Department of History

The South Asia region – contemporary India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan – has been a crossroads of diverse people, ideas and commodities for millennia. This course covers key themes and developments in South Asia between about 1000 and 1750. British colonial rule from the late eighteenth century remade South Asia, and contemporary understandings of pre-modern history have been shaped in large part by colonial knowledge. The course seeks to understand the way colonialism has effected knowledge of the past, and to reconstruct key developments and trends in light of recent scholarship. We will begin by covering major issues in early South Asia, then proceed to consider closely the medieval and early modern periods. Central themes include pre-modern dimensions of the Hindu-Muslim encounter, emergence of South Asian regions, the subcontinent in global networks, and early presence of European powers. In addition to surveying diverse political, socio-economic and cultural developments across South Asia, the course also raises methodological questions about how different sources provide different perspectives on history. Accordingly, we consider material evidence alongside various narrative primary sources, as well as scholarly writings. The course also highlights the importance of historical memory and the continuing relevance of the pre-colonial period in contemporary South Asia. Overall, the course seeks to provide students with scholarly tools and sources to better understand the formation of religious, ethnic and linguistic communities in South Asia before colonialism.