The subject of maritime and oceanic history comprises a large corpus and includes related thematic engagements such as the history of overseas exploration and expansion, navalmilitary history, shipping, port cities, the role of migrations and cross-cultural processes. This extensive field of enquiry also focuses upon the study of littoral societies or the coastal regions, in understanding the influence of the ocean upon these lands. The interface between the land and the sea, with its several ecological and topographical variations, has played an important role in determining human activity, the settlement patterns and material culture in the coastal regions, which taken together constitute huge masses of territories in all continents. The general pattern of existence and the rhythm of life in all these dissociated regions, however, had considerable commonality, due to the overwhelming impact of the two dominant elements-water and land-in shaping the destinies of its inhabitants. Coastal societies have their own particular notion of identity and ambience, which differentiates them from the extensive continental zones. It is in this context, that coastal territories and their histories constitute an interesting theme of enquiry. The present volume examines a number of themes pertaining to different coastal regions of India: coastal ecology, commercial crops, transmission of diseases, fortifications, port hierarchy, new port towns, vessels and boats, fishing communities, social life of women, etc. It should be of interest to students and scholars of maritime history of India.

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Polycoloniality is a study of the activities of non-British European powers and players - primarily the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, the Danish, the 'Germans' (representatives of the Austrian and Prussian empires), the Swedish and the Greek - in Bengal from the late 13th to the early 19th century, and their role in shaping Bengal's brush with 'colonial modernity' prior to, and possibly more foundationally than, the English. Much of the traditional historiography of colonialism, in South Asia in general and Bengal in particular, and the resultant postcolonial commonsense, is woefully mononational, with the focus being almost exclusively on England and its colonial exploits. This is obviously factually incorrect and inadequate, with the multiple European nations named above having had simultaneous colonial contact with Bengal from the 16th century, and there having been a steady flow of Europeans, primarily Italians, to Bengal from at least the late 13th century. More importantly, it is these multiple European players, rather than the English, who can be credited with the setting up of the first cosmopolitan cities in Bengal, its first colleges and universities, the beginnings of print culture in Bengali, the foundations of the modern linguistic, literary and cultural registers of Bengal, the first instances of social and political reforms, etc. Apart from an elaboration of all the above, can Polycoloniality, or a re-look at Bengal's colonial history through the lens of plurality, also offer a template to understand the multinational forms of current new-imperialism more fittingly than postcolonial commonsense can?

From the Rawlinson MS. A. 315 in the Bodleian Library, with facsimile of original t.-p.: Itinerarium mundi, that is A memoriall or sundry relations of certain voiages,journeies ettc. ... By: Peter Mundy. With an appendix of extracts from the writings of seventeenth-century travellers to the Levant. Continued in Second Series 35, 45, 46, 55, and 78. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1907.

This book examines aspects of the production of statistical knowledge as part of colonial governance in India using Foucault’s ideas of “governmentality.” The modern state is distinctive for its bureaucratic organization, official procedures, and accountability that in the colonial context of governing at a distance instituted a vast system of recordation bearing semblance to and yet differing markedly from the Victorian administrative state. The colonial rule of difference that shaped liberal governmentality introduced new categories of rule that were nested in the procedures and records and could be unraveled from the archive of colonial governance. Such an exercise is attempted here for certain key epistemic categories such as space, time, measurement, classification and causality that have enabled the constitution of modern knowledge and the social scientific discourses of “economy,” “society,” and “history.” The different chapters engage with how enumerative technologies of rule led to proliferating measurements and classifications as fields and objects came within the purview of modern governance rendering both statistical knowledge and also new ways of acting on objects and new discourses of governance and the nation. The postcolonial implications of colonial governmentality are examined with respect to both planning techniques for attainment of justice and the role of information in the constitution of neoliberal subjects.