Borderlands

Borderlands

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-08

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 9004489207

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Boundaries, borderlines, limits on the one hand and rites of passage, contact zones, in-between spaces on the other have attracted renewed interest in a broad variety of cultural discourses after a long period of decenterings and delimitations in numerous fields of social, psychological, and intellectual life. Anthropological dimensions of the subject and its multifarious ways of world-making represent the central challenge among the concerns of the humanities. The role of literature and the arts in the formation of cultural and personal identities, theoretical and political approaches to the relation between self and other, the familiar and the foreign, have become key issues in literary and cultural studies; forms of expressivity and expression and question of mediation as well as new enquiries into ethics have characterized the intellectual energies of the past decade. The aim of Borderlands is to represent a variety of approaches to questions of border crossing and boundary transgression; approaches from different angles and different disciplines, but all converging in their own way on the post-colonial paradigm. Topics discussed include globalization, cartography and ontology, transitional identity, ecocritical sensibility, questions of the application of post-coloniality, gender and sexuality, and attitudes towards space and place. As well as studies of the cinema of the settler colonies, the films of Neil Jordan, and 'Othering' in Canadian sports journalism, there are treatments of the Nigerian novel, South African prison memoirs, and African women's writing. Authors examined include Elizabeth Bowen, Bruce Chatwin, Mohamed Choukri, Nuruddin Farah, Jamaica Kincaid, Pauline Melville, Bharati Mukherjee, Michael Ondaatje, and Leslie Marmon Silko.


Born to Trade

Born to Trade

Author: Surendra Gopal

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-09-13

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1351987372

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This pioneering work traces migration of Indian traders to Russia, Iran, West Asia and South-East Asia in medieval times. Four essays throw light on the activities of the Indian business community in Russia. Generally Indians came to Russia via Iran. There they took a boat, crossed the Caspian Sea and reached the Russian port of Astrakhan. Indian visitors included Hindus (including Jains), Muslims, Christians, Parsis among others. Hindus constituted the largest segment of the migrants. They became an object of local curiosity because of their rituals and social practices. They also became an object of jealousy. Indians did not enjoy political and administrative support as the European East India Companies did. Occasionally local rulers consulted them and sought their advice. Three essays deal with Indian traders in Iran in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One essay discusses trade between India and Iran in the fifteenth century. There are papers discussing activities of Indian traders in West Asia, Yemen and South East Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The conclusion focuses on Indian merchants and the Indian Ocean in medieval times. The author concludes that Indian traders did not enjoy political and royal support, essential for success. He also affirms that crossing the seas did not lead to social boycott by their caste-men. This taboo came much later, probably with the advent of British rule in the nineteenth century.


Polycoloniality

Polycoloniality

Author: Saugata Bhaduri

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-12-30

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9389812569

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Polycoloniality is a study of the activities of non-British European powers and players - primarily the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, the Danish, the 'Germans' (representatives of the Austrian and Prussian empires), the Swedish and the Greek - in Bengal from the late 13th to the early 19th century, and their role in shaping Bengal's brush with 'colonial modernity' prior to, and possibly more foundationally than, the English. Much of the traditional historiography of colonialism, in South Asia in general and Bengal in particular, and the resultant postcolonial commonsense, is woefully mononational, with the focus being almost exclusively on England and its colonial exploits. This is obviously factually incorrect and inadequate, with the multiple European nations named above having had simultaneous colonial contact with Bengal from the 16th century, and there having been a steady flow of Europeans, primarily Italians, to Bengal from at least the late 13th century. More importantly, it is these multiple European players, rather than the English, who can be credited with the setting up of the first cosmopolitan cities in Bengal, its first colleges and universities, the beginnings of print culture in Bengali, the foundations of the modern linguistic, literary and cultural registers of Bengal, the first instances of social and political reforms, etc. Apart from an elaboration of all the above, can Polycoloniality, or a re-look at Bengal's colonial history through the lens of plurality, also offer a template to understand the multinational forms of current new-imperialism more fittingly than postcolonial commonsense can?


The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600–1750

The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600–1750

Author: David Veevers

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-06-11

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1108752519

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This is an important, revisionist account of the origins of the British Empire in Asia in the early modern period. David Veevers uncovers a hidden world of transcultural interactions between servants of the English East India Company and the Asian communities and states they came into contact with, revealing how it was this integration of Europeans into non-European economies, states and societies which was central to British imperial and commercial success rather than national or mercantilist enterprise. As their servants skilfully adapted to this rich and complex environment, the East India Company became enfranchised by the eighteenth century with a breadth of privileges and rights – from governing sprawling metropolises to trading customs-free. In emphasising the Asian genesis of the British Empire, this book sheds new light on the foreign frameworks of power which fuelled the expansion of Global Britain in the early modern world.


Ethnography and Encounter

Ethnography and Encounter

Author: Guido van Meersbergen

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-10-18

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9004471820

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The global operations of the East India Companies were profoundly shaped by European perceptions of foreign lands. Providing a cultural perspective absent from existing economic and institutional histories, Ethnography and Encounter is the first book to systematically explore how Company agents’ understandings of and attitudes towards Asian peoples and societies informed institutional approaches to trade, diplomacy, and colonial governance. Its fine-grained comparisons of Dutch and English activities in seventeenth-century South Asia show how corporate ethnography was produced, how it underpinned given modes of conduct, and how it illuminates connections across space and time. Ethnography and Encounter identifies deep commonalities between Dutch and English discourses and practices, their indebtedness to pan-European ethnographic traditions, and their centrality to wider histories of European expansion.


The Rise of Merchant Empires

The Rise of Merchant Empires

Author: James D. Tracy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 9780521457354

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This volume examines the rise of the many different trading empires from the end of the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century.


India in the World Economy

India in the World Economy

Author: Tirthankar Roy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-06-18

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1107009103

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This enthralling book offers a new approach to Indian economic history, placing trade and mercantile activity in the region within a global framework.


Archives and Archiving in the 21st Century

Archives and Archiving in the 21st Century

Author: Radhika Seshan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-08-09

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1040103294

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Archives intersect with our lives in many ways. We have archives of our own, documenting family memories and histories. Then, there are larger archives that document different aspects of the past — memories, identities, location, time, and space. This volume explores changing notions of the archive in different areas, to trace the ways in which the archives continue to be used in history. It examines how history, the historian, and the archive interact in many ways to look at the past and record it. The chapters in this volume discuss an array of diverse and important themes regarding the making and usage of archives which include reconstructing pre-modern economic history from the Dutch archives; the role of India Office Records in the British Library; reading the Rungia Gosavi Affair in 1857 from colonial archives; and Uday Shankar’s Kalpana as archive besides the usage of archives to study nationalism, historiography and literature, water and Chola history, Mysorean invasions in Kerala, and cyberspace. The chapters also explore how archives impact and shape our investigations. First of its kind, this important work will be of interest to scholars and researchers of archival studies, research methodology, archaeology, Indian history, ancient history, medieval history, modern India, anthropology, and history in general.