine the significance of the idea of the mansab, which older writers like Moreland have seen as rooted in the earlier Mongol practice of numerical ranking (an idea that is currently out of favour). In other words, rather than accept as a postulate that Akbar’s institutions were created sui generis, we might speak of an evolving tool-box of contemporary statecraft, from which a set of institutions were improvised and partly innovated. This would enable us, to start with, to place less of the burden of historical explanation on the ruler’s ’genius’.

This, however, is not where Streusand’s interests lie. Rather, having accepted as a postulate the notion of a sharp discontinuity in the nature of the state between Akbar and his predecessors, his main thrust is two-fold. First, he wishes to examine (in Chapter 3 of his book) whether Akbar’s conquests and successful attempts at centralisation were the result of the introduction of firearms-that is, the so-called ’Gunpowder Empires’ hypothesis of Marshall Hodgson. Second, having provided us in the following chapter with a fairly conventional political history, dealing with the years from 1556 to about 1570, Streusand devotes space to ’the definitive reforms’ of Akbar, which dated to the years 1572-1580, when ’Akbar’s empire became recognizably Mughal’ (p. 108). This requires a description of mansabdari and a discussion of the mahzar of 1579, leading to the development of the idea of an ’Akbari constitution’, to be inferred largely from court-ritual, and Abu’l Fazl’s writings on sovereignty. On the basis of an examination of court-ritual, Streusand attempts to demonstrate a rather obvious point about the ’syncretic’ nature of the ideololgy under Akbar, and his use of ’Hindu’ elements derived from earlier polities. All the while, he stresses that his intention is not to bring to light new documentation, but rather to read standard primary materials (such as Abu’l Fazl’s Akbar Nama, ’Abd al-Qadir al-Badaoni’s Muntakhäb ut-Tawdrikh, or Nizam al-Din Ahmad’s Tabaqdt-i Akbari), as well as the secondary literature afresh.

 Concerning the ’Gunpowder Empires’ question, Streusand’s conclusions do not wholly support Hodgson; he argues from brief descriptions of Akbar’s sieges of Chitor, Ranthambor and Kalinjar that artillery played no great role in his success in siege warfare. However, his later assertion (p. 67) that ’firearms contributed to centralization, the distinguishing characteristic of the gunpowder empires, in a more complex way’, winds up confusing the issue. By his own admission, the Mughals at the second battle of Panipat in 1556 ’apparently had no guns’ (p. 53); and guns are seen as irrelevant in one of the only two other battles examined, Tukaroi (1575), and Haldighati (1576). To argue, as Streusand does at one point, that the ’narrow margin of victory’ in some of these battles ’shows that the Mughals needed the combination of artillery and mounted archers to win easy victories’ (p. 56) is a specious form of reasoning; what he in fact needed to demonstrate were instances where firearms did indeed make a great deal of difference. This he does not do, even in the case of Haldighati, which in his own words ’meant nothing’ as an engagement anyway. At the end of a thirty-page discussion, we are hence none the wiser on the question. 

On the issue of the reforms of the 1570s and the ’Akbari constitution’, Streusand concludes that the official ideology under Akbar did include significant ’Hindu’ elements in it, and that this was because the Mughal state was hybrid-Islamic at the centre, but Hindu at the periphery: thus, ’an Ottoman Sultan would have found the central bureaucracy familiar; a Chola Rajah would have understood the limited imperial role in the provinces’. The conclusion therefore is that ’the Mughal government [w]as an imperial centre supported by a shifting structure of segments’.

It is only natural, in view of this, that towards his concluding paragraphs, as well as earlier in his book, Streusand pays obeisance to Burton Stein’s ’segmentary state’ formulation, arguing that it may not be wholly inappropriate in the Mughal context (albeit with some modifications).  In effect, the substance of his conclusion appears to be that despite having undergone a process of centralisation, the Mughal state as a structure remained, at the time of Akbar’s death, less centralised than say the Ottoman state. This was, he argues, largely the result of the fact that in the. years following the ’great revolt’ of 1580-82 in the eastern part of the realm, ’Akbar compromised the principles of centralized government which he and his closest advisers shared’ (p. 178). The result, in his view, was the resort to the jagir system, and Streusand maintains that the failure of centralising forces is clearly manifested in the execution in 1581 of Khwaja Shah Mansur Shirazi, who had been appointed wazir in 1578, on false accusations of rebellion (and loyalty to Mirza Hakim!) (pp. 166-70).  

If we compare his monograph to the Aligarh paradigm outlined above, then, Streusand appears to depart from it in certain respects. The extent of Mughal power and the extractive nature of the post-Akbar state do not come through as clearly in his work as in those other writings. Further, an attempt is made to bring in ideological elements, as well as court-ritual, in what is clearly the result of the influence of Chicago-based ’anthropological history’. Again, the zabt system, which Athar Ali has described as ’the characteristic institution of Mughal revenue administration’, gets little space in his analysis, as indeed do matters economic in general. The economic significance of the incorporation of Gujarat, Bengal and Sind into the Mughal domains between 1570 and 1595, for example, is scarcely touched upon, and the focus remains very much on imperial court and centre. This disregard for the relationship between central state and region, and indeed for spatial analysis in general, .. [other] formulations, discussed at greater length below.

 -  Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “The Mughal state−−Structure or process? Reflections on recent western historiography.” Indian Economic Social History Review 29(3), 1992. pp. 297-303 

[bouxmounir]

« Des empires construits entre islam et christianisme »

« Des empires construits entre islam et christianisme »

la Croix : Empire, Impérialisme… Ces concepts ne sont-ils pas revenus dans l’actualité, notamment depuis la « guerre contre le terrorisme » menée par les États-Unis après le 11 septembre, il y a vingt ans ? Sanjay Sabhrmaniam : Sur cru, au XXDieu Siècle, avec les guerres mondiales puis la fin des empires coloniaux, auxquels appartenait autrefois l’empire. La modernité était l’État-nation. Mais, à…

[eeverestresearch]

On three ways to be alien

Sanjay Subrahnahmanyam's depiction of the premodern transgressor of cultural boundaries is far from celebratory. They are a complex individual with multifaceted and performative identity. Their lives are beset with the difficulties of wearing of different masks and playing different roles in order to navigate specific social and political contexts. Facility of imposture is an important question. He makes the salient point that such persons were not always valued in past societies - and indeed the peril of navigating various groups identities appears to be that they can all turn against you as an alien/outsider in many forms. (Perhaps we can relate to persecution of Manichaeism, rattles everyones cages by claiming origins everywhere and ultimately seen as a 'foreign' religion by all?)

How does the historian deal with such figures? They are unique evidence, standing at the juncture of many soc-pol-cult structures but with agency made visible by the tensions with which they are not subsumed into them. A critical method for a biographically oriented global microhistory.

He makes a very interesting point regarding ethnography, how it can often fuel a self-fulfilling ethnogenesis (c.f. colonial india and caste system), the process that is also often termed 'the invention of tradition'. But how do we relate this formation of perceived group identities through ethnographic thinking to diasporic groups that are ethnically constituted? Another point on DIASPORA: dual definition (1) Modern, usually c19-20, (2) Medieval/early modern: usually dealing with merchants and entrepreneurs (surely this is too limiting?)

[arysthaeniru]

Hey, I was wondering, would you recommend any particular books/documentaries/websites/etc. to learn pre-modern Indian history? I've got the gist well enough to cover in a basic-ass World History class, but I never got the chance to learn about it specifically when I was in school, so I know I'm not doing as good a job as some other units.

Ooooohhh, I have a few, but I know I’m definitely a bit more well-versed in colonial India, I mostly know of pre-colonial India through the referential, looking-backness?

Mana Kia, Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin Before Nationalism is a really good look at like India/Pakistan/Persia reaching through the Mughal Empire and a bit prior to that. 

Burjor, Avari, India: The Ancient Past, has some flaws, mostly the problem I have with all civilizational textbooks, in which civilizational progress is taken as a given and unquestionably a good thing and civilizational comparisons are good (this is such a problem in Ancient History textbooks!!), but I think it’s otherwise fair and easy for undergrads to grasp? He’s very critical of Hinduism and the caste system, while not falling into most common colonials stereotypes about it, which I like!

Singh, Khushwant, History of the Sikhs: Volume 1, is a very detailed book that I admit I haven’t fully read through, but I find the introduction and conclusion really useful! 

Alam, Muzaffar and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, The Mughal State, 1526-1750 is a good slightly more advanced collection of essays about the various aspects of the long Mughal reign, and I think it’s a great look at some of the key debates in the field right now? 

I also enjoy this little article, I just think it’s nifty:  Pollard, Elizabeth. 2013. “Indian Spices and Roman ‘Magic’ in Imperial and Late Antique Indomediterranea.” Journal of World History 24 (1): 1–23.

I have a stupidly long list of articles to recommend from my Global Modern South Asia class too, which are all over the place, but I think these are good places to start! I wish I had more about South India and the Tamil Kingdoms, but honestly, a lot of Indian history is very north India focused, for sure. 

[vishvavasu]

According to C. H. H. Wake, Malukun clove, nutmeg, and mace exports rose as much as 500 percent between 1500 and 1620, with growth particularly notable from 1550.169 Likewise, Reid and David Bulbeck argue for a 550 percent increase by volume of Southeast Asian pepper exports from the 1510s to the 1670s, and a twelvefold increase by value to the 1640s.170 Although Sanjay Subrahmanyam has queried some of Reid’s figures,171 the geographic diffusion of pepper cultivation is clear. In 1500 it was grown chiefly along the northern and southeastern coasts and in some interior districts of Sumatra, and in Pahang, Pattani, Kedah, and northwest Java. By 1600 it had spread to the northeast peninsula and along the West Sumatran coast, as Chinese and European demand shot up and as Portugal’s capture of Melaka led Muslim pepper traders to develop alternate routes and sources of supply. By 1680 fresh cultivation had opened in the Malay peninsula, around Banjarmasin in Borneo, in the Minangkabau highlands, and in Southwest Sumatra. All told, in 1650 some 6 percent of the population of Sumatra, the peninsula, and Borneo may have earned a living growing pepper.172

169 Wake, “Changing Pattern,” 393, which is consistent with CHSEA, 465, Fig. 8.1, and with estimates of spice exports to Europe at AC, vol. II, 14, Fig. 3. After 1620, however, Dutch control depressed fine spice production. On spreading clove cultivation, Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade, 153–66.

170 Calculated in local prices. Bulbeck et al., Southeast Asian Exports, 86–87. Cf. figures at CHSEA, 465, Fig. 8.1; AC, vol. II, 20–23; Andaya, Live as Brothers, 44–45.

171 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Writing History ‘Backwards,’” Studies in History 10 (1994): 131–45.

172 AC, vol. II, 8–10, 32–36 and Map 2; Bulbeck et al., Southeast Asian Exports, ch. 3, esp. Map 4; and n. 108 supra.

[seitosatoko]

“Yet our sensitivity to the flaws of the one-size-lits-all Western-based conceit ot modernity should not obscure the appeal of the modern to the peoples around the world who co-produced it. For modernity, as Sanjay Subrahmanyam has written, is "historically a global and conjunctural phenomenon—not a virus that spreads from one place to another." Imperialism made the process largely coercive in many places, while Japan undertook a defensive modernization to preserve its sovereignty in the nineteenth-century international order dominated by the West. But some aspects of global and conjunctural modernity possessed—and continue to possess— magnetic attraction for reformers and revolutionaries, workers and peasants, elites and ordinary people who reached for modern ways of living and being. To denigrate this aspirational modernity or condescend to contemporary desires for development would be to reproduce, from the opposite vantage point and with all goodwill, the Eurocentric arrogance that once kept the "backward" peoples of "elsewhere" forever in the "imaginary waiting room" of history while the West commanded the halls of the modern.”

— Carol Gluck, “The End of Elsewhere: Writing Modernity Now”

[gregor-samsung]

“ Quando pensiamo alla sorte dei vinti, è la poesia, il dramma, il romanzo che vengono in mente. Tutto nasce con Omero che ha costretto i vincitori greci a piangere su Ettore e su Troia. Invece è stata la legge dei vincitori che ha trionfato nella storiografia europea dei secoli dell’età che chiamiamo moderna: qui si è imposto il canone dello sguardo dall’alto sul resto del mondo e sulle conquiste coloniali. Quello che è calato allora sul continente africano è stato il velo oscuro della sconfitta, con la scomparsa delle sue antiche civiltà e la devastante tratta degli schiavi. Solo in tempi recenti la decolonizzazione ha cominciato a modificare questo stato delle cose. Dopo quattro secoli di celebrazioni della scoperta di Cristoforo Colombo, nel centenario del 1492 in un’America latina di Stati e culture decolonizzati si è tenuto un festival «de los no descubiertos». E solo di recente il crollo dell’imperialismo europeo con le due guerre mondiali ha creato le condizioni perché lo storico indiano Sanjay Subrahmanyam invitasse ad aprire gli occhi sulle tante «storie connesse» che hanno intrecciato le vicende europee e mediterranee con quelle dell’Islam, dell’India e del lontano Oriente [Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Mondi connessi. La storia oltre l’etnocentrismo, Carocci, Roma 2014.]. Forse sta arrivando il tempo giusto per «provincializzare l’Europa», come propose vent’anni fa un altro studioso indiano, Dipesh Chakrabarty [D. C., Provincializzare l’Europa, Meltemi, Roma 2004.]. E intanto, da tempo, ci sono folle di «vinti interni» che si fanno avanti nelle ricerche storiche – le donne, le classi subalterne, gli eretici. “

Adriano Prosperi, Un tempo senza storia. La distruzione del passato, Giulio Einaudi editore (collana Vele); prima edizione: 19 gennaio 2021. [Libro elettronico]

[athibanenglish]

Sanjay Subrahmanyam: Playing to his strengths

Sanjay Subrahmanyam: Playing to his strengths

Sanjay Subrahmanyam is at a stage in his career when he should focus on the core identity of his music Musicians go through different phases of development, maturity and discovery. Sanjay Subrahmanyam has scaled some tall peaks of recognition and respect, but must carefully navigate the next phase to keep his legacy going. Many stalwarts eschewed adventure and experimentation at a certain stage…

[pyotra]

Even the privilege to remain casteless is only made available to Savarnas. Which is why in spite of all the half-baked things that TM Krishna says, writes and does, he is going to be thrust on us as a revolutionary. Whenever one remarks something critical about TM Krishna's 'radical' initiatives, it is always met with responses that claim "But hey, he is at least doing something. So we can't completely reject him!" or the even more boring, "Do you know how many Brahmins hate him for the radical things he is doing?" (A big yawn.)

There is a glaring irony in any Brahmin trying to become an anti-caste revolutionary. If TM Krishna or any other Brahmin has to be regarded as an anti-caste revolutionary, then their contribution should weaken the caste structure, in at least the domain they are working. Which means that the Brahmin-Savarnas who have accumulated privileges over centuries should lose some of it. And those who never had any privileges, gain some. This must be achieved through a structural change and not through any philanthropic activity. Just a bare minimal requirement, right? So going by this basic principle, I am sure we can agree that the Brahmin revolutionary too (being part of the caste structure) should lose some of his/her privileges in the process. (Yes only, no?) But what has TM Krishna's supposedly 'radical' initiatives led to?

1. He wins the Magsaysay award. The same year, Bezwada Wilson too wins the award. Wilson has been fighting to end manual scavenging for over 30 years. On the other hand, TM Krishna lived most of his life as a very privileged Iyengar. And suddenly discovered 'Caste' on one lazy summer morning. 'The Hindu' when publishing the news about the Magsaysay award winners allots a huge chunk of the first page to Krishna and a small box news for Wilson.This directly reveals how the caste structure works. TM Krishna's pointless, patronizing but well-publicized events allowed him to reap a huge benefit here. But Wilson's 30 plus years of work put him behind the new Iyenger kid on the block. (Obviously!)

2. TM Krishna quits the December music season citing reasons, which include the domination of the Carnatic music scene by a single community. Ahem! The same community he belongs to, that is. As someone who has drawn all possible benefits out of the season by being part of the community, he decides to quit it one day. Did it make him lose his privileges? Not one bit. In fact, he has already sucked all the privileges out of the December music season and become some sort of a star singer. By quitting the season, he actually becomes an even more sought after singer. And basic economics tells us that when you lower the supply, the demand automatically goes up. Which in this case would naturally translate to an increase in ticket prices for his concerts. By making the decision to quit the season, he has become a bigger star, who is commercially better off. He is no more one among the several singers of the crowded season. But someone you can only access exclusively. (Smart move, right?)

3. Every now and then, TM Krishna works with lower caste singers, musicians or art forms. And if you cared to notice (am sure, you have), we hardly get to see any of their names or faces. The only name that is repeatedly pushed down our throat is TM Krishna's. All his generosity in willing to work with art forms or artists from oppressed communities has not done anything significant to them. And it can't too. But on the other hand, it has made him some sort of a benevolent and revolutionary cultural icon. Which further increases his market value as a Carnatic singer. In the crowded Carnatic market scene, TM Krishna has been able to stand out by stepping on the shoulders of these nameless, faceless artists. It was alleged that there was a tough competition for the top spot between TM Krishna and another Carnatic singer Sanjay Subrahmanyan, an Iyer - leading to some sort of an intra-agraharam tussle. But with the kind of posturing Krishna has been doing the last few years, he has been able to easily overshadow Sanjay Subrahmanyam. (Is Iyengar the new 'higher'?)

4. There is a direct commercial value in artists indulging in socially woke activities. When actor Salman Khan drunk drove and killed people sleeping on the pavement, he was advised to start the 'Being Human' brand. Tamil actor Surya and his family members make emotional appeals about their Agaram Foundation. Another Tamil actor Kamal Hassan peddled atheism and Periyar to appeal to the Dravidian audience when his competitor Rajinikant was doing better with the masses. Actor Aamir Khan confirmed his progressiveness by repeatedly sobbing on his show Satyamev Jayate. The thing is, in highly competitive environments, artists can never become huge stars by just minding their own business. They have to create goodwill karma and build a cult around it. And the return on investment in such activities is freakingly huge and translates to better business. We don't know and will never know if anyone really got benefitted through the 'Being Human' initiative. But it has made Salman a bigger brand than he already was. Similarly, TM Krishna has only become a bigger brand through all his philanthropic initiatives.(Whatte wow!)

So where were we? Yeah. We kind of agreed that if TM Krishna's radical initiatives are worthwhile, then it should leave him with fewer privileges than where he started. But is that what is happening? Not at all. He is rather becoming a bigger star and only accumulating more and more privileges. And by amassing these privileges, will he be strengthening the caste system or weakening it? (Tell me, please!)

By wallowing in a series of photo-op friendly initiatives, TM Krishna is only robbing the voice of several Dalit-Bahujan activists who have been working in the anti-caste space for decades but will never be heard. In a caste society, for any real revolution to happen, the Brahmin should learn to shut up. Or in TM Krishna's case, he can also use the ancestral property (polite term for caste property) he has inherited to create a new Music Sabha and ban Brahmins from it. Doing anything else is just the equivalent of loud farting. And we all might have to just close our noses for a while.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“To begin with, the early modern period defines a new sense of the limits of inhabited world, in good measure because it is in a fundamental way an age of travel and discovery, of geographical redefinition. There were thus various attempts, often from conflicting perspectives and points of departure, to push back the limits of the world, as they were known to different peoples in about 1350. Rather than treat the European voyages of exploration as the sole or even the single most important focus, we need to bear in mind that the period witnesses the expansion in a number of cultures of travel, as well as the concomitant development of travel-literature as a literary genre, whether the routes explored are overland (trans-Saharan, trans-Central Asian) or maritime. The notion of 'discovery' thus applies as much to Zheng He's Indian Ocean voyages in the early fifteenth century as those of Cabral or Magellan a century later. These voyages were accompanied by often momentous changes in conceptions of space and thus cartography; significant new empirical 'ethnographies' also emerged from them.

But the early modern period also sees other shifts. Among these is a heightening of the long-term structural conflict that inhered in relations between settled agricultural and urban societies on the one hand, and nomadic groups (hunter gatherers, pastoralists, etc.) on the other. This tension, to which ecologically minded historians have drawn our attention in recent times, represents a paradigm within which to address questions relating to the agricultural frontier and agricultural innovation, demography, urbanization and patterns of urban settlement, and the issue of travel, discovery and colonization as leading to an ecological shift of global dimensions. Obviously, the balance between settlers and wanderers differed, too, from continent to continent and region to region. However, rather than pose the issue in terms simply of the ostensible conflict between non-European societies, which had achieved some form of ideal, Golden Age, equilibrium between settlers and wanderers, and an expanding Europe which had somehow broken out of this (on account of its unfortunate 'modernity'), it may be more useful to argue for certain broadly universal conflicts during the period in life-styles, and modes of resource-use. In turn, it is of obvious interest to link up these questions with the issue of global trade flows (commodities, bullion), their dimensions and their implications both backwards and forwards, for producers and consumers. Amongst other matters, the early modern period sees the rise of a slave trade of unprecendented dimensions (both in the Atlantic and elsewhere), as also the emergence of new cash crops with powerful social consequences for both producers and consumers, notably tea and coffee, but also opium, the production of which expands considerably, even if it was already traded in an earlier period.

These shifts are equally accompanied by complex changes in political theology (to borrow a phrase from Ernst Kantorowicz), which the exclusive focus on the emergence of the nation-state and the ideologies that go under the name of 'nationalism' has served to obscure. The early modern construct of the Universal Empire obviously had classical (and even mythological) roots, but was considerably reworked in the new geographical and political settings of the period. Thus, on the one hand, we have the Chinggis Khanid Timurid tradition, that informs a great deal of what occurs in West Asia, the Ottoman Empire, Iran, North India and Central Asia; one part of this legacy is also present in China. In pre-Columbian America and Southern and Central Africa, equally, notions of universal empire existed, related to indigenous cosmologies (as in South Asia, or the 'galactic polities' of Southeast Asia)." The great projects of universal empire embodied by the Spanish Habsburgs (who looked back to classical roots-especially the Holy Roman Empire), and later even by the major trading Companies, and eventually by Great Britain, need to be related to these other, at times pre-existent and autonomous, notions of empire. A number of authors in recent times have addressed both the technology and insitutional bases of empirebuilding (warfare, the 'military revolution', financial markets, accounting, record-keeping on paper, etc.), but have paid far less attention to the symbolic and ideological constructs (in particular, millenarian visions of empire) that underlie these.' This may be the result of embarrassment in the face of this seeming contradiction, or a residue of naive Enlightenment teleologies. But one of the points to be developed (and which is touched on briefly by Lieberman, albeit in a rather different context) is the coexistence of such seemingly archaic forms of political articulation as empires and the notion of an emerging 'modernity'-thus a return in a manner of speaking to the issue addressed (albeit not wholly satisfactorily) by Joseph Schumpeter in his classic work on imperialism.

The early modern period also raises a number of key issues that may be addressed under the broad head of 'historical anthropology'. Thus, it is of obvious interest to examine how notions of universalism and humanism emerge in various vocabularies, and yet how these terms do not in fact unite the early modern world, but instead lead to new or intensified forms of hierarchy, domination and separation. This may be seen in a certain sense as the 'paradox of enlightenment' revisited (with or without the capital E, to be sure). A subsidiary question is to re-examine what remains (after a half-century and more of debate) of the well-known Burckhardt hypothesis, concerning the new notion of the individual that emerges with modernity. This would require inter alia an exploration of literature, and literary forms, as they are established in the period, not just in Renaissance and post-Renaissance Europe, but elsewhere in the world. Some links with the 'social history of medicine' literature are also indicated, since there are some obvious links to be made between medical and biological knowledge, and conceptions of the individual.'” - Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia.” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, Special Issue: The Eurasian Context of the Early Modern History of Mainland South East Asia, 1400-1800 (Jul., 1997), pp. 737-740