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The Pull Towards The Coast And Other Essays

by Ranabir Chakravarti
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Current price ₹907.00
Original price ₹1,395.00
Original price ₹1,395.00
Original price ₹1,395.00
(-35%)
₹907.00
Current price ₹907.00

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Book cover type: Hardcover
  • ISBN13: 9788194786948
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: Ratna Sagar
  • Publisher Imprint: PrimusBook
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 326
  • Original Price: INR 1395.0
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 570 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): N/A

The pull towards the Coast and other essays: the Indian Ocean history and the subcontinent before 1500 CE presents nine essays and two appendices on both, the ‘history of ’ and the ‘history in’ the Indian Ocean prior to C.1500 CE by identifying the factors of change and continuity with reference to particular cases and overviews alike. The third largest maritime space, with the subcontinent and Sri Lanka at its centre, the Indian Ocean has been regularly traversed at least since the third millennium BCE, thanks to the near predictable alterations of the monsoon wind system and the ubiquitous vessels made of wooden planks, stitched with coconut coir. The book discards at once the notion of the perceived efficacy of brahmanical taboos against Indic seafaring and the Eurocentric perspective of ‘the age of discoveries’, in the history of the Indian Ocean. South Asian ports, oriented to the Indian Ocean, were ‘maritime cities’, sites of thriving exchanges of commodities as well as the meeting grounds of numerous ethnic communities and socio-religious groups with rich legacies from disparate zones, and this had far-reaching consequences. The essays in this volume discuss, inter alia, the possibilities of the interlocking of the coasts with—and their distinctiveness from—the mainland of South Asia; The attitudes of powers to the coasts and maritime trade without becoming maritime polities or thalassocracies; and the significance of Blue commodities in the sea-borne networks. In doing so, this volume seeks to rescue the subcontinent pre-modern pasts from the stranglehold of nationalism and the nation state.

Ranabir Chakravarti has an enduring interest in and engagements with the pre-modern maritime history of the Indian Ocean. He also specializes in the socio-economic and political history of pre-modern South Asia. Besides regularly contributing to peer-reviewed journals and edited scholarly volumes in India and abroad, Chakravarti has authored/co-authored and edited/jointly edited the following books: Warfare for Wealth: Early Indian Perspectives (Calcutta, 1986); A Sourcebook of Indian Civilization (Hyderabad, 2000); Trade in Early India (New Delhi, 2001); Trade and Traders in Early Indian Society (New Delhi, 3rd edn., 2020); Indo-Judaic Studies: A View from the Margins (New York, 2007); Exploring Early India up to c.AD 1300 (Delhi, Primus, 3rd edn., 2016); History of Bangladesh: Early Bengal in Regional Perspectives up to c. 1200 CE in two volumes (Dhaka, 2018); History, Historians, Historiography (Kolkata, 2018). He has provided annotations to a fourteenth century Latin Crusade tract, How to Defeat the Saracens (English translation by Giles Constable, Washington, D C: Dumberton Oaks, 2012). A bilingual author, he has also published three books in Bangla on early Indian history. He was elected Sectional President, Ancient India, of Indian History Congress in 2011.

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