A History of India - Softcover

Stein, Burton

3.47

57 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0631205462 ISBN 13: 9780631205463

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998

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This history provides an original, succinct but sustained narrative of the development of Indian society, culture and polity from 7000 BC to the present.

Themes explored include:

The interactions and tensions between cultures and politics, communities and states, and the region and the outside world
Findings of recent research on the range of Indian history and pre-history
The nature of pre-modern as well as contemporary politics
Origins and consequences of the Mughal and British conquests
The link between contemporary problems - such as the role of women, poverty and religions nationalism - and India's rich and varied history.

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Review:

Academic in style, Stein's text provides a useful survey of Indian history from antiquity to the mid-1960s, with brief mention of later events such as the Indian intervention in the Pakistani civil war of 1970. Stein provides particularly good information on the rise of city-states like Mohenjo Daro in the Indus Valley around 3500 B.C. and on their collapse thanks to a combination of factors, including the deforestation of the Indus watershed for firewood and depletion of topsoil through too intensive agriculture. He discusses the evolution of the caste system, as much a strength historically as it was a weakness; the arrival of Islam in India in the 8th century A.D. and the subsequent development of specifically Indian forms of the religion, most notably Sufism; and the fortunes of the various European nations that laid claim to parts of the Indian subcontinent in the early modern era. --Gregory McNamee

From the Back Cover:

This history provides an original, succinct but sustained narrative of the development of Indian society, culture and polity from 7000 BC to the present. It throws new light on past and currently vexing questions, and relates contemporary India, with its promise and its problems, to a rich and varied past.

The text is informed throughout by Professor Stein's personal vision and, in particular, his special interests in political and social development and the oft-neglected South.

The book opens with an outline of the main argument. The author introduces his major themes, showing the interactions and tensions in Indian history between communities and states, between cultures and politics, and between the region and the outside world. The narrative which follows incorporates critically the accumulated findings of recent research on the whole range of Indian history and prehistory, considering the nature of premodern as well as contemporary politics, and examines the origins and consequences of the Mughal and British conquests as well as controversial recent issues, such as India's national integrity, its commitments to secularism and to improving the condition of women.

The author's insights reveal an in-depth understanding of India's current problems and possibilities as it moves into its second half-century of independence. Illustrated with maps and photographs, and containing chronologies and a guide to further reading, A History of India will be valued for its vivid narrative and trenchant analysis.

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