This accessible book draws on anthropological fieldwork conducted in a number of sites to explore the relation between mobility, cosmopolitanism, and commerce. It is pioneering in that it looks at Sindhis, a widespread group that has so far been largely ignored by anthopologists.

Annexation and the Unhappy Valley: The Historical Anthropology of Sindh’s Colonization addresses the nineteenth century expansion and consolidation of British colonial power in the Sindh region of South Asia. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach and employs a fine-grained, nuanced and situated reading of multiple agents and their actions. It explores how the political and administrative incorporation of territory (i.e., annexation) by East India Company informs the conversion of intra-cultural distinctions into socio-historical conflicts among the colonized and colonizers. The book focuses on colonial direct rule, rather than the more commonly studied indirect rule, of South Asia. It socio-culturally explores how agents, perspectives and intentions vary—both within and across regions—to impact the actions and structures of colonial governance.

The conference on Karachi in 2013 was the first event arranged by a newly-created body, The Karachi Conference Foundation, designed to deliberate on all aspects of the city’s life. This book, bringing together the papers presented at the Conference, represents a landmark in scholarship on the mega-city and its issues. It is always a matter of great interest to see how certain societies have developed, starting out as Stone Age sites and flourishing as throbbing urban centres. While not every stage of this process is always documented, the records of remnants collected often help in painting a portrait that provides insights into this transformation. This is what Studies on Karachi does. Lay readers and scholars in a range of different disciplines with an interest in how a sleepy settlement in the late medieval period developed into a mega-city will find this book particularly useful. What emerges from the various chapters is the depiction of a city that, despite its vibrancy, is afflicted with numerous problems, ranging from poor planning to colossal mismanagement. Women, marginalized communities, neglected areas, issues of planning and development, and the history, and the anthropology of Karachi are all particular foci of attention throughout the book.

With an official population approaching fifteen million, Karachi is one of the largest cities in the world. It is also the most violent. Since the mid-1980s, it has endured endemic political conflict and criminal violence, which revolve around control of the city and its resources (votes, land and bhatta-"protection" money). These struggles for the city have become ethnicized. Karachi, often referred to as a "Pakistan in miniature," has become increasingly fragmented, socially as well as territorially. Despite this chronic state of urban political warfare, Karachi is the cornerstone of the economy of Pakistan. Gayer's book is an attempt to elucidate this conundrum. Against journalistic accounts describing Karachi as chaotic and ungovernable, he argues that there is indeed order of a kind in the city's permanent civil war. Far from being entropic, Karachi's polity is predicated upon organisational, interpretative and pragmatic routines that have made violence "manageable" for its populations. Whether such "ordered disorder" is viable in the long term remains to be seen, but for now Karachi works despite-and sometimes through-violence.

"Between 1850 and 1950, the Indian Ocean teemed with people, commodities and ideas ... Sugata Bose finds in these intricate social and economic webs evidence of the interdependence of the peoples of the lands beyond the horizon, from the Middle East to East Africa to Southeast Asia"--Jacket.

This book examines the social and cultural infrastructure that sustains Sindhi business and its trade networks. It provides a rich historical context to the narrative by tracing the origin of Sindhi Trade to the annexation of Sindh in 1843, when it was incorporated into an expanding global economy. The book also locates Sindhi business within the dynamics of the contemporary Indian diaspora and features several success stories both from India and outside. The book emphasizes the commercial inventiveness, spatial mobility, and adaptability of Sindhis----the qualities crucial to building successful cosmopolitan businesses.