Books 2009: the Deccan
Nov. 3rd, 2009 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbBooks 2009: 90
non-fiction
90. Richard M. Eaton, A Social History of the Deccan, 1300-1761: Eight Indian Lives, Cambridge, 2008.
Every so often, you run across great history. Well-written, forgiving of a beginner's ignorance, thorough, insightful, and gripping.
I found this book one of those. Eaton, a noted social historian of India, has chosen here to examine social trends in the Deccan from the medieval to the just pre-colonial period using the lives of eight historically significant individuals as points around which to structure his argument. This approach has a number of things to recommend it, not least among which is that it provides a historical framework and narrative within which the reader can contextualise the social developments that Eaton discusses, which range from the development of sultanates to the rise and fall of military slavery to social banditry and the rise of Brahmin rule.
On the other hand, this reader could have used a little more context, but I was very ignorant of Indian history when I started reading this book.
non-fiction
90. Richard M. Eaton, A Social History of the Deccan, 1300-1761: Eight Indian Lives, Cambridge, 2008.
Every so often, you run across great history. Well-written, forgiving of a beginner's ignorance, thorough, insightful, and gripping.
I found this book one of those. Eaton, a noted social historian of India, has chosen here to examine social trends in the Deccan from the medieval to the just pre-colonial period using the lives of eight historically significant individuals as points around which to structure his argument. This approach has a number of things to recommend it, not least among which is that it provides a historical framework and narrative within which the reader can contextualise the social developments that Eaton discusses, which range from the development of sultanates to the rise and fall of military slavery to social banditry and the rise of Brahmin rule.
On the other hand, this reader could have used a little more context, but I was very ignorant of Indian history when I started reading this book.
