History of India (and the rest of the subcontinent)

20 Aug 2023 20:27

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Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder.

See also: Imperialism (by which I don't mean to imply that India's history is solely defined by imperialism...); Persianate Culture; "Wisdom of the East" (similar disclaimers apply)

Recommended, big picture:
• A. L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India
• John Keay, India: A History
• Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India
• Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India
• V. A. Smith, The Oxford History of India

Recommended, close-ups:
• Raziuddin Aquil, Sufism, Culture and Politics: Afghans and Islam in Medieval North India
• Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni, Tarikh al-Hind [Which I know in the English translation from 1888, Alberuni's India, apparently the only English translation]

To read:
• Alice Albinia, Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River
• Catherine B. Asher, India Before Europe
• Ross Bassett, The Technological Indian
• C. A. Bayly
  • Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire
  • Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870
  • Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire
• Debjani Bhattacharyya, Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta
• Vivek Chibber, Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India
• William Dalrymple
  • White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India
  • The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857
• Rana Dasgupta, Capital: The Eruption of Delhi
• Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India
• Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History
• Richard Maxwell Eaton
  • The Sufis of Bijapur, 1300--1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India
  • Social History of Deccan, 1300--1761
  • India in the Persianate Age, 1000--1765
  • Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204--1760
• Diana L. Eck, India: A Sacred Geography
• Emily Erikson, Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company, 1600–1757
• Michael H. Fisher, An Environmental History of India: From Earliest Times to the Twenty-First Century
• Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval "Hindu-Muslim" Encounter
• Ramachandra Guha (ed.), Makers of Modern India
• John Guy, Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India, 1100--1900
• Sana Haroon, Frontier of Faith: Islam in the Indo-Afghan Borderland
• Gary Jacobsohn, Wheel of Law: India's Secularism in Comparative Constitutional Context
• D. N. Jha, The Myth of the Holy Cow
• John Keay, When Men and Mountains Meet: The Explorers of the Western Himalayas 1820--1875
• Rajeev Kinra, Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary
• David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind
• Nayanjot Lahiri
  • Ashoka in Ancient India
  • Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization Was Discovered
• Pankaj Mishra
  • From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia
  • Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond
• Meera Nanda, Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India
• Martha C. Nussbaum, The Clash Within
• Kim Plofker, Mathematics in India
• Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India
• A. K. Ramanujan, Poems of Love and War: From the Eight Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil
• John Reeve, The Lives of the Mughal Emperors
• John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire
• Janet Rizvi, Ladakh: Crossroads of High Asia
• Francis Robinson, The Mughal Emperors: And the Islamic Dynasties of India, Iran, and Central Asia
• Tirthankar Roy
  • India in the World Economy: From Antiquity to the Present
  • Monsoon Economies: India's History in a Changing Climate
• Geoffrey Samuel, Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions To the Thirteenth Century
• Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity
• David Shulman, More Than Real: A History of the Imagination in South India
• Nico Slate, Lord Cornwallis Is Dead: The Struggle for Democracy in the United States and India
• Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, Casting Kings: Bards and Indian Modernity
• Aurel Stein, On Alexander's Track to the Indus: Personal Narrative of Explorations on the North-West Frontier of India
• Burton Stein, Vijayanagara
• Robert W. Stern, Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution
• Romila Thapar
  • Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
  • Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300
  • Somanatha
• Audrey Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court
• Rita Wright, The Ancient Indus: Urbanism, Economy and Society