Between Household and State - by Subah Dayal (Paperback)

About the Book

"For decades, scholars have examined the Mughal Empire, South Asia's largest and most powerful pre-colonial empire, to measure the greatness of its political, ideological, and cultural institutions. Between Household and State departs from dynastic narrations of the Mughal past to highlight the role of elite households and familial networks in shaping imperial power, particularly in peninsular India, the only region of the subcontinent never fully incorporated into the imperial realm. Drawing upon rare documentary and literary materials in Persian and Urdu alongside the Dutch East India Company's archives, the book takes us on a journey from military forts and regional courts in the Deccan to the weaving villages of the Coromandel Coast to examine how regional elite alliances, feuds, and material exchanges intersected with imperial institutions to create new forms of affinity, belonging, and social exclusion. Between Household and State brings attention to the importance of ghar-or home-as an analytical framework for the creation of mobile forms of sovereignty that anchored the Mughal frontier across the variable geography of peninsular India in the seventeenth century"--

Book Synopsis

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Between Household and State departs from dynastic narrations of the Mughal past to highlight the role of elite households and familial networks in peninsular India, the only region of the subcontinent never fully incorporated into the imperial realm. Drawing on rare documentary and literary materials in Persian and Urdu alongside the Dutch East India Company's archives, this book takes readers on a journey from military forts and regional courts in the Deccan to the ports and weaving villages of the Coromandel Coast. It examines how regional elite alliances, feuds, and material exchanges intersected with imperial institutions to create new forms of affinity, belonging, and social exclusion. Subah Dayal brings attention to the importance of ghar--or home--in the creation of forms of mobility that anchored the Mughal frontier across the variable geography of peninsular India in the seventeenth century.

From the Back Cover

"Dayal's impressive archival discoveries open up entirely new ways of thinking about mobility in South Asia. In this exciting multi-lingual study of households and their crucial role in building Deccan kingdoms, she offers a dazzling view of how households forged connections across ecological and political frontiers, mobilizing the power of literati, merchants, and military entrepreneurs in new forms of world-making in the early modern Deccan."
--Purnima Dhavan, author of When Sparrows Became Hawks: The Making of the Sikh Warrior Tradition, 1699-1799

"Drawing upon a formidable body of sources in Persian, Dutch, and Indian vernaculars, Dayal studies the presence of the Mughal Empire in the Deccan through the lens of circulation, new identity formations, the household, and belonging as experienced by elites and ordinary people up and down the social hierarchy. This engaging book is full of important insights and is a required reading for anyone interested in the history of early modern South Asia and beyond." --Ali Anooshahr, Professor of History at University of California, Davis

"Subah Dayal's book examines the Deccan frontier of Mughal expansion through a careful reading of historical and literary texts and archival documents. These address the great families and households that formed the core of political organization from different angles and provide many original insights into the world of the seventeenth century." --Muzaffar Alam, George V. Bobrinskoy Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at University of Chicago

About the Author

Subah Dayal is Assistant Professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. Her writings have appeared in the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.