European Adventurers in North India

European Adventurers in North India
Author: Uma Shanker Pandey
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2019-07-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000145093

This book explores how European, particularly French, adventurers shaped early modern India. It highlights the significant contributions of these adventurers in social, political, economic, and intellectual life of north India in the 18th and the 19th centuries. The author examines how the French adventurers played a key role in bringing Western science and ideas to a polity in flux. He examines the role of individuals like René Madec, Sombre, De Boigne, Perron, Gentil, Canaple, Delamarr, Sonson, and Pedrose, who made instrumental contributions in modernising armies of pre-modern states in South Asia. The volume also underlines how French adventurers’ commercial networks developing from their enterprises opened up markets in the heartlands of north India for European consumers. Further, it brings to the fore intellectual pursuits of the leading French figures such as Anquetil Duperron, Polier, Gentil, De Boigne, and Perron, whose engagement with Indian literature opened a new chapter framing studies of the Occident. Rich in French, English, and translated Persian archival resources, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of colonial history, early modern history, military history, and South Asian studies.

European Adventurers of Northern India, 1785 to 1849

European Adventurers of Northern India, 1785 to 1849
Author: C. Grey
Publisher: Asian Educational Services
Total Pages: 466
Release: 1993
Genre: Adventure and adventurers
ISBN: 9788120608535

Includes: European Officers Of Ranjit Singhs Army George Thomas, William Obrien, J.F. Allard, Paolo Di Avita, Charles Masson, Alexander Gardiner And Others.

European Adventurers in North India

European Adventurers in North India
Author: Uma Shanker Pandey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2020
Genre: Adventure and adventurers
ISBN: 9780367463762

"This book explores how European adventurers, particularly French, shaped early modern India. It highlights the significant contributions of these adventurers in social, political, economic and intellectual life of North India in the 18th and the 19th centuries. The author examines how the French adventurers played a key role in bringing Western science and ideas to a polity in flux. He examines the role of individuals like René Madec, Sombre, De Boigne, Perron, Gentil, Canaple, Delamarr, Sonson, and Pedrose, who made instrumental contributions in modernising armies of pre-modern states in South Asia. The volume also underlines how their commercial networks developing from their enterprises opened up markets in the heartlands of north India for European consumers. Further, it brings to the fore intellectual pursuits of the leading French figures such as Anquetil Duperron, Polier, Gentil, De Boigne, and Perron, whose engagement with Indian literature opened a new chapter framing studies of the Occident. Rich in French, English and translated Persian archival resources, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of colonial history, early modern history, military history, and South Asian studies"--

Colonialism, Uprising and the Urban Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Delhi

Colonialism, Uprising and the Urban Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Delhi
Author: Jyoti Pandey Sharma
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2023-03-03
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 100084143X

No other city in the Indian subcontinent can lay claim to having so many lives as Delhi. This book examines Delhi in the politically and culturally dynamic nineteenth century which was marked midway by the 1857 uprising against British colonial rule as a watershed event. Following British occupation, Delhi became a receptacle for encounters between the centuries-old Mughal traditions and the incoming colonial ideal, producing a traditionalism-modernity binary. Employing the built environment lens, the book traces the architectural trajectory of Delhi as it transitioned from the seventeenth-century Mughal Badshahi Shahar (imperial city) first into a culturally hybrid Dilli-Delhi combine of the pre-uprising era and thereafter into a modern British city following the uprising. This transition is presented via four constructs that draw on the traditionalism-modernity binary of Mughal and British Delhi and include Marhoom Dilli (Dead Delhi); Picturesque Delhi; Baaghi Dilli (Insurgent Delhi) and Tamed Delhi. The book goes beyond the nineteenth century to examine the vestiges of Delhi’s four nineteenth-century lives in the present while making a case for their acknowledgement as a cultural asset that can propel the city’s urban development agenda. By bringing together the city’s past and its present as well as addressing its future, the book can count among its readers not just scholars but also those interested in cities and their evolving landscapes.

The Mughals and the North-East

The Mughals and the North-East
Author: Sajal Nag
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2023-07-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 100090525X

There is a perception that the region of north-east India maintained its ‘splendid isolation’ and remained outside the reach of the Mughals and did not have a pre-colonial past. The present book is an attempt to decenter and demolish the said perceptions and asserts that north-east India had a ‘medieval’ past through linkage with the dominant central power in India – the Mughals. The eastern frontier of this Mughal Empire was constituted by a number of states like Bengal, Koch Bihar, Assam, Manipur, Dimasa, Jaintia, Cachar, Tripura, Khasi confederation, Chittagong, Lushai and the Nagas. Of these, some areas like Bengal were an integral part of the Mughal Empire, while others like Koch Bihar and Assam were in and out of the empire. Tripura, Manipur, Jaintia and Cachar were frequently overrun by the Mughals whenever the State was short of revenue and withdrew soon without incorporating them in the state. Despite not being a formal part of the Mughal Empire, the society, economy, polity and culture of the north-east India, however, had been majorly impacted by the Mughal presence. The brief, but effective advent of the Mughals had supplanted certain political and revenue institutions in various states. It generated trade and commerce, which linked it to the rest of India. A number of wondering Sufi saints, Islamic missionaries, imprisoned Mughal soldiers and officers were settled in various states, which resulted in a substantial Muslim population growth in the region. Besides the population, there are numerous Islamic and syncretic institutions, cultures, and shrines which dot the entire region.

Taming the Imperial Imagination

Taming the Imperial Imagination
Author: Martin J. Bayly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2016-05-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1316668479

Taming the Imperial Imagination marks a novel intervention into the debate on empire and international relations, and offers a new perspective on nineteenth-century Anglo-Afghan relations. Martin J. Bayly shows how, throughout the nineteenth century, the British Empire in India sought to understand and control its peripheries through the use of colonial knowledge. Addressing the fundamental question of what Afghanistan itself meant to the British at the time, he draws on extensive archival research to show how knowledge of Afghanistan was built, refined and warped by an evolving colonial state. This knowledge informed policy choices and cast Afghanistan in a separate legal and normative universe. Beginning with the disorganised exploits of nineteenth-century explorers and ending with the cold strategic logic of the militarised 'scientific frontier', this book tracks the nineteenth-century origins of contemporary policy 'expertise' and the forms of knowledge that inform interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere today.

Armies and State-building in the Modern Middle East

Armies and State-building in the Modern Middle East
Author: Stephanie Cronin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-12-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786734419

The uprisings of 2011, which erupted so unexpectedly and spread across the Middle East, once again propelled the armies of the region to the centre of the political stage. Throughout the region, the experience of the first decade of the twenty-first century provides ample reason to re-examine Middle Eastern armies and the historical context which produced them. By adding an historical understanding to a contemporary political analysis, Stephanie Cronin examines the structures and activities of Middle Eastern armies and their role in state- and empire-building. Focusing on Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, Armies, Tribes and States in the Middle East presents a clear and concise analysis of the nature of armies and the differing guises military reform has taken throughout the region. Covering the region from the birth of modern armies there in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, to the military revolutions of the 1950s and 60s and on to the twenty-first century army-building exercises seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cronin provides a unique and vital presentation of the role of the military in the modern Middle East.

Military Manpower, Armies and Warfare in South Asia

Military Manpower, Armies and Warfare in South Asia
Author: Kaushik Roy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317321286

Roy investigates the various factors that influenced the formation and mobilization of military forces in the region from 300 BC to the modern day.