Hermann Kulke - A History of India

Indias history is the fascinating epic of a great civilisation. It is a history of amazing cultural continuity. Today, it is the history of one-sixth of mankind. Both Indian and foreign historians have been attracted by this great theme. Several histories of India have been written in recent times, thus the present authors may be asked why they have dared to produce yet another account of Indian history.

Research in Indian history to which both authors have contributed in their own way is progressing rapidly and an adequate synthesis is needed at more frequent intervals. This kind of up-to-date synthesis the authors hope to have provided here. It is difficult for one author to cope with the span of Indian history from ancient times to the present. Consequently, many surveys of this vast subject have been done by teams of authors, but rarely have these authors had the benefit of working together in the same department, comparing notes on Indian history for many years. This has been the good fortune of the present authors who have worked together at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University for nearly two decades.

In the late 1970s they first embarked on this joint venture at the request of a German publisher. The German edition was published in 1982, revised editions appeared in 1998 and 2006. The first English edition was published by David Croom of Croom Helm, London, in 1986. Subsequently the rights were acquired by Routledge, London, and ever since the Routledge editorial team has been helpful in bringing out new editions of this text. Inspired by the interest in their work the authors have submitted this thoroughly revised text in September 2009. Earlier editions of this comprehensive survey have been translated into several languages. The first one was the Italian edition in 1991. This was followed by Turkish, Romanian, Polish and Hungarian editions and by a Chinese one published in Beijing in 2008. The book has also been reprinted in India and is widely used as a textbook.

The authors have benefited from discussions with Indian, British and American colleagues, many of whom cannot read their German publications. They are glad to communicate with them by means of this book. However, this book is not restricted to a dialogue among historians, it is written for the student and the general reader. To this reader the authors want to introduce themselves here. Hermann Kulke studied Indology (Sanskrit) and history at Freiburg University and did his PhD thesis on the Cidambaramahatmya , a text which encompasses the tradition of the south Indian temple city Chidambaram. His second major book was on the Gajapati kingship of Orissa. He has actively participated in the first Orissa Research Project of the German Research Council and was the coeditor of The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa (1978). He continued to work on Orissa and co-ordinated the second Orissa Research Project from 1999 to 2005. He also worked on Indian historiography and medieval state formation in India and Indonesia and on the Devaraja cult of Angkor. He published a book on kings and cults in India and Indonesia, edited a volume on The State in India, 10001700 , and wrote another history of India in German which was published in 2005. Most recently he has co-edited a volume on the Chola naval expeditions in the eleventh century. In 1988 Hermann Kulke was called to the new chair of Asian history at Kiel University. The distance between Heidelberg and Kiel has not reduced the contacts with his co-author.

Dietmar Rothermund studied history and philosophy at Marburg and Munich universities and at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he did his PhD thesis on the history of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. He then went to India and worked on a history of the freedom movement which was published in German in 1965. He subsequently wrote a book on India and the Soviet Union and a major research monograph on agrarian relations in India under British rule. He also wrote a comprehensive biography of Mahatma Gandhi in German and then published a shorter version of it in English. In the 1970s he participated in the Dhanbad Research Project of the German Research Council, a project which was devoted to the history, politics and economics of an Indian coalfield. Subsequently, he mostly worked on Indian economic history and published a research monograph on India in the Great Depression, 19291939 (1992), followed by a general text on The Global Impact of the Great Depression, 19291939 (1996). In the 1990s he turned his attention to the liberalisation of the Indian economy and edited a volume on Liberalising India: Progress and Problems (1996). He also produced The Rout-ledge Companion to Decolonization in 2006 and a book devoted to current affairs: India: The Rise of an Asian Giant , published by Yale University Press in 2008.

In keeping with their respective fields of specialisation the authors have divided the work on the present text. Hermann Kulke has written .

When writing a history of India one is faced with a dilemma with regard to the term India. Before 1947 it refers to an area which is now usually called South Asia and includes other states such as Bangladesh and Pakistan. The history of the latter states is covered by the present book up to 1947 whereas for the subsequent period it is restricted to the Republic of India. Bangladesh and Pakistan are mentioned only to the extent that they have affected the Republic of India.

For the transcription of Indian names and terms the authors have adopted the standard English style and omitted diacritical marks. In recent years the names of some major Indian cities have been changed, i.e. the pre-colonial names have been restored. In the present text the new names have been used wherever it seemed to be appropriate. In historical contexts the old names have been retained. Names such as Bombay Presidency and Madras Presidency cannot be converted into Mumbai Presidency and Chennai Presidency. The glossary lists both new names and old names found in the text.