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| This is the second of a three-volume history of India, characterized by three main arguments: (a) Indian history has been crucially conditioned by the manifold and two-way connections linking the Indian subcontinent to the remainder of the world; (b) Indian society was never static, but always crisscrossed by powerful currents of change; (c) colonialism caused both the crystallization of a ‘traditional’ society – which, in that shape, had never really existed before – and, at the same time, the rise of modernity. This volume examines the history of India from the collapse of the Mughal Empire to the end of colonialism in 1947. It analyses the features of the most important pre-colonial Indian states and the role played by the British colonialism in their destruction or reduction to political irrelevance. Second, the volume highlights the contradictory role of the colonial order in freezing a previously evolving society, causing the coming into being of a ‘traditional India’ and, at the same time, somewhat unwittingly, triggering the rise of a new modern India. Furthermore, the volume analyses the role of India in supporting the British Empire both economically and militarily, and how the implementation of the liberal economic policy by the colonial rulers resulted in the loss of millions of Indian lives. Finally, the volume closely examines the rise and evolution of Indian nationalism, the reasons that forced the British to end their rule, and, last but not least, the causes of partition and the responsibilities of the parties and political leaders involved. About the Author Michelguglielmo Torri, a former Harkness Fellow, a retired full professor Asian History (University of Turin), presently the president of ‘Asia Maior, an Italian think tank on Asia’, is the doyen of the Italian historians working on South Asia. He has widely published in Italian and English. Some of his articles have appeared in ‘Asian Survey’, the ‘Economic and Political Weekly’, the ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society’, ‘Modern Asian Studies’, ‘Studies in History’, and ‘The Indian Economic and Social History Review’. |
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