India and the Islamic Heartlands

An Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange

Gagan D. S. Sood

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781316485095
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

Based on the chance survival of a remarkable cache of documents, India and the Islamic Heartlands recaptures a vanished and forgotten world from the eighteenth century spanning much of today's Middle East and South Asia. Gagan D. S. Sood focuses on ordinary people - traders, pilgrims, bankers, clerics, brokers, and scribes, among others - who were engaged in activities marked by large distances and long silences. By elucidating their everyday lives in a range of settings, from the family household to the polity at large, Sood pieces together the connective tissue of a world that lay beyond the sovereign purview. Recapturing this obscured and neglected world helps us better understand the region during a pivotal moment in its history, and offers new answers to old questions concerning early modern Eurasia and its transition to colonialism.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Maps
• Tables
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Note on spelling and transliteration
• Abbreviations
• Prologue
• Introduction
• 1 Cognitive patterns: approaching the world
• 2 A cosmic order: the meaning and end of life
• 3 A familial order: ties of blood, duty and affect
• 4 A relational order: intimates, strangers and plurality
• 5 A communications order: language, writing and couriers
• 6 A political order: temporal authority and governance
• 7 Everyday practices: indispensable skills and techniques
• 8 Flows and interactions: the arena’s connective tissue
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index