Sumit Guha and University of Washington Press

Sumit Guha (UT-Austin) has a new book out from University of Washington Press: Ecologies of Empire in South Asia, 1400–1900 (July 2023). I'm intrigued by the strength of UW's South Asia catalogue. Their Global South Asia series (edited by Padma Kaimal, K. Sivaramakrishnan, and Anand A. Yang) just grows more impressive, and it's been fun seeing how the various titles intersect. I can't quite keep up with it, but I've leaned a lot on Sugata Ray's Climate Change and the Art of Devotion since it came out.

I always thought my book manuscript was destined to be sent to Duke or UChicago. Then the reality turned out to be that I'd always be one chapter away from finishing it and would send it nowhere. But every time I look at the UW Press website, I wonder if there's a way through that last chapter because that's the cohort I would want to join.

Anyway, back to Sumit Guha: a review of his previous book, History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200–2000, also from UW Press, appeared on H-Net reviews his month, courtesy of Ramya Sreenivasan. My one real thought about this is that my own scholarship sags when it comes to Marathi-language sources, and I feel this most acutely when I'm writing/thinking about Sawai Jai Singh when he is outside the bounds of Amber/Jaipur, let's say the Malwa sojourns. This isn't what's keeping me from finishing my book, obviously, but I do sometimes wonder how different this last chapter would look if I'd spent as much time in Maharashtra as I had Rajasthan back in the day.

India, the Portuguese and Maritime Interactions

 

 

H-net book review for:

 

Pius Malekandathil, Lotika Varadarajan, Amar Farooqui, eds. India, the Portuguese and Maritime Interactions: Vol. I: Science, Economy and Urbanity. Delhi: Primus Books, 2019.

The Making of Modern Physics in Colonial India

Here is an exciting new book! Why this book excites me: while these scientists aren't unknown to other physicists, they are not very often the focus of English-medium (Eurocentric) text books, despite the cosmopolitan, transnational practice of science. Having typed that sentence, perhaps we can say that Bose is the exception, though it is more because of the pairing of his name with Einstein's. (How many Americans know who Raman is, despite the Nobel Prize?) I suspect fans of early quantum physics, but I'm more interested in the sustenance of "Indian science" under a colonial government.

The Making of Modern Physics in Colonial India

Somaditya Banerjee

ISBN 9781472465535

Routledge, May 26, 2020

Hardcover, 202 pages

From the publisher:

"This monograph offers a cultural history of the development of physics in India during the first half of the twentieth century, focusing on Indian physicists Satyendranath Bose (1894-1974), Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (1888-1970) and Meghnad Saha (1893-1956). The analytical category "bhadralok physics" is introduced to explore how it became possible for a highly successful brand of modern science to develop in a country that was still under colonial domination. The term Bhadralok refers to the then emerging group of native intelligentsia, who were identified by academic pursuits and manners. Exploring the forms of life of this social group allows a better understanding of the specific character of Indian modernity that, as exemplified by the work of bhadralok physicists, combined modern science with indigenous knowledge in an original program of scientific research.

The three scientists achieved the most significant scientific successes in the new revolutionary field of quantum physics, with such internationally recognized accomplishments as the Saha ionization equation (1921), the famous Bose-Einstein statistics (1924), and the Raman Effect (1928), the latter discovery having led to the first ever Nobel Prize awarded to a scientist from Asia. This book analyzes the responses by Indian scientists to the radical concept of the light quantum, and their further development of this approach outside the purview of European authorities. The outlook of bhadralok physicists is characterized here as "cosmopolitan nationalism," which allows us to analyze how the group pursued modern science in conjunction with, and as an instrument of Indian national liberation."

Arts of South Asia

Why this book excites me:

Arts of South Asia offers "a collective approach to previously unrecorded histories about how the arts of South Asia were sourced for external appreciation and about a variety of economic, political, and social forces that enabled 'collecting.'" [p1]  While I'm mostly interested in the sections exploring artworks that have been "kidnapped" (authors' word), the book also deals with art that has been produced for "translocal consumers," with local and possibly global circulation in mind.

I'm also intrigued by the chapter on Coomaraswamy, for obvious reasons, but also because he played such a large role in shaping the Indian painting collection at the Boston MFA. 

Arts of South Asia: Cultures of Collecting 
Allysa B. Peyton and Katherine Anne Paul, Editors
University Press of Florida, 2019
ISBN 9781683400479
Hardcover, 296 pages, $65.00

Table of Contents:

Introduction (Allysa B. Peyton & Katherine Anne Paul)

Chapter One: “Relating to a Country So Distant”: Collecting South Asian Arms and Armor at the Tower of London during the Nineteenth Century (Natasha Bennett)

Chapter Two: Objects across Empire The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (Deepali Dewan)

Chapter Three: Colonial Collecting in Ceylon: Dispersing the Hugh Nevill Collections across the British Isles (Sushma Jansari)

Chapter Four: “We Want Quality and Condition”: The Formation of Chester Beatty’s South Asian Manuscripts and Miniatures Collection (Hyder Abbas)

Chapter Five: Collecting with Éclat: Coomaraswamy and the Framing of Indian Art in American Museums  (Brinda Kumar)

Chapter Six: Nasli Heeramaneck: The Consummate Collector and Connoisseur (Pratapaditya Pal)

Chapter Seven: Masterworks of South Asian Art at the Newark Museum: From Missionaries, Merchants, Medical Women and Men (Katherine Anne Paul)

Chapter Eight: Collecting and Curating Indian Art in Southeast Asia The Asian Civilisations Museum and the Indian Heritage Centre, Singapore (Gauri Parimoo Krishnan)

Chapter Nine: Returning “Home”: The Journey and Afterlife of Repatriated Objects (Melody Rod-ari)

Appendix A. Publicly Accessible Collections of South Asian Art outside South Asia

Appendix B. Higher Education Programs for South Asian Studies

Appendix C. Selected Histories of Global Collecting

The China-India Rivalry

H-net book review for:

T. V. Paul, ed. The China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2018.

India Suffragettes

H-net review for:

Sumita Mukherjee. Indian Suffragettes: Female Identities and Transnational Networks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

The Imperial Army Project

H-net book review for:

Douglas E. Delaney. The Imperial Army Project: Britain and the Land Forces of the Dominions and India, 1902-1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Negotiating Languages

H-net book review for:

Walter N. Hakala. Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Definition of Modern South Asia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

Indus Basin Waters + Sanskrit at the Mughal Courts

H-Net book reviews for:

Audrey Truschke. Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. (exciting!)

Daniel Haines. Rivers Divided: Indus Basin Waters in the Making of India and Pakistan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Empire, Nation, and Imaginary Institutions

H-net review for:

Partha Chatterjee. Empire and Nation: Selected Essays. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Sudipta Kaviraj. The Imaginary Institution of India: Politics and Ideas. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

(Review by Neera Chandhoke)

Robert Knight

H-net review for:

Edwin Hirschmann. Robert Knight: Reforming Editor in Victorian India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

(Review by Jeffrey Patterson)

Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of India

H-net book review for:

Toni Huber. The Holy Land Reborn: Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

(Review by Jessica Falcone).