Books in the Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society series

A unique examination of the role of the Indian army in post-World War II India in the run-up to Partition. Daniel Marston draws upon extensive archival research and interviews with veterans of the events of 1947 to provide fresh insight into the final days of the British Raj.

An important new study which analyses the system of personal law in colonial India, showing how it encouraged gender equality and a better relationship between state and society. By focusing on Hindu law, this illuminating book challenges existing scholarship, showing how - far from being based on traditional values - Hindu law was developed around ideas of liberalism.

This book charts the history of artisan production in the Bombay Presidency from 1870 to 1960. Using extensive archival research and numerous interviews, this book explores the role of weavers, merchants, consumers and laborers in the making of what the author calls 'small-town capitalism'.

Colonial Justice in British India describes the lesser-known history of the violence and criminal conduct of one group of European planters, paupers, sailors and soldiers in British India. In a powerful corrective to dominant views, this study reveals the disquieting violence that accompanied imperial forms of power.

Interest in Shi'a Islam has increased greatly, although Shi'ism in the Indian subcontinent has remained largely underexplored. This book traces the history of Indian Shi'ism through the colonial period toward independence in 1947. It shows how a Shi'a sectarian identity developed that existed separately from its Sunni counterparts.

Tracing the historical roots of India's transition to independence, Newbigin's highly original study explores the role of economy, gender and religion in the development of representative politics in twentieth-century India. This book will stimulate debate across disciplines, particularly among scholars considering law, gender and economy in colonial and post-colonial societies.

This book studies the cultural world of the Muslim soldiers of colonial India. Set in Hyderabad in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the book focuses on the soldiers' relationships with the faqir holy men who protected them and the British officers they served.

The book charts the development of merchant communities in the province of Sind from the pre-colonial period, throught colonial conquest, to independence. Describing how they came to negotiate trade throughout the world, the book throws light on the nature of these diasporas in their interaction with the global economy.

A groundbreaking analysis of the construction of the British Empire in late eighteenth-century India. After the conquest of Bengal, Britons confronted the anomaly of a European trading company acting as an Indian ruler, and tried to build their authority on the basis of an 'ancient constitution', from the Mughal Empire.

An original contribution to scholarship on colonialism, gender and sexuality in India. By following the stories of a number of mixed-race families, at all levels of the social scale, Durba Ghosh offers a fascinating account of how gender, class and race affected the cultural and social mores of the period.

The partition of India was a seminal event of the twentieth century. While much has been written about the Punjab and the creation of West Pakistan, little is known about the partition of Bengal. This remarkable 2007 book assesses the devastating social, political and economic consequences of that partition.

Contrary to popular belief that poverty has been characteristic of India for centuries, the author demonstrates that, it was not until the rise of colonial rule that the decline in the economic fortunes of the labouring communities was initiated. The book represents a powerful revisionist statement on Britain in India.

Tirthankar Roy challenges the view that traditional industry was destroyed in the colonial period. Roy argues that while traditional industry did evolve during the industrial revolution, these transformations had a galvanizing effect on manufacturing generally and that the major industries in post-independence India were shaped by such transformations.

This 1999 book reconstructs the history of forest communities in western India to explore questions relating to identity and the environment. It demonstrates how the ideology of indigenous cultures, developed out of the notion of a pure and untouched ethnicity, is rooted in racial and colonial anthropology. This penetrating critique will contribute significantly to the literature.

This 2006 book sets out to piece together the story of the rise and demise of warrior asceticism in India from the 1500s to the present. It shows Hinduism is not a religion of non-violence, as Hindu warrior ascetics were an important component of the South Asian military labor market.

Daud Ali's book explores courtly culture in classical India. Trawling literary sources and inscriptions, the book explores the growth of royal households and the crystallisation of a courtly worldview which would remain stable for almost a millenium.

In a history of labouring women in Calcutta, the author demonstrates how social constructions of gender shaped their lives and how the long-term trends in the Indian economy devalued their labour. The study makes a significant contribution to the social and economic history of colonial India.

Nandini Gooptu's 2001 history of the Indian urban poor represents a tour-de-force. It focuses on themes ranging from the social construction of poverty, religious and caste identities and nationalist and labour politics. In this way, the book contributes to current debates on the nature of subaltern politics and consciousness.

Ian Copland's fascinating study of the role played by the Indian princes in the devolution of British colonial power rehabilitates the maharajas and nawabs of South Asia as subjects for serious historical debate.

In a penetrating account of the evolution of British intelligence gathering in India, C. A. Bayly shows how networks of Indian spies were recruited to secure information about their subjects. He also examines the social and intellectual origins of these 'native informants', and considers how the colonial authorities interpreted the information they supplied.

How did British rule in India transform persons from lower social classes? Could Indians from such classes rise in the world by marrying Europeans and embracing their religion and customs? This book explores such questions by examining the intriguing story of an interracial family who lived in southern India in the mid-nineteenth century. The family, which consisted of two untouchable brothers, both of whom married Eurasian women, became wealthy as distillers in the local community. A family dispute resulted in a landmark court case, Abraham v. Abraham. Chandra Mallampalli uses this case to examine the lives of those involved, and shows that far from being products of a 'civilizing mission' who embraced the ways of Englishmen, the Abrahams were ultimately - when faced with the strictures of the colonial legal system - obliged to contend with hierarchy and racial difference.

In this book William Gould explores what is arguably one of the most important and controversial themes in twentieth-century Indian history and politics: the nature of Hindu nationalism as an ideology and political language. Rather than concentrating on the main institutions of the Hindu Right in India as other studies have done, the author uses a variety of historical sources to analyse how Hindu nationalism affected the supposedly secularist Congress in the key state of Uttar Pradesh. In this way, the author offers an alternative assessment of how these languages and ideologies transformed the relationship between Congress and north Indian Muslims. The book makes a major contribution to historical analyses of the critical last two decades before Partition and Independence in 1947, which will be of value to scholars interested in historical and contemporary Hindu nationalism, and to students researching the final stages of colonial power in India.

In a fascinating 2003 book, Norbert Peabody analyses histories written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to understand the shifts in royal power which took place in Rajasthan. He concludes that different societies establish different co-ordinates to interpret their past, and that these co-ordinates will determine social and political outcomes.