Rethinking Connectivity: Region, Place and Space in Asia

The history of a place, no matter how small, cannot be understood without appreciating the connections ―visible or invisible; random or methodical; haphazard or systematic―it forges with other places across time and space. Once these connections become consistent and durable, they transform into connectivities. Rethinking Connectivity: Region, Place and Space in Asia urges us to look not just for connections but also connectivities. Starting with cases of highly visible and structured/networked connectivities in an overland route spanning Central Asia and in a coastal polity’s transactions on the far side of the Indian Ocean, the book showcases some of the most remarkable links forged in Asian history. It contains three examples of ideologies and individuals negotiating connections already established in colonial Bengal and, from these realms of the visible, moves to the intangible domain of visual strategies to discern other linkages. Cultural icons celebrating the nation, and maps displaying increasingly novel conceptions of space and time, reinforce the idea of an Asia that is connected and even braided, but also contested from early times to the present.