India: A History

Keay. John

ISBN 10: 0002557177 / ISBN 13: 9780002557177

Published by HarperCollins, 2000

About this Item

1st edition softback, 2000. Pictorial wrappers a little spine-creased, otherwise VG. Pages clean & tight. No inscriptions. Illustrated. 576 pages. Seller Inventory # ABE-1539601464499

Bibliographic Details

Title: India: A History

Publisher: HarperCollins

Publication Date: 2000

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Very Good

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

The first single-volume history of India since the 1950s, combining narrative pace and skill with social, economic and cultural analysis. Five millennia of the sub-continent’s history will be interpreted by one of our finest writers on India and the Far East.

India’s history begins with a highly advanced urban civilisation in the Indus valley, regressing to a tribal and pastoral nomadism, and then evolving into a uniquely stratified society. The pattern of inward invasion plus outward migration was established early: from Alexander the Great via the march of Islam and the great Moghuls to the coming of the East India Company and the establishment of the British Raj.

Older, richer and more distinctive than almost any other, India’s culture furnishes all that the historian could wish for in the way of continuity and diversity. The peoples of the Indian subcontinent, while sharing a common history and culture, are not now, and never have been, a single unitary state; the book accommodates Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as other embryonic nation states like the Sikh Punjab, Muslim Kashmir and Assam.

Above all, the colonial era is seen in the overall context of Indian history, and the legacy of the 1947 partition is examined from the standpoint of today.

Review:

The history of what is now India stretches back thousands of years, further than that of nearly any other region on Earth. Yet, observes historian John Keay, most historical work on India concentrates on the period after the arrival of Europeans, with predictable biases, distortions and misapprehensions. One, for example, is the tendency to locate the source of social conflict in India's many religions--to which Keay retorts, "Historically, it was Europe, not India, which consistently made religion grounds for war".

Taking the longest possible view, Keay surveys what is both provable and invented in the historical record. His narrative begins in 3000 B.C. with the complex, and little understood, Harappan period, a time of state formation and the development of agriculture and trade networks. This period coincides with the arrival of Indo-European invaders, the so-called Aryans, whose name, of course, has been put to bad use at many points since. Keay traces the growth of subsequent states and kingdoms throughout antiquity and the medieval period, suggesting that the lack of unified government made the job of the European conquerors somewhat easier--but by no means inevitable. He continues to the modern day, his narrative ending with Indian-Pakistani conflicts in 1998.

Fluently told and well documented, Keay's narrative history is of much value to students and general readers with an interest in India's past and present. --Gregory McNamee