India: a Concise History

by Francis Watson

The history of India is a story of many states and empires which begins in the third millennium BC with the Indus Valley civilization. The subsequent influx of pastoral nomads, first in a long series of invasions from the northwest that included the Moghuls nearly 3,000 years later, established the Vedic religious tradition. In a gradual assimilation of popular cults, formalization of the Sanskrit language, and the institution of caste, this tradition supplied the cohesion upon which a national consciousness, in its Western sense, is a comparatively recent grafting. In modern times, two hundred years of British ascendancy were followed in the twentieth century by India taking its place among the nation-states of the modern world. For this revised edition, a new chapter by Dilip Hiro covers the events that have taken place in India from the 1980s to the present day. The enduring distinctiveness of India, its widely recognized but often bewildering "diversity of unity," emerges from these pages as a product of geographical simplicity and historical complexity. 186 illustrations and 4 maps.

Genres: History, India

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 2 out of 5]

Heavy on the concise and short on the India. The second star is for the wealth of nice photos and relevant maps, if that's any indication as to the overall quality.
Look, I get it. India is complicated. Its diverse regions and peoples make for a endless undertaking of understanding, and it's probably impossible to simplify it in any way, but there has to be a better approach than this. Scads of centuries are passed over and regions smear into regions as this wayward and ADD-suffering history meanders about. Things get mildly cohesive once the British take over, but even that's a rush-job.

[Melissa McShane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think a concise history of India might be a mistake. Five thousand years of existence (the author begins in roughly 3000 B.C.) crammed into 192 pages makes for an overwhelming experience, particularly when names and dates flash by so quickly they're easily forgotten. I give this an extra star for the extensive drawings and photos, which give the reader a better sense of India than the text does.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tackles its immense task admirably and gives a good overview of the historical movements, and some of the key figures within that. It, naturally enough, gets a bit clogged in names and places and events that it can't possibly spell out clearly, and could probably have profited by a few more maps to clarify. Nevertheless, given its scope it's an amazing achievement, that also highlights the importance of India in broader world history.