Empire and Gunpowder

Empire and Gunpowder

Author: Moumita Chowdhury

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-07-19

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1000603970

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book focuses on the relation between technology, warfare and state in South Asia in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. It explores how gunpowder and artillery played a pivotal role in the military ascendancy of the East India Company in India. The monograph argues that the contemporary Indian military landscape was extremely dynamic, with contemporary indigenous polities (Mysore, the Maratha Confederacy and the Khalsa Kingdom) attempting to transform their military systems by modelling their armies on European lines. It shows how the Company established an edge through an efficient bureaucracy and a standardised manufacturing system, while the Indian powers primarily focused on continuous innovation and failed to introduce standardisation of production. Drawing on archival records from India and the UK, this volume makes a significant intervention in our understanding of the rise of the British Empire in South Asia. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, especially military history, military and strategic studies and South Asian studies.


The Colonial State: Theory and Practice

The Colonial State: Theory and Practice

Author: General Editor Towards Freedom Project Indian Council of Historical Research Sabyasachi Bhattacharya

Publisher: Ratna Sagar

Published: 2016-04-25

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9789384092054

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The aim in this work is to address, through historical narrativization of some specific moments of colonial state building, the question: What, in theory, are the historical specificities of the 'colonial' state as distinct from other state forms? An attempt is made in this book, to weave together the discourse of state theory and the narrative of state practices. This approach is based on the argument that theory was not something out there to guide practice. Empirical evidence suggests a more complex picture of interaction between the two where, within parameters structured by theory, the practice in turn produces and structures theory at each conjuncture.


Towns and Cities of Medieval India

Towns and Cities of Medieval India

Author: Aniruddha Ray

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-09-13

Total Pages: 727

ISBN-13: 1351997300

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This much anticipated volume looks at the historical evolution of towns and cities in medieval India from the early thirteenth to the late eighteenth century. The selection is based on the availability of documents. These include the narratives of European travellers in English, French, Italian, Dutch, and German with the exception of Ibn Battuta in mid-fourteenth century and also Middle Bengali literature in case of towns in Bengal. While the coastal towns and cities have been looked at, the interior ones are also described on the basis of the writings of later historians and archaeologists. Care has been taken to explain the rise, growth and the decline of some towns and cities in which the changing courses of rivers had played a crucial role. Attempts have been made to search other factors responsible for such eventualities. The delineation of physical features within the city has been given due emphasis including the different quarters of the city and the manners and customs of the local population with reference to craft production and commercial links. The morphological differences between the cities of eastern and those of the western or northern India have also been described. This is clear from the observations of port towns described here. All these would show that India was one of the most urbanized area in the medieval period before advent of the British.


Technology in Ancient & Medieval India

Technology in Ancient & Medieval India

Author: Aniruddha Ray

Publisher:

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Papers presented at the Seminar on Technology in Medieval India--16th to 18th Century, September 7 and 8, 1984, Birla Industrial & Technological Museum, Calcutta.


Delhi Sultanate and its Times

Delhi Sultanate and its Times

Author: The late Mohammad Habib

Publisher: OUP India

Published: 2013-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780198069942

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The volume cover the entire political history of Delhi Sultanate, focusing on Mahmud Ghazni's campaigns, Ziyauddin Barani's descriptions, Sufi saints and their records, as well as peasants, artisans, tailors, weavers and a plethora of people who constituted the landscape of the subcontinent during the eleventh to seventeenth centuries.