Expanding Frontiers in South Asian and World History
Essays in Honour of John F. Richards

The book encapsulates discussions under the rubric of 'frontiers' in multiple contexts.

Richard M. Eaton (Edited by), Munis D. Faruqui (Edited by), David Gilmartin (Edited by), Sunil Kumar (Edited by)

9781107034280, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 March 2013

377 pages
23.7 x 16.4 x 3.1 cm, 0.66 kg

This book has brought together some of the foremost scholars of South Asian and global history, who were colleagues and associates of Professor John F. Richards, to discuss themes that marked his work as a historian in an academic career of almost forty years. It encapsulates discussions under the rubric of 'frontiers' in multiple contexts. Frontier has often been conceived as a space of transformation marking new forms of economic organization, commodity trade, land settlement and state authority. The essays here underline the range of interests and approaches that marked Professor Richards' illustrious career - frontiers and state building; frontiers and environmental change; cultural frontiers; frontiers, trade and drugs; and frontiers and world history. The volume discusses issues from medieval to early modern South Asian history. It also reflects a concern for large-scale global processes and for the detailed specificities of each historical case as evident in Professor Richards' work.

List of contributors
Foreword Gordon Johnson
Introduction David Gilmartin
1. At empire's end: the Nizam, Hyderabad and eighteenth-century India Munis D. Faruqui
2. The ignored elites: Turks, Mongols and a Persian secretarial class in the early Delhi sultanate Sunil Kumar
3. 'Silk Road, Cotton Road or … Indo-Chinese trade in pre-European times' Stephen F. Dale
4. The political economy of opium smuggling in early-nineteenth-century India: leakage or resistance? Claude Markovits
5. Opium and the company: maritime trade and imperial finances on Java, 1684–1796 George Bryan Souza
6. The Mughals, the Sufi Shaikhs and the formation of the Akbari Dispensation Muzaffar Alam
7. Notes on political thought in medieval and early modern South India Velcheru Narayana Rao and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
8. Becoming Turk the Rajput way: conversion and identity in an Indian warrior narrative Cynthia Talbot
9. Nature and nurture on imperial China's frontiers Peter C. Perdue
10. The frontiers of memory: what the Marathas remembered of Vijayanagara Sumit Guha
11. 'Kiss my foot,' said the King: firearms, diplomacy, and the battle for Raichur, 1520 Richard M. Eaton
12. Frontiers of family life: early modern Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds Patrick Manning
13. Chinese revenue farms and borders in Southeast Asia Carl A. Trocki
Publications John Folsom Richards
Index.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF], General & world history [HBG]