Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy

Drawing on the newest and most sophisticated historical research and scholarship in the field, Modern South Asia provides a challenging insight for those with an intellectual curiosity about the region. After sketching the pre-modern history of the subcontinent, the book concentrates on the last three centuries. Jointly authored by two leading Indian and Pakistani historians, it offers a rare depth of historical understanding of the politics, cultures, and economies that shape the lives of more than a fifth of humanity.

In this comprehensive study, the authors interpret and debate the striking developments in contemporary South Asian history and historical writing, covering the entire spectrum of the region’s modern history – social, economic and political. The book provides new insights into the structure and ideology of the British raj, the meaning of subaltern resistance, the refashioning of social relations along the lines of caste, class, community and gender, the different strands of anti-colonial nationalism and the dynamics of decolonization.

This third edition brings the debate up to the present day, taking account of recent historical research and covering the closer integration of South Asia with the global economy, the impact of developments in Afghanistan on the region as a whole, and the fresh challenges to South Asia’s nation-states.

Sugata Bose is Gardiner Professor of History at Harvard University. His publications include Peasant Labor and Colonial Capital (1993) in The New Cambridge History of India series and A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (2006).

Ayesha Jalal is Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University. Her publications include Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850 (2000) and Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (2010).