This book explores the modern transformation of state and society in the Indian Himalaya.

The Routledge Companion to Northeast India is a trans-disciplinary and comprehensive compendium of a vital yet under-researched region in South Asia. It provides a unique guide to prevailing themes, theories, arguments, and history of Northeast India by discussing its life-forms – human and not – languages, landscapes, and lifeways in all its diversity and difference. The companion contains authoritative entries from leading specialists from and on the region and offers clear, concise, and illuminating explanations of key themes and ideas. A hands-on, practical, and comprehensive guide to Northeast India, this companion fills a significant gap in the literature and will be an invaluable teaching, learning, and research resource for scholars and students of Northeast India Studies, South Asian and Southeast Asian societies, culture, politics, humanities, and the social sciences in general.

This comprehensive history of Nepal spans pre-historic times and the Licchavi Period to more recent developments, such as the Maoist insurgency and the rise of the republic. In addition to religious history and histories of selected regions (Mustang, Sherpa, Tarai, and others), it covers the nation's relations with its powerful neighbors and its cultural aspects, especially its rich history of arts, architecture, and crafts.

The contemporary status of the eight South Asian nations was determined by the creation of the British Indian empire and the process of decolonization. This book by the late Ainslie T. Embree is an insightful exploration of how the boundaries of these states were created between 1757 and 1857. During these one hundred years, political and military developments in the Indian subcontinent made a significant impact upon the definition of borders as they (almost) exist today. The narrative begins after Aurangzeb’s death, when vast areas of the Mughal Empire were taken over by regional powers, following which the East India Company swiftly expanded its territory, thus altering the boundaries of the region. Embree explores the meaning of ‘boundaries’ and ‘frontiers’; while the British stressed on ‘natural frontiers’, those shaped by natural landscapes, there was also the French sense of ‘natural borders’, which represented state borders reflecting social composition. Artfully written, with a careful examination of archival materials from England and India, this book reveals the colonial and local interests at work while modern states were carved into being.

Traditionally, history has been telling us the stories of kings. In the long tradition of history writing, his-story has always dominated over her-story. Though queens evoke a sense of romance and their stories are told like fairy tales, it is common enough to find that these stories end in tragedy. In India's history, not all queens are remembered today. Some are celebrated; while others have been almost ignored by historians. In Ranis and the Raj, Queeny Pradhan has selected six queens. All the six queens are fromthe nineteenth century and have faced the British Raj, the East India Company and the Crown. From the Rani of Sirmur, who was the earliest to deal with theBritish authorities, to Rani Chennamma, Rani Jindan, Begum Zeenat Mahal, Rani Lakshmi Bai, to the Sikkim Queen from the 1860s to 1890s, Pradhan has attempted to carve an engrossing historical narrative for each of these important figures in Indian history. Unlike the biographical convention in traditional history writing, theresearch in this book can be placed in the realm of 'microhistory'. The life stories of these queens are fragmented due to the 'silences' and 'invisibilization' in political history of the time, and this book aims to fill these gaps.