Empire and Decolonization in South Asia

Catalog description

This graduate reading course on Empire and Decolonization in South Asia introduces students to important literature on the history of the Mughal, British, French, and Portuguese empires in the South Asian subcontinent. The course covers the activities of the Mughal State, European East India companies, the establishment of British imperialism, and Partition. The course also tracks key moments and problems in the course of South Asias experiments with decolonization since the late 19th Century. This course trains graduate students to analyze the contingencies and violence of imperial rule, the tense oppositions to colonial ambition, and the politics of difference under empire and post-colonial nation-states.