Rachel Ball
Reading Lists
Comprehensive Exams
21 January 2008
Field: Social History of Modern South Asia
Examiner: Prasannan Parthasarathi
GENERAL SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY
Bayly, Susan. Caste, Society and Politics in India: from the 18th Century to the Modern Age
Bose, Sugata and Ayesha Jalal. Modern South Asia: history, culture, political economy
Hardy, Peter. The Muslims of British India
Metcalf, Barbara D. and Thomas R. Metcalf. A Concise History of India
Parthasarathi, Prasannan, “The State of Indian Social History,” in the Journal of Social History, Fall
2003
Said, Edward. Orientalism
Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India, 1885-1947
Wolpert, Stanley. A New History of India
MUGHAL RULE AND INDIA BETWEEN EMPIRES
Alam, Muzaffar and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. The Mughal State, 1526-1750
Habib, Irfan. The Agrarian system of the Mughal Empire (1556-1707)
Habib, Irfan and Tapa Raychaudhuri (eds.) The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 1 c. 1200-c.
1750
Eaton, Richard M. The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier
------ Essays on Islam and Indian History
Leonard, Karen. “The ‘Great Firm’ Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire,” in Comparative
Studies in Society and History, Vol. 21, No. 2 (April 1979), 151-167.
THE TRANSITION TO COLONIAL RULE: THE 18TH CENTURY
Alam, Muzaffar. The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India, Awadh, and the Punjab
Alavi, Seema. The Eighteenth Century in India
Bayly, C.A. Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire
Cain, P.J. and A.G. Hopkins. British Imperialism 1688-2000
Chaudhuri, K.N. The Trading World of the English East India Company, 1660-1760
Gordon, Stewart. Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in 18th Century India
Marshall, Peter (ed.) The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: evolution or revolution?
--------------- East India Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the 18th Century
Metcalf, Thomas R. Ideologies of the Raj
COLONIAL RULE UNTIL THE REBELLION OF 1857
Bayly, C.A. Information and Empire: Political Intelligence and Social Communication in North India, 17801880
Bose, Sugata. Peasant Labor and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal since 1770
Cohn, Bernard. Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: The British in India
Derrett, J.D.M. Religion, Law and the State in India
Frynkenberg, Robert. Land Control and Social Structure in India
Singha, Radhika. A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India
Stein, Burton. The Making of Agrarian Policy in British India
Stokes, Eric. The English Utilitarians in India
-----------The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India
IMPERIAL RELATIONS: METROPOLE AND COLONY
Ballhatchet, Kenneth. Race, Sex, and Class under the British Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their
Critics, 1793-1905
Bayly, C.A. The Birth of the Modern World
Cannadine, David. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire
Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino famines and the making of the third world
Dirks, Nicholas B. The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain
Ferguson, Niall. Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power
Gallagher, John. (Edited by Anil Seal) The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire: The Ford
Lectures and other essays
Hall, Catherine. Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the British Imagination 1830-1867
Inden, Ronald B. Imagining India
Levine, Philippa (ed.) Gender and Empire
Levine, Philippa. Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire
Porter, Bernard. The Absent-minded Imperialists
Robinson, Ronald and John Gallagher with Alice Denny. Africa and the Victorians: The Climax of
Imperialism
Seeley, J.R. The Expansion of England
Sinha, Mrinalini. Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire
------------ Colonial Masculinity
FROM REBELLION TO NATIONALISM
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities
Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories
--------- Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse
--------- A Possible India: Essays on Political Criticism
Chaturvedi, Vinayak (ed.) Mapping Subaltern Studies
Gellner, Ernest. Nation and Nationalism
Guha, Ranajit and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (eds.)Selected Subaltern Studies
Guha, Ranajit (ed.) A Subaltern Studies Reader: 1986-1995
-------------- Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India
Hasan, Mushirul. Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, 1916-1928
Jones, Kenneth W. Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th Century Punjab
Metcalf, Barbara Daly. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900
Robinson, Francis. Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of United Provinces Muslims, 18601923
Sarkar, Sumit. The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-1908
Seal, Anil. The Emergence of Indian Nationalism
WAR CHANGES THINGS: GANDHIAN NATIONALISM TO INDEPENDENCE
Amin, Shahid. Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992
Bayly, C.A. and Tim Harper. Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945
Brown, Judith M. Gandhi’s Rise to Power: Indian Politics 1915-1922
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal 1890-1934
Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan. The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India; Business Strategies and the
Working Classes in Bombay, 1900-1940
------------- Imperial power and popular politics: Class, resistance, and the state in India, c. 1850-1950
Fernandes, Leela. Producins Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class, and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills
Gandhi, Mohandas K. Hind Swaraj and Other Writings
Kumar, Radha. “Family and the Factory: Women in the Bombay cotton textile industry, 19191939,” in Women in Colonial India: Essays on Survival, Work and the State, J. Krishnamurty (ed.)
Ludden, David (ed.) Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization
of South Asia
Pandey, Gyanendra. The Construction of Communalism in North India
-------------- The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, 1927-1934
Sen, Samita. Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry
A DIVIDED NATION: PARTITION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Ansari, Sarah. Life After Partition: Migration, Community and Strife in Sindh: 1947-1962
Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India
Chakravartty, Gargi. Coming out of Partition: Refugee Women of Bengal
Chatterji, Joya. Bengal Divided: Hindu communalism and Partition
------------- The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947-1967
------------- “Of Graveyards and Ghettos: Muslims in Partitioned West Bengal 1947-1967,” in Living
Together Separately: Cultural India in History and Politics. Mushirul Hasan and Asim Roy (eds.)
Jalal, Ayesha. The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the demand for Pakistan
Khan, Yasmin. The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan
Menon, Ritu and Kamla Bhasin. Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition
Zamindar, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali. The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: refugees,
boundaries, histories