Product Description

The first single-volume history of India since the 1950s, combining narrative pace and skill with social, economic and cultural analysis. Five millennia of the sub-continent's history are interpreted by one of our finest writers on India and the Far East. Older, richer and more distinctive than almost any other, India's culture furnishes all that the historian could wish for in the way of continuity and diversity. The peoples of the Indian subcontinent, while sharing a common history and culture, are not now, and never have been, a single unitary state; the book accommodates Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as other embryonic nation states like the Sikh Punjab, Muslim Kashmir and Assam. Above all, the colonial era is seen in the overall context of Indian history, and the legacy of the 1947 partition is examined from the standpoint of today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18220 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The history of what is now India stretches back thousands of years, further than that of nearly any other region on Earth. Yet, observes historian John Keay, most historical work on India concentrates on the period after the arrival of Europeans, with predictable biases, distortions and misapprehensions. One, for example, is the tendency to locate the source of social conflict in India's many religions--to which Keay retorts, "Historically, it was Europe, not India, which consistently made religion grounds for war".

Taking the longest possible view, Keay surveys what is both provable and invented in the historical record. His narrative begins in 3000 B.C. with the complex, and little understood, Harappan period, a time of state formation and the development of agriculture and trade networks. This period coincides with the arrival of Indo-European invaders, the so-called Aryans, whose name, of course, has been put to bad use at many points since. Keay traces the growth of subsequent states and kingdoms throughout antiquity and the medieval period, suggesting that the lack of unified government made the job of the European conquerors somewhat easier--but by no means inevitable. He continues to the modern day, his narrative ending with Indian-Pakistani conflicts in 1998.

Fluently told and well documented, Keay's narrative history is of much value to students and general readers with an interest in India's past and present. --Gregory McNamee

Review
'A delight! one of the best general studies of the subcontinent' Andrew Lycett, Sunday Times 'Ambitious, colourful and fascinating' Lawrence James, The Times

About the Author
John Keay is a writer, broadcaster and historian whose books include INTO INDIA, INDIA DISCOVERED, WHEN MEN AND MOUNTAINS MEET, HIGHLAND DROVE, THE HONOURABLE COMPANY: A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY, THE GREAT ARC and (with his wife Julia) the COLLINS ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF SCOTLAND. He has travelled extensively in India and the Far East, and specialised in Asian history and current affairs.

Customer Reviews

India in a single volume
Keay manages to compress thousands of years of history into 500 or so pages in this single-volume history. It is a very useful guide to the history of this fascinating nation and allows the reader to look right back to the classic Sanskrit literature and ancient civilisations, through to the modern wonders of the information technology boom of the nineties. India is a land of contrasts and Keay provides enough detail for the book to be useful, without getting mired in differing interpretations. If you want to understand modern India then it is essential to have some idea of where the nation developed from, this book is a great help.

Superb introduction to the history of India
For a book that is over 500 pages long, it may seem strange for me to suggest this is an introduction to the history of India. However, given the breadth of information Keay is trying to include in one single book, I think introduction is about right.

I read this book as I was interested to get an impartial view on the history of India, the origin behind its culture, its religion, its empires and how this has all combined to make India the country it is today. Keay delivers this superbly, in a very well researched book which does not include any arrogance on the part of the author in terms of the expected knowledge of its reader. He does not at any point indicate to me a particular bias to a religious or cultural view which makes the book all the better to read.

Like many books charting the history of a country, I did find the level of detail on the past 100 years slightly rushed but that is my only criticism of a book I found thoroughly enjoyable to read.

Definitely recommended.

A readable concise history
This is a very approachable complete history of india (2000Bc to Present) and to have a book quite as easy to digest about such a large time scale is a rarity. It is very good for beginners to this subject area and is not limited to just the India's boundaries.

I found some very interesting other books from this one about Sankrit Literature and Alexander the Great - this book also has lots of very nice pictures which effectively divide the book into smaller sections, making it even more easy to handle.