The eight essays here are addressed to a wide range of topics extending in time from the Mughal period to the 1970's, and in theme from communalism to industrial labour.

Subaltern Studies: v. 2: Writings on South Asian History and Society

Ranajit Guha

OUP India

Ranajit guha is arguably the indian historian whose writings have had a massive and formative impact on contemporary scholarship in several disciplines throughout the world: on postcolonial studies in literature, in anthropology, in history, in cultural studies, in art history guha first became known as the practitioner of a critical marxism that ran parallel to the work of british and french marxist historians of the 1960s and 1970s but which, instead of recreating a history from below, sought active political engagement with the present by deploying insights drawn from gramsci and mao more recently, guhas writings have drawn attention to the phenomenological and the everyday and been noticed for their sustained critique of the disciplinary practices of history-writing guhas reputation rests most famously on his international role as founder and guiding spirit of subaltern studies, the series of essays and monographs that have, over the past three decades, critiqued colonialist and nationalist historiographies while spawning new ways of thinking about history in europe, latin america and the usa, these have created a ferment richer than anything else emerging out of modern south asia, even as they have unsettled many existing frameworks of thought guhas fascinatingly diverse historical and political writings, dating from the 1950s and tucked away in obscure journals and collections, have been virtually inaccessible: they are brought together for the first time in the present volume, which comprises his collected essays in english, forty-four in number these writings have been put together by partha chatterjee, whose long association with guha as a founder-member of the subaltern studies editorial board is complemented by his own international stature as a historian, political theorist and public intellectual chatterjees introduction sketches the professional life and intellectual trajectory of indias most profoundly influential modern historian

Small Voice of History: Collected Essays

Permanent Black

A Rule of Property for Bengal is a classic work on the history of colonial India. First published in 1963, and long unavailable in this country, it is an essential text in the areas of colonial and postcolonial studies. In this book, Ranajit Guha examines the British establishment of the Permanent Settlement of Bengal—the first major administrative intervention by the British in the region and an effort to impose a western notion of private property on the Bengal countryside. Guha’s study of the intellectual origins, goals, and implementation of this policy provides an in-depth view of the dynamics of colonialism and reflects on the lasting effect of that dynamic following the formal termination of colonial rule. 
By proclaiming the Permanent Settlement in 1793, the British hoped to promote a prosperous capitalist agriculture of the kind that had developed in England. The act renounced for all time the state’s right to raise the assessment already made upon landowners and thus sought to establish a system of property that was, in the British view, necessary for the creation of a stable government. Guha traces the origins of the Permanent Settlement to the anti-feudal ideas of Phillip Francis and the critique of feudalism provided by physiocratic thought, the precursor of political economy. The central question the book asks is how the Permanent Settlement, founded in anti-feudalism and grafted onto India by the most advanced capitalist power of the day became instrumental in the development of a neo-feudal organization of landed property and in the absorption and reproduction of precapitalist elements in a colonial regime. 
Guha’s examination of the British attempt to mold Bengal to the contours of its own society without an understanding of the traditions and obligations upon which the Indian agrarian system was based is a truly pioneering work. The implications of A Rule of Property for Bengal remain rich for the current discussions from the postcolonialist perspective on the meaning of modernity and enlightenment.

A Rule Of Property For Bengal :An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement

Orient Blackswan

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Books by Ranajit Guha

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ranajit Guha. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Subaltern Studies: v. 2: Writings on South Asian History and Society

Small Voice of History: Collected Essays

A Rule Of Property For Bengal :An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement