Shows how colonial indirect rule and land tenure institutions create state weakness, ethnic inequality and insurgency in India, and around the world.

What explains the peculiar spatial variation of Maoist insurgency in India? Mukherjee develops a novel typology of colonial indirect rule and land tenure in India, showing how they can lead to land inequality, weak state and Maoist insurgency. Using a multi-method research design that combines qualitative analysis of archival data on Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh states, Mukherjee demonstrates path dependence of land/ethnic inequality leading to Maoist insurgency. This is nested within a quantitative analysis of a district level dataset which uses an instrumental variable analysis to address potential selection bias in colonial choice of princely states. The author also analyses various Maoist documents, and interviews with key human rights activists, police officers, and bureaucrats, providing rich contextual understanding of the motivations of agents. Furthermore, he demonstrates the generalizability of his theory to cases of colonial frontier indirect rule causing ​ethnic secessionist insurgency in Burma, and the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan.

The Indian Army was one of the most important colonial institutions that the British created. From its humble origins as a mercantile police force to a modern contemporary army in the Second World War, this institution underwent many transitions. This book examines the Indian Army during the later colonial era from the First Afghan War in 1839 to Indian independence in 1947. During this period, the Indian Army developed from an internal policing force, to a frontier army, and then to a conventional western style fighting force capable of deployment to overseas’ theaters. These transitions resulted in significant structural and doctrinal changes in the army. The doctrines, and tactics honed during this period would have a dramatic impact upon the post-colonial armies of India and Pakistan. From civil-military relations to fighting and structural doctrines, the Indian and Pakistani armies closely reflect the deep-seated impact of decades of evolution during the late colonial era.

A striking new interpretation of colonial policing and political violence in three empires between the two world wars.

This book models the trade-off that rulers of weak, ethnically-divided states face between coups and civil war. Drawing evidence from extensive field research in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo combined with statistical analysis of most African countries, it develops a framework to understand the causes of state failure.

How American colonists laid the foundations of American capitalism with an economy built on credit Even before the United States became a country, laws prioritizing access to credit set colonial America apart from the rest of the world. Credit Nation examines how the drive to expand credit shaped property laws and legal institutions in the colonial and founding eras of the republic. In this major new history of early America, Claire Priest describes how the British Parliament departed from the customary ways that English law protected land and inheritance, enacting laws for the colonies that privileged creditors by defining land and slaves as commodities available to satisfy debts. Colonial governments, in turn, created local legal institutions that enabled people to further leverage their assets to obtain credit. Priest shows how loans backed with slaves as property fueled slavery from the colonial era through the Civil War, and that increased access to credit was key to the explosive growth of capitalism in nineteenth-century America. Credit Nation presents a new vision of American economic history, one where credit markets and liquidity were prioritized from the outset, where property rights and slaves became commodities for creditors' claims, and where legal institutions played a critical role in the Stamp Act crisis and other political episodes of the founding period.

This volume provides an overview of the costs, benefits, consequences, and prospects for rebuilding nations emerging from violent conflict. The rationale for this comes from the growing realization that, in the post-Cold War era and in the aftermath of 9/11, our understanding of conflict and conflict resolution has to include consideration of the conditions conducive to sustaining the peace in nations torn by civil war or interstate conflict. The chapters analyze the prospects for building a sustainable peace from a number of different perspectives, examining: the role of economic development democratization respect for human rights the potential for renewal of conflict the United Nations and other critical topics. In an age when 'nation-building' is once again on the international agenda, and scholars as well as policy makers realize both the tremendous costs and benefits in fostering developed, democratic, peaceful and secure nations, the time has truly come for a book that integrates all the facets of this important subject. Conflict Prevention and Peace-building in Post-War Societies will appeal to students and scholars of peace studies, international relations, security studies and conflict resolution as well as policy makers and analysts.