ABSTRACT

The Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia provides a comprehensive overview of the historiographical specialisation and sophistication of the history of colonialism in South Asia. It explores the classic works of earlier generations of historians and offers an introduction to the rapid and multifaceted development of historical research on colonial South Asia since the 1990s. Covering economic history, political history, and social history and offering insights from other disciplines and ‘turns’ within the mainstream of history, the handbook is structured in six parts:

  • Overarching Themes and Debates
  • The World of Economy and Labour
  • Creating and Keeping Order: Science, Race, Religion, Law, and Education
  • Environment and Space
  • Culture, Media, and the Everyday
  • Colonial South Asia in the World

The editors have assembled a group of leading international scholars of South Asian history and related disciplines to introduce a broad readership into the respective subfields and research topics. Designed to serve as a comprehensive and nuanced yet readable introduction to the vast field of the history of colonialism in the Indian subcontinent, the handbook will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of South Asian history, imperial and colonial history, and global and world history.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

The history of colonialism in South Asia: Cutting out paths through the historiographical jungle

part I|109 pages

Overarching Themes and Debates

chapter 1|14 pages

Caste in British India

Between continuity and colonial construction, and beyond

chapter 3|12 pages

State formation in India

From the Company state to the late colonial state

chapter 6|15 pages

Reconstituting masculinities/femininities

Modern experiences

chapter 7|13 pages

Contested history

The rise of communalism and the Partition of British India

chapter 8|11 pages

The Raj's uncanny other

Indirect rule and the princely states

part III|87 pages

Creating and Keeping Order: Science, Race, Religion, Law, and Education

chapter 15|13 pages

Race in colonial South Asia

Science and the law

chapter 16|12 pages

‘A race apart’?

The European community in colonial India

chapter 20|14 pages

Schooling the subcontinent

State, space, and society, and the dynamics of education in colonial South Asia

part IV|75 pages

Environment and Space

chapter 21|12 pages

Of lives and landscapes

The environmental history of colonial South Asia

chapter 22|13 pages

Questioning ‘railway-centrism’

Infrastructural governance and cultures of the colonial transport system, 1760s–1900s

chapter 23|15 pages

Colonial port cities and the infrastructure of empire

Tracing the geography of alcohol in British colonial India

chapter 24|10 pages

Site of deficiency and site of hope 1

The village in colonial South Asia

chapter 25|12 pages

Imperial sanctuaries

The hill stations of colonial South Asia

part V|93 pages

Culture, Media and the Everyday

chapter 28|14 pages

Before Bollywood

Bombay cinema and the rise of the film industry in late colonial India

chapter 29|13 pages

Rhythms of the Raj

Music in colonial South Asia

chapter 31|11 pages

Food and intoxicants in British India

part VI|73 pages

Colonial South Asia in the World

chapter 37|12 pages

Disruptive entanglements

South Asia and South Asians in the world wars

chapter 38|11 pages

Indian humanitarianism under colonial rule

Imperial loyalty, national self-assertion, and anti-colonial emancipation

chapter 39|13 pages

Famine relief in colonial South Asia, 1858–1947

Regional and global perspectives