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The Vijayanagara rajas ruled a substantial part of the southern peninsula of India for over three hundred years, beginning in the mid-fourteenth century. During this epoch the region was transformed from its medieval past toward a modern colonial future. Concentrating on the later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history of Vijayanagara, this book details the pattern of rule established in this important and long-lived Hindu kingdom that was followed by other, often smaller kingdoms of peninsular India until the onset of colonialism. Through an analysis of the politics, society, and economy of Vijayanagara, the author addresses the central question of the extent to which Vijayanagara, as a medieval Hindu kingdom, can be viewed as a prototype of the polities and societies confronted by the British in the late eighteenth century. The book thus presents an understanding and appreciation of one of the great medieval kingdoms of India as well as a more general assessment of the nature of the state, society, and culture on the eve of European colonial rule.
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THE NEW CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF INDIA Vijayanagara
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE NEW CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF INDIA General editor GORDON JOHNSON Director, Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Selwyn College
Associate editors C. A. BAYLY Smuts Reader in Commonwealth Studies, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St Catharine's College
and]omi F. RICHARDS Professor of History, Duke University
Although the original Cambridge History of India, published between 1922 and 1937, did much to formulate a chronology for Indian history and describe the administrative structures of government in India, it has inevitably been overtaken by the mass of new research published over the last fifty years. Designed to take full account of recent scholarship and changing conceptions of South Asia's historical development, The New Cambridge History of India will be published as a series of short, self-contained volumes, each dealing with a separate theme and written by a single person. Within an overall four-part structure, thirty-one complementary volumes in uniform format will be published during the next five years. As before, each will conclude with a substantial bibliographical essay designed to lead non-specialists further into the literature. The four parts planned are as follows: I The Mughals and their Contemporaries. II Indian States and the Transition to Colonialism. Ill The Indian Empire and the Beginnings of Modern Society. IV The Evolution of Contemporary South Asia. A list of individual titles in preparation will be found at the end of the volume.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE NEW CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF INDIA 1-2
Vijayanagara BURTON STEIN
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