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India: A History (Paperback)
by John Keay
| Category:
Indian history, Asian studies, India, History |
| Market price: ¥ 218.00
MSL price:
¥ 198.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
An encompassing, systematically laid out and an absorbing read, this book is probably the best single-volume Indian history. |
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Author: John Keay
Publisher: Grove Press
Pub. in: May, 2001
ISBN: 0802137970
Pages: 608
Measurements: 9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01023
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0802137975
Language: American English
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- Awards & Credential -
The bestselling book on Indian history on Amazon.com. |
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- MSL Picks -
This one volume history of India offers a great perspective on the 3500+ years of known history (plus the 1000+ additional years of archaeological history) by focussing equal attention on equal periods of time, roughly speaking. Naturally, the sources are admittedly sparse the further back we go, but the author does a remarkably good job of keeping a reasonable perspective.
Of course, it skips many details later in the story, when details from the recent past are abundant. This makes for less conjecture, but also leaves one with a sense of glossing over, if you are familiar with recent Indian history.
Overall, this is an excellent history book for the serious beginner, and can point the interested reader to further enquiry. It is adequately illustrated, and rather nicely diagrammed (particularly for some dynasties where successive rulers went back and forth across generations).
(From quoting Pranab Majumder, USA)
Target readers:
People interested in Indian history and culture.
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- Better with -
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In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India
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Born in 1941 in Devon, England, Keay was educated at Ampleforth College, York and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a demy (scholar) in Modern History. His tutors included the historian A J P Taylor and the playwright Alan Bennet. He first visited India in 1965 and has been returning there about every two years ever since. After a brief spell as a political correspondent (The Economist), he assisted in the revision of the last edition of John Murray's Handbook to India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (1975) and wrote Into India, his first book.
A string of acclaimed works followed - and continues. His next four books, all published in the 1970s, are still available today. The paperback of his The Honourable Company has just been reprinted for the tenth time. India: A History has just been produced in two volumes by the Folio Society. The Great Arc remains a best-seller. Collins' Encyclopaedia of Scotland, now in its second edition, has become the classic work of reference on all things Scottish. And his latest book, Sowing the Wind, on the West's management of the Middle East in the twentieth century has been described as 'the best in almost forty years' (Guardian), 'always entertaining and acute' (The Spectator), 'pulls off the impossible' (Sunday Times), 'impressive Éexcellent' (New Statesman), 'brilliant' (Sunday Herald).
He is married to the author Julia Keay. They have four children and have lived in the Scottish Highlands since 1971. Though hailed as 'one of our most outstanding historians' (Yorkshire Post), John Keay is not attached to any academic faculty and survives on the royalty receipts from his books. In 2002-3 he ascended the Mekong river in connection with an account of the De Lagree/Garnier expedition of 1866-8. It will be published by HarperCollins in 2004 as Mad About The Mekong (working title).
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From Publisher
John Keay's India: A History is a probing and provocative chronicle of five thousand years of South Asian history, from the first Harrapan settlements on the banks of the Indus River to the recent nuclear-arms race. In a tour de force of narrative history, Keay blends together insights from a variety of scholarly fields and weaves them together to chart the evolution of the rich tapestry of cultures, religions, and peoples that makes up the modern nations of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Authoritative and eminently readable, India: A History is a compelling epic portrait of one of the world's oldest and most richly diverse civilizations.
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| View all 10 comments |
Gregory McNamee (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-22 00:00>
The history of what is now India stretches back thousands of years, further than that of nearly any other region on earth. Yet, observes historian John Keay, most historical work on India concentrates on the period after the arrival of Europeans, with predictable biases, distortions, and misapprehensions. One, for example, is the tendency to locate the source of social conflict in India's many religions - to which Keay retorts, "Historically, it was Europe, not India, which consistently made religion grounds for war."
Taking the longest possible view, Keay surveys what is both provable and invented in the historical record. His narrative begins in 3000 B.C., with the complex, and little-understood, Harappan period, a time of state formation and the development of agriculture and trade networks. This period coincides with the arrival of Indo-European invaders, the so-called Aryans, whose name, of course, has been put to bad use at many points since. Keay traces the growth of subsequent states and kingdoms throughout antiquity and the medieval period, suggesting that the lack of unified government made the job of the European conquerors somewhat easier - but by no means inevitable. He continues to the modern day, his narrative ending with Indian-Pakistani conflicts in 1998.
Fluently told and well documented, Keay's narrative history is of much value to students and general readers with an interest in India's past and present.
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Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-22 00:00>
Sweeping from the ancient brick cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, built in the Indus Valley around 2000 B.C., to modern India's urban middle class armed with computers and cell phones, this erudite, panoramic history captures the flow of Indian civilization. No apologist for Britannia's rule, British historian Keay (Into India, etc.) gives the lie to comforting fantasies of the British Raj as the benevolently run "Jewel in the Crown." For most Indians, "Pax Britannica meant mainly 'Tax Britannica,'" he writes. Nor was British-ruled India peaceful, he adds, because India became a launch pad for British wars against Indonesia, Nepal and Burma, for the invasion of Afghanistan and the quashing of native revolts - often with the coerced participation of Indian troops. Finally, the Raj was "Axe Britannica," beginning the extensive deforestation of the subcontinent and the systematic suppression of its rural economy. Keay challenges much conventional scholarship in a dispassionate chronicle based largely on a fresh look at primary sources. For instance, the Mauryan emperor Ashoka, enthroned in 268 B.C., is revered because he preached tolerance and renounced armed violence, yet Keay notes that, contrary to popular opinion, Ashoka never specifically abjured warfare nor did he disband his army. Keay concludes this illustrated history by astutely surveying India's erratic progress in the half-century since independence, marked by communal violence, resurgence of regional interests and the rise of Hindu nationalism. This careful study serves up a banquet for connoisseurs and serious students of India. |
Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-22 00:00>
Sweeping from the ancient brick cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, built in the Indus Valley around 2000 B.C., to modern India's urban middle class armed with computers and cell phones, this erudite, panoramic history captures the flow of Indian civilization. No apologist for Britannia's rule, British historian Keay (Into India, etc.) gives the lie to comforting fantasies of the British Raj as the benevolently run "Jewel in the Crown." For most Indians, "Pax Britannica meant mainly 'Tax Britannica,'" he writes. Nor was British-ruled India peaceful, he adds, because India became a launch pad for British wars against Indonesia, Nepal and Burma, for the invasion of Afghanistan and the quashing of native revolts - often with the coerced participation of Indian troops. Finally, the Raj was "Axe Britannica," beginning the extensive deforestation of the subcontinent and the systematic suppression of its rural economy. Keay challenges much conventional scholarship in a dispassionate chronicle based largely on a fresh look at primary sources. For instance, the Mauryan emperor Ashoka, enthroned in 268 B.C., is revered because he preached tolerance and renounced armed violence, yet Keay notes that, contrary to popular opinion, Ashoka never specifically abjured warfare nor did he disband his army. Keay concludes this illustrated history by astutely surveying India's erratic progress in the half-century since independence, marked by communal violence, resurgence of regional interests and the rise of Hindu nationalism. This careful study serves up a banquet for connoisseurs and serious students of India. |
Gilbert Taylor (Booklist, USA), USA
<2007-10-22 00:00>
India's history is ancient and abundant. The profligacy of monuments so testifies, as does a once-lost civilization, the Harappan in the Indus valley, not to mention the annals commissioned by various conquerors, leading up to the better documented days of the British Raj and its successor states of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. If one has time to read but one overview of the cultures and chronology of the subcontinent, Keay's work has a strong claim to be that overview. His history exhibits the complete panoply of cultures that have arisen on, or arrived at, the plain of the Ganges River. The wonder is that in such limited length Keay concisely conveys the bedrock features of Indian civilization, such as those of Hinduism reaching back to Vedic literature and going forward in time to those of Islam. Within this mix of cultures, Keay avers, Indian historiography is afflicted with the selective interpretations of nationalist writers: he corrects the defect by example in this evenhanded, informed, and enthusiastic illumination of the vastness of Indian history. |
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