Daily Times

Old World Empires

Cultures of Power and Governance in Eurasia

Ilhan Niaz

The book provides a one-volume historical survey of the origins, development, and nature of state power in Eurasia. It covers several historical monarchies and autocracies and provides an insight of how the rulers of bygone days resorted to intrigues, coercion, torture and complete obedience from their relatives, subordinates, and subjects in order to have absolute control over all matters of governance.

Annexation and the Unhappy Valley

The Historical Anthropology of Sindh’s Colonization

by Matthew A Cook

Annexation and the Unhappy Valley: The Historical Anthropology of Sindh’s Colonization addresses the 19th 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 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 Punjab under Imperialism 1885 — 1947

Imran Ali

This comprehensive survey of British rule in the Punjab demonstrates that colonial policy-making led to many of the socio-economic and political problems currently plaguing Pakistan and Indian Punjab. Subordinating development goals to its political and military imperatives, the colonial state co-operated with the dominant social classes, the members of which became the major beneficiaries of agricultural colonization. Even while the rulers tried to use the vast resources of the Punjab to advance imperial purposes, they were themselves being used by their collaborators to advance implacable private interests.