India’s Colonial Encounter: Essays in Memory of Eric Stokes

The late Professor Eric Stokes conducted pioneering researches in certain areas of nineteenth century certain areas of nineteenth century South Asian history and established a lively scholarly tradition at Cambridge. The English Utilitarians in India (1959); The Peasant and the Raj (1968); and The Peasant Armed: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 (1978) represent major works of historical scholarship. In all his writings, as Chris Bayly tells us, the discovery of complexity and paradox had the wider purpose of warning against the danger of monolithic or dogmatic constructions of the past. This volume reflects on certain themes which formed the bedrock of Eric Stokes’ historical writings-History of Ideas, the 1857 upheaval, agrarian structure and peasant struggles. It is a major contribution to the existing historical literature on South Asia. As one of the reviewers pointed out, ‘what the book has done, is to bring together a significant number of well-researched, empirically and analytically-sound papers. No mean achievement, perhaps, at a time when rigorous, professionally-competent historical scholarship is all too often dismissed as tainted by “positivism” and insufficiently “theoretical”.’ This revised and enlarged edition includes two essays by C.A. Bayly and Walter Hauser.