Description
Book SynopsisWhen Portuguese explorers first arrived in India, the maritime passage initiated an exchange of goods as well as ideas. European ambassadors, missionaries, soldiers, and scholars who followed produced a body of knowledge that shaped European thought about India. Sanjay Subrahmanyam tracks these changing ideas over the entire early modern period.
Trade ReviewSanjay Subrahmanyam brings his wide learning and wise judgement to a fraught subject—European conceptions of India as they are shaped by exploration, trade, and conquest.
Europe's India uncovers the complex ground of knowledge-formation and knowledge-acquisition, of self-presentation and self-understanding, while resisting doctrinal simplicities. This is a thoroughly readable and deeply instructive work. -- Akeel Bilgrami, author of
Secularism, Identity, and EnchantmentAs one would expect from Sanjay Subrahmanyam, this is a witty, erudite book with a range that dazzles: from art and art history to science and technology to history and literature. -- David Washbrook, Trinity College, University of Cambridge
[A] significant contribution to the field of postcolonial interpretations of European views of India. -- P. P. Barua * Choice *
Covering the three centuries between Vasco da Gama’s arrival and the consolidation of the English East India Company’s trading and political dominance by the end of the 1700s, Subrahmanyam evaluates in intricate detail how selected European individuals engaged with the subcontinent over time, and the extent to which common ‘European’ modes of understanding South Asian society gradually emerged…An intellectual and cultural history thoroughly rooted in the politics and institutions of changing times,
Europe’s India charts the social, occupational and ideological differences that marked Europeans who travelled to pre-modern India, together with their diverse regional origins and convergences. -- Elizabeth Buettner * Times Literary Supplement *
