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| This is the first of a three-volume history of India, characterized by three main arguments: (a) Indian history has been crucially conditioned by the 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 first human settlements in the subcontinent up to the death of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1717. The political, military, economic and social developments are analysed against the backdrop represented by the rise, decline, fall and renais-sance of flourishing urban civilizations. While the economy remained mainly agrarian, long-distance trade and pre-modern, but quite sophisticated, manufacturing and service activities rose, declined and rose again. This caused the parallel rise, decline and resurgence of intermediate social strata, later resulting in the formation of a modern bourgeoisie. While the existing religious and cultural strands are analysed, a particular emphasis is placed on the relations between the two main religious traditions, Hinduism and Islam. This volume demonstrates that, despite exceptions, an essentially harmonious coexistence did exsist, which often extended to cooperation. This coexistence came into being as a result of both Realpolitik and the presence, within both Hinduism and Islam, of surprisingly similar mystical movements extremely influential both at the mass level and at the level of the ruling classes. 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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