Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750-1950

The idea of an 'eternal India', based on stable and unchanging villages, has been in disarray for at least two decades. This volume sets out to construct an alternative positive vision, using the idea of 'circulation' in relation to South Asia in the colonial period. It comprises a set of complementary essays which deal with merchant circulation, pilgrimages, cartography, policing, labour mobility, and the movement of itinerant groups - from colonial administrators to wandering bards - and demonstrates that the South Asia of this period was made and remade by changing patterns and the logic of circulation. This book will not only interest South Asianists but also those interested in historical method as well as wider comparative perspectives on early modern and contemporary history.