Sunil Amrith’s Followers (40)

Sunil Amrith

Born

Singapore

Website

https://www.sunilamrithauthor.com

Twitter

sunilamrith

Genre

Nonfiction, History

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Sunil Amrith is Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of History, and a Director of the Joint Center for History and Economics.

Sunil Amrith grew up in Singapore, and received a B.A. (2000) and Ph.D. (2005) from the University of Cambridge. He was a research fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge (2004–2006) and taught modern Asian history at Birkbeck College of the University of London (2006–2014) prior to joining the faculty of Harvard University, where he is currently Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and a professor of history. He is also a director of the Harvard Center for History and Economics. His additional publications include Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeas Sunil Amrith is Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of History, and a Director of the Joint Center for History and Economics.

Sunil Amrith grew up in Singapore, and received a B.A. (2000) and Ph.D. (2005) from the University of Cambridge. He was a research fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge (2004–2006) and taught modern Asian history at Birkbeck College of the University of London (2006–2014) prior to joining the faculty of Harvard University, where he is currently Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and a professor of history. He is also a director of the Harvard Center for History and Economics. His additional publications include Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930–65 (2006) and Sites of Asian Interaction: Ideas, Networks and Mobility (co-editor, 2014).

His research is on the trans-regional movement of people, ideas, and institutions, and has focused most recently on the Bay of Bengal as a region connecting South and Southeast Asia. Amrith's areas of particular interest include the history of migration, environmental history, and the history of public health. He is a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, and received the 2016 Infosys Prize in Humanities.

Sunil Amrith is a historian exploring migration in South and Southeast Asia and its role in shaping present-day social and cultural dynamics. His focus on migration, rather than political forces such as colonial empires and the formation of modern nations, demonstrates that South Asia (primarily India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka) and Southeast Asia (including Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore) are tied by centuries of movement of people and goods around and across the Bay of Bengal.

In Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia (2011) and Crossing the Bay of Bengal (2013), Amrith combines the theoretical frameworks of oceanic and environmental history with archival, ethnographic, and visual research to chart how migration transformed individuals, families, and communities. Using narratives and records left by coastal traders, merchants, and migrants, he evokes the lives of ordinary Indians who made homes in new lands across the bay. Amrith's examination of the emergence of diverse, multiethnic coastal communities sheds new light on the social and political consequences of colonization. Colonialism diminished some of the intimate cultural, social, and economic connections among the peoples of coastal areas while enabling new ones. Many bonds finally snapped during decolonization, however, when defining national boundaries and national identity became the priority.

Amrith's analysis of the forces driving migration in Crossing the Bay of Bengal takes into account the ways in which climatic patterns around the bay defined the lives of migrants and coastal residents. He will expand on this work in his current project on the history of environmental change in Asia, focusing particularly on the monsoon in the context of a changing climate. Amrith is leading a reorientation of South and Southeast Asian history and opening new avenues for understanding the region's place in global history.

Amrith's most recent book is Unruly Waters (Basic Books and Penguin UK), a history of the struggle to understand and control water in modern South Asia. His previous book, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (Harvard University Press, 2013) was awarded the American Historical Association's John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History in 2014. He is also the author of Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and Decolonizing International Health: South and Southeast Asia, 1930-1965 (Palgrave, 2006), as well as articles in journals including the American Historical Review, Past and Present, and Economic and Political Weekly.

Amrith sits on the editorial boards of Modern Asian Studies and is one of the series editors of the Cambr ...more

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Sunil Amrith’s books

Average rating: 3.92 · 784 ratings · 124 reviews · 14 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years 3.98 avg rating — 444 ratings — published 2024 — 15 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Unruly Waters: How Rains, Rivers, Coasts, and Seas Have Shaped Asia's History 3.77 avg rating — 154 ratings — published 2018 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants 3.91 avg rating — 130 ratings — published 2013 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia (New Approaches to Asian History, Series Number 7) 3.81 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 2011 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930-65 really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2006 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	History Workshop Journal. No 66. Autumn 2008 by Sunil Amrith, Sally Alexander (editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	History Workshop Journal. No 63. Spring 2007 by Sunil Amrith, Sally Alexander (editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	History Workshop Journal. No 68. Autumn 2009 by Sunil Amrith, Sally Alexander (editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	History Workshop Journal. No 65. Spring 2008 by Sunil Amrith, Sally Alexander (editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	History Workshop Journal. No 67. Spring 2009 by Sunil Amrith, Sally Alexander (editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Sunil Amrith (?)

“Picture the Bay of Bengal as an expanse of tropical water: still and blue in the calm of the January winter, or raging and turbid with silt at the peak of the summer rains. Picture it in two dimensions on a map, overlaid with a web of shipping channels and telegraph cables and inscribed with lines of distance. Now imagine the sea as a mental map: as a family tree of cousins, uncles, sisters, sons, connected by letters and journeys and stories. Think of it as a sea of debt, bound by advances and loans and obligations. Picture the Bay of Bengal even where it is absent — deep in the Malaysian jungle, where Hindu shrines sprout from the landscape as if washed up by the sea, left behind.”
― Sunil S. Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants

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Sunil Amrith’s Followers (40)

Sunil Amrith

Combine EditionsSunil Amrith’s books

Combine Editions
Sunil Amrith’s books