James Cuninghame Grant Duff (1789-1858) was the first to write a comprehensive history of the Marathas. Not much, however, has been known about his life or his motives in undertaking this project of writing Maratha history. An attempt is made in this book to shed some light on Duff’s career and his pioneering work on Maratha history with the help of his personal papers and official correspondence preserved in London and also unpublished and published source material in India. Duff, a Scotsman, jointed the services of the East India Company as a cadet at the age of sixteen. By the dint of his merit he rose to the rank of Captain, and played a valiant role in the British overthrow of the Maratha Power in 1818. He was then appointed as political agent and resident of the newly created Satara Raj, in which capacity he proved to be an able administrator with a vision. The book went through seven reprints upto 1970, its Marathi translation was first published in 1829-30 by the Govt. of Bombay and it went through six editions. It was also rendered into Gujarati and Hindi. It was critically reviewed between 1868-1918. The present work presents a dispassionate birds-eye-view of the pioneering work by Grant Duff to reconstruct the history of the Marathas which was a desideratum in the early 19 century.
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