List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiii
1 Introduction 1
RADHIKA SESHAN
PART I
Documents, Historiographies 9
2 Reconstructing Pre-Modern Economic History from the Dutch Archives 11
ISHRAT ALAM
3 Demystification and Digitisation: India Office Records in the British Library 21
RUBY MALONI
4 Après Elton and Carr: History, the Historian, and the Archive 34
RILA MUKHERJEE
5 Reading the Colonial Archive: The Rungia Gosavi Affair of 1857 48
AVANISH PATIL
6 Contextualising Archives: Mysorean invasions in Kerala 56
ABDURAHIMAN THOTTEKKAT
PART II
Visual and Literary 73
7 Archives in Tibet and Their Received Understanding 75
M N RAJESH
8 Archive and Beyond: Literature as Archive/Archives in Literature 86
CHANDRANI CHATTERJEE
9 Nationalism, Historiography, and Literature: Water and Chola
History 100
RADHIKA SESHAN
10 History of Everyday Archived in Stone and Clay: Case Studies from Early India 107
SUCHANDRA GHOSH
PART III
Emerging Archives 117
11 The Singing of Genealogies and Jati Puranas: Archiving Cosmologies and Ethical Frameworks within the Universe of an Indian Village 119
SUSHRUTI SANTHANAM
12 Exploring Uday Shankar’s Film, Kalpana, as an Archive 133
SULAKSHANA SEN
13 Archive: A Digital Forensic Investigator’s Perspective 144
SHWETA A. CHAWLA
Index 149
Biography
Radhika Seshan retired as Professor and Head of the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University (formerly the University of Pune). She is now Visiting Faculty at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune. Within the broad area of medieval Indian history, her research focuses on trade, especially in textiles, and maritime networks. Her most recent publication is a monograph, Empires of the Sea: A Brief Human History of the Indian Ocean World (2023). Her other works include Wage Earners in India 1500–1900: Regional Approaches in an International Context, jointly edited with Jan Lucassen (2021), and Connecting the Indian Ocean World – Across Sea and Land, and Merchants and Ports in the Indian Ocean World: Across Sea and Land, jointly edited with Ryuto Shimada (Routledge, 2023).
