A Concise History of Modern India

The third edition of the Metcalfs' classic history of India charts developments across the last twenty years.

Barbara D. Metcalf (Author), Thomas R. Metcalf (Author)

9781107672185, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 October 2012

362 pages, 52 b/w illus. 4 maps
22.6 x 15 x 2.3 cm, 0.47 kg

'A Concise History of Modern India is an indispensable guide to Indian history, culture, religion, and politics from the fourteenth century to India's emergence as a major player in information technology and the global economy in the new millennium. Beautifully crafted, lucidly written, and analytically uncompromising this book is invaluable to scholars interested in the rich and contradictory history of the world's largest democracy.' Rochona Majumdar, University of Chicago

A Concise History of Modern India by Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, has become a classic in the field since it was first published in 2001. As a fresh interpretation of Indian history from the Mughals to the present, it has informed students across the world. In the third edition of the book, a final chapter charts the dramatic developments of the last twenty years, from 1990 through the Congress electoral victory of 2009, to the rise of the Indian high-tech industry in a country still troubled by poverty and political unrest. The narrative focuses on the fundamentally political theme of the imaginative and institutional structures that have successively sustained and transformed India, first under British colonial rule and then, after 1947, as an independent country. Woven into the larger political narrative is an account of India's social and economic development and its rich cultural life.

1. Sultans, Mughals, and pre-colonial Indian society
2. Mughal twilight: the emergence of regional states and the East India Company
3. The East India Company Raj, 1772–1850
4. Revolt, the modern state, and colonized subjects, 1848–85
5. Civil society, colonial constraints, 1885–1919
6. The crisis of the colonial order, 1919–39
7. The 1940s: triumph and tragedy
8. Congress Raj: democracy and development, 1950–89
9. Democratic India at the turn of the Millennium: prosperity, poverty, power.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Asian history [HBJF], History [HB]