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Economic History of Early Modern India: A response
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 June 2015
Extract
The review article on Economic History of Early Modern India (Routledge, London, 2013; Economic History from now on) by Shami Ghosh is both a review of the book and a series of arguments about how eighteenth-century Indian history should be interpreted. These arguments suggest a few hypotheses about the pattern of economic change in this time (1707–1818), which are presented as an alternative to what the book thinks it is possible to claim, given the current state of knowledge. In pursuing the second objective, which is to seek fresh interpretation, Ghosh recommends reconnecting Indian regions with global economic history more firmly than is in evidence in the book. Overall, the article subjects the book to a close reading, and outlines a research programme that will surely help further the discourse on the eighteenth century.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015
References
1 Marshall, P. J., ‘Introduction’, in Marshall, P. J. (ed.), The Eighteenth Century in Indian History, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 14–5Google Scholar.
2 Roy, T.. ‘Where is Bengal? Situating an Indian Region in the Early Modern World Economy’, Past and Present, 213, 2011, pp. 115–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Nadri, Ghulam, Eighteenth-Century Gujarat: The Dynamics of its Political Economy, 1750–1800, Leiden: Brill, 2009Google Scholar.
4 Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent and Wong, R. Bin, Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2011CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 One reviewer thinks that the book is elusive on public goods, precisely the point on which, Ghosh suggests, a fruitful parallel between India and these regions could be found. See Debin Ma in EH-Net, February 2012: http://eh.net/book_reviews/before-and-beyond-divergence-the-politics-of-economic-change-in-china-and-europe/ (accessed 9 April 2015).