{"title":"Book Reviews : MUSHIRUL HASAN and NARIAKI NAKAZATO, eds, The Unfinished Agenda. Nation- building in South Asia, New Delhi, Manohar, 2001, pp. 536","authors":"Tirthankar Roy","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000206","url":null,"abstract":"important to recognise that Weber concentrated on the first and Durkheim on the second. In pushing through Weber’s thought that soteriology had to be distinguished from other types of religion, and accordingly being concerned with a world outside soteriology-while also recognising that ’Weber, unlike Durkheim, was not interested in analyzing the category of social religion’-I suspect Gellner’s interpretation, as it explores the social pathways by which Newar Buddhism asserted, and continues to assert itself, is being single-mindedly Durkheimian. It is important to be rather careful about the charge being laid here, especially since Gellner (in situating his collection as a whole) is concerned to register a movement","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"242 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000206","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64786076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : JAYMALA DIDDEE and SAMITA GUPTA, Pune: Queen of the Deccan, Pune, Elephant Design Pvt Ltd., 2000, pp. 304","authors":"J. Laine","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000207","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"245 - 246"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000207","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'White women degrading themselves to the lowest depths' : European networks of prostitution and colonial anxieties in British India and Ceylon ca. 1880-1914","authors":"H. Fischer-Tiné","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000202","url":null,"abstract":"The international traffic in European prostitutes to South Asia became a matter of political debate both in Britain and India from the 1880s onwards. After discussing briefly the metropolitan obsession with the so-called 'White Slave Traffic', this article reconstructs the spread of the prostitution networks until WW I, gives a short account of the working conditions of the European prostitutes, and analyses the discourse it provoked around the topics of morality and racial prestige between various and often antagonistic sectors of colonial and metropolitan societies. By focusing on a group of 'white subalterns', this article challenges received notions af colonialism as an homogenous enterprise based on clear-cut racial distinctions and makes a strong argument for the introduction of 'class' as an important category for the understanding of the imperial project.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"163 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000202","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Turning the stones over: Sixteenth-century millenarianism from the Tagus to the Ganges","authors":"S. Subrahmanyam","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000201","url":null,"abstract":"This article proposes a conjunctural reading of a series of political and ideological currents that underpinned empire-building strategies over a good part of Eurasia in the sixteenth century. Drawing on recent research concerning Ottoman and other Mediterranean millenarian movements, it argues that one can understand these in a context that stretches as far as Portugal on the one hand, and Mughal India on the other. Such a reinterpretation allows us to approach the question of the 'Discoveries' anew, but it also gives us a methodological tool to pursue the project of 'connected histories' that places South Asia in a wider and interactive historical context.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"129 - 161"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000201","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : DAVID N. GELLNER, The Anthropology of Buddhism and Hinduism: Weberian Themes, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 397","authors":"Sasheej Hegde","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000205","url":null,"abstract":"mentality and methods were too Indian for an increasingly racist East India Company army. The last thematic section on ’Military Revolutions’ consists of Simon Digby’s essay ’The Problems of the Military Ascendancy of the Delhi Sultanate (from his War Horse and Elephant, 1971 ), Iqtidar Alam Khan’s ’Early Use of Cannon and Muskets in India, 1442-1526’, Doug Streusand’s ’The Process of Expansion’ and Jos Gommans’ ’Indian Warfare and Afghan Innovation during the Eighteenth Century’. They all contribute, in different ways, to the debate on military techniques of the Turks, the Mughals and the Afghans at the three most crucial conjunctures in medieval Indian history, namely in the thirteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Unfortunately the editors have not standardised the transliteration nor apparently checked for typos. Professor Iqtidar Alam Khan may be embarrassed to find himself the author of an article ’Metallurgy in Medieval India-the Case of the Cast-Iron Cannon’ (p. 34 n. 92; it is an early work by the present reviewer), while Professor Moosvi is referred to as ’Musir’.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"239 - 242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000205","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64786044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Damming the Mahanadi river: The emergence of multi-purpose river valley development in India (1943-46)","authors":"Rohan D’souza","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000104","url":null,"abstract":"Nehruvian mnnumentalism has often been described as the most significant driver for large dam construction in independent India. Political and popular imagination has, until recently, not only largely hailed the pursuit of multi-purpose river valley development (MPRVD) as heralding the nation into the modern moment, but, more signifecantly, the latter has been celebrated as a part of an apolitical consensus for national development. This article argues that MPRVD schemes were introduced in India in a political context where Indian capital and the colonial state were constituting a new rhetoric and paradigm for rule.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"105 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000104","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : RAJEN SAIKIA, Social and Economic History of Assam, 1853-1921, Manohar, New Delhi, 2000, pp. 258","authors":"Tirthankar Roy","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000108","url":null,"abstract":"courtesan households, and upwardly-mobile urban and rural groups negotiated a place in the middle class and its public sphere. Cultural attitudes of Hindu and Muslim middle classes could have been usefully compared. The author tells us that he had to leave out a lot of detail when transforming his doctoral thesis into a book. Readers might hope that this detail will find place in the author’s next book.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"113 - 114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000108","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : SANJAY SHARMA, Famine, Philanthropy and the Colonial State: North India in the Early Nineteenth Century, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 256","authors":"V. Menon","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000109","url":null,"abstract":"a systematic chronological study of either politics or economics. The ’new economy’ appears without almost any comment on the old economy. Agrarian relations are covered in the most cursory manner. So are agricultural change, plantations and migrations, the major transformative forces in colonial Assam. True, these subjects have been dealt with in other well-known works, but a discussion was needed for the sake of completeness and for the reader to get a perspective on what is offered. One thus gets a rather partial view of both the new economy and the new polity. The presentation is rather poor. There are no maps, tables appear without titles and sources, and the informal writing style, while making the book very readable, gives rise to expressions that can leave some readers puzzled. The Garos’ ’periodic killing spree’, the Bhutias’ ’unpredictable and haughty’ temper, needed at least some historically grounded account. Having discussed the limitations, it needs to be stated that the three chapters that I find the strongest in the book do count as significant contributions. That, together with the great readability of the book, makes it a welcome addition to the","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"114 - 116"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000109","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Europeans in late Mughal south Asia: The perceptions of Italian missionaries","authors":"D. Lorenzen","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000101","url":null,"abstract":"During the last half of the eighteenth century, a group of Roman Catholic Capuchin friars from Italy were active as missionaries in various towns in Bihar and also in Chandernagore. Their principal stations in Bihar were Bettiah and Patna. Four of these missionaries wrote letters, essays, books and translations relating to their encounter with Hinduism, Indian culture, and the political events of the period. These texts shed light on what was happening in these towns during this period, and also explain in detail the reactions of the missionaries to Hindu polytheism, Hindu mythology, the caste system, and the political culture of late Mughal society. What is particularly interesting is the contrast between their perceptions, influenced by conservative Catholicism, and those of the French and British, more influenced by Enlightenment culture.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"1 - 31"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000101","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64786011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : ANDREW ABBOTT, Chaos of Disciplines, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. 259","authors":"Harish Naraindas","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000105","url":null,"abstract":"Chaos l)f ~~I.SC’I f)IllTt’.S’ is a theoretical tour deforce of the social sciences. While the last few decades have witnessed a large body of work on the structure and history of the natural sciences, there has been a surprising paucity of works that theorise the history of the social sciences. Using sociology as a stand in for the social sciences, Abbott argues that the social sciences have been unable to decide as to whether their brief is the study of facts, or the study of values (p. 35). This vacillation is reflected not only in each discipline, but also in every research tradition within the disciplines, whose practitioners soon divide into two antithetical groups of those who study facts and call for causal explanation, as against those who study values and offer inter-","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"107 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000105","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}