Europe’s India: Words, People, Empires, 1500–1800

Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Published by Harvard University Press 2017

Europe’s India

Words, People, Empires, 1500–1800

Sanjay Subrahmanyam

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674977532

Overview
Contents

About this book

When Portuguese explorers first arrived in India, the maritime passage initiated an exchange of goods as well as ideas. European ambassadors, missionaries, soldiers, and scholars who followed produced a body of knowledge that shaped European thought about India. Sanjay Subrahmanyam tracks these changing ideas over the entire early modern period.

Reviews

Sanjay Subrahmanyam brings his wide learning and wise judgement to a fraught subject—European conceptions of India as they are shaped by exploration, trade, and conquest. Europe's India uncovers the complex ground of knowledge-formation and knowledge-acquisition, of self-presentation and self-understanding, while resisting doctrinal simplicities. This is a thoroughly readable and deeply instructive work.
-- Akeel Bilgrami, author of Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment

As one would expect from Sanjay Subrahmanyam, this is a witty, erudite book with a range that dazzles: from art and art history to science and technology to history and literature.
-- David Washbrook, Trinity College, University of Cambridge

[A] significant contribution to the field of postcolonial interpretations of European views of India.
-- P. P. Barua Choice

Covering the three centuries between Vasco da Gama’s arrival and the consolidation of the English East India Company’s trading and political dominance by the end of the 1700s, Subrahmanyam evaluates in intricate detail how selected European individuals engaged with the subcontinent over time, and the extent to which common ‘European’ modes of understanding South Asian society gradually emerged…An intellectual and cultural history thoroughly rooted in the politics and institutions of changing times, Europe’s India charts the social, occupational and ideological differences that marked Europeans who travelled to pre-modern India, together with their diverse regional origins and convergences.
-- Elizabeth Buettner Times Literary Supplement

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
PREFACE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Before and Beyond “Orientalism” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. On the Indo-Portuguese Moment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
2. The Question of “Indian Religion” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
3. Of Coproduction: The Case of James Fraser, 1730–1750 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	144
4. The Transition to Colonial Knowledge Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
By Way of Conclusion: On India’s Eu rope Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	286
ABBREVIATIONS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	327
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	329
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	383

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Pages
- Main content: 416
Illustrations
- Other: 22 halftones, 3 maps

eBook

Published: March 13, 2017
ISBN: 9780674977532