Bengal: Rethinking History (Essays in Historiography)

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Over the last twenty-five years significant epistemological shifts and methodological innovations have enriched the historiography of colonial Bengal. The essays in Bengal: Rethinking History critically examine some of those trends and indicate possibilities of future research.

In the first section of this book, Lakshmi Subramanian discusses the debates concerning the early fortunes of the English East India Company, Sanjukta Das Gupta deals with the complex literature on peasant and tribal movements, Arjan de Haan looks at the debates with regard to the industrial working classes and Brian Hatcher traces the changing trends in the interpretation of Bengal Renaissance. The essay by Bob Pokrant, Peter Reeves and John McGuire on the historical significance of fish, fisheries and the social life of Bengal fishermen is an example of the new areas of research that are being opened up in recent years.

In the second section on social identities and politics, Asim Roy provides a comprehensive study of the enormous volume of literature on the Bengali Muslims' quest for identity, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay discusses the literature on caste system and construction of identities among lower caste Hindus and Samita Sen takes a critical glance at recent researches on the history of women. Nationalism has been one of the most explored areas of Bengal history. In this volume Sugata Bose critically examines the existing views on Bengal nationalism, while Joya Chatterji investigates the problems of interpreting the troubled politics of the 1940s.

This book does not propagate any particular view of history, as the essays represent a melange of opinions, sometimes at variance with each other. It looks critically at the existing historical discourses with a view to stoke new debates.

Sekhar Bandyopadhyay is Director of the New Zealand India Research Institute and Professor of Asian History at Victoria University of Wellington, where he has been teaching since 1992. His academic specialization is in social and political history of modern India. He has also written on the Indian diaspora and India-New Zealand relations in historical times.