Zahoor Ali Khan

Zahoor Ali Khan’s Studies in Indian Historical Geography: From Ancient Sarasvati to the Railway Age, a cartographic enquiry encompassing sixteen chapters, takes readers from historical-geography discourses on the river Sarasvati theories to map the impact of railways on the national markets. The book ends by mapping the uprising of 1857—offering a tribute to Kunwar Singh and his comrades


Reviewed by: Balakrishnan P
Bhangya Bhukya

Bhangya Bhukya, Professor of History at Hyderabad University, has written an engaging textbook on the history of Telangana.  The book weaves a socio-economic and political history of the Telangana region from the prehistoric times to 1724 when Mughal control over the Deccan came to an end. In his book, Bhukya underscores the importance of writing a history of the South


Reviewed by: Akhila Mathew
Uma Das Gupta

Born into a wealthy family in Calcutta in 1861, there was very little scope, so to speak, in Rabindranath Tagore’s childhood years for experiencing country life first hand. It was only in the 1890s, after Tagore was well past youth, that he was tasked with the supervision and management of the family’s (zamindari) estates in the rural areas of eastern Bengal.


Reviewed by: Nabanipa Bhattacharjee
Farhat Hasan

As per the recent research, the earliest remains of paper found in India are from early 11th century Multan. By the end of the 13th century, if one believes Amir Khusrau, it came to be manufactured even in Delhi; however, its production and its general availability was so limited that, as per Ziya Barani’s information, the paper would sometimes be washed and re-used for writing again.


Reviewed by: Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi
S. Jeyaseela Stephen

The Tamil country has a long history of being a part of the larger world of maritime trade in the Indian Ocean region, with its trade links extending even up to Rome in the ancient period. The coastline was thus dotted with ports which were essential links between the hinterland and the external world. Whereas the patterns of trade remained remarkably stable over the centuries, the scenario with regard to the ports and their relative prosperity


Reviewed by: Kanakalatha Mukund
Samuel Berthet

Focusing on the northern Bay of Bengal region, this book is a welcome addition to both the corpus of Indian Ocean studies in general, and to the study of smaller regions within this large body of water in particular. Divided into two parts, the first being ‘Chittagong and the Northern Bay of Bengal in the Early Historical Period’, and the second on ‘Shipbuilding Culture and Technology in Chittagong and the Northern Bay of Bengal’, the book, while not being strictly chronology bound, covers a wide sweep of history.


Reviewed by: Radhika Seshan