Open Access Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Open access publications by faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students in the Department of History.
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Recovering the Dalit Public Sphere: Vernacular Liberalism in Late Colonial North India(Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2024-04-01) Rawat, Ramnarayan S.Drawing from publications by Swami Achutanand and the Adi-Hindu Mahasabha press between 1916 and 1940, this article examines the role of this north Indian Dalit organization in creating language and categories of liberalism in the Hindi vernacular. The Mahasabha poet-activists published numerous song-booklets in a variety of Hindi song genres to intervene in ongoing discussions on the subjects of representation and equality which they characterized as mulki-haq and unch-niche. Histories of liberties in late colonial India have typically examined its emergence within dominant Hindu and Muslim middle-class groups. This article uncovers the unique contributions of Dalit poet-activists who recognized the value of liberal ideas and institutions in challenging caste and abolishing “Manu’s Kanun” (lawgiver Manu’s Hindu law codes). It highlights the methodological importance of mohalla (neighborhood) sources usually located in Dalit activists’ houses in untouchable quarters. The chapbooks found in mohalla collections have enabled the writing of a new history of the Mahasabha’s activism and of the initiatives taken by poet-activists in founding a new Dalit politics in northern India. I explore the emergence of a Dalit literate public which sustained the activities of the Mahasabha and which responded with enthusiasm to its articulation of the new social identity of Achut (untouched) and a new political identity of Adi-Hindus—original inhabitants of Hindustan (India). Offering a new methodological approach in using mohalla sources and song-booklets composed in praise of liberal institutions, this essay makes a significant contribution to the recovery of a forgotten Dalit public sphere in early twentieth-century India.Item Writing Capitalism into Iranian History(Iranian Studies, 2023-04-18) Matthee, RudiCapitalism used to be a singular term, but, like many keywords in English, now is often presented and discussed as a plural: capitalisms. Whereas capitalism formerly stood for what today is called industrial capitalism, scholars currently talk about varieties of capitalism: commercial capitalism, industrial capitalism, financial capitalism, and neoliberal capitalism, to name but the most prominent historical variants. Given this proliferation, and the inherent difficulty of defining capitalism, singular, it is important to be clear about the meaning and function of our object of inquiry. After all, “different definitions lead to different conclusions and may make for very different histories.”Item The wrath of God or national hero? Nader Shah in European and Iranian historiography(Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2023-03-16) Matthee, RudiThis article examines the way in which Iran's eighteenth-century ruler Nader Shah was portrayed in contemporary Europe as well as in Iran, and how the resulting image—half national hero, half ruthless warlord—has resonated until today. In an age short on ‘great’ leaders, Nader spoke to the imagination like no other contemporary ruler, Western or Asian. Nader's subsequent record can be read as a palimpsest, a layered series of images of multiple world conquerors, from Alexander to Napoleon. The latter, who shared Nader's humble background and evoked a similar ambivalence, represented the closest analogue, turning him into the European Nader Shah. In the modern West, Nader no longer speaks to the imagination. Modern Iranians, by contrast, have come to see him as the Iranian Napoleon. While still ambivalent about him, they admire him as the ruler who regenerated the nation and ended foreign occupation, yet his undeniable cruelty and imperialism make him an awkward national hero.Item Some Ptolemaic and Roman Sites in the Central Eastern Desert(Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 2022-11-16) Sidebotham, Steven E.; Barnard, Hans; Gates-Foster, Jennifer E.; Zitterkopf, Ronald E.The University of Delaware conducted numerous surveys in the Eastern Desert between 1987 and 2015. This contribution examines eight sites studied between 1990 and 1999 that lay east of the Nile city of Qena in Upper Egypt. They include mines, quarries, and road infrastructure (forts and accommodations for transport animals) that supported these mineral extraction activities. Sites throughout the region range from pre-historic to Islamic and modern, but this study focuses only on those from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Examination of sites presented here expands our knowledge of the economic importance of this area of the Eas- tern Desert, dominated by mines and quarries and the infrastructure that facilitated exploitation of mineral resources and their transport to the Nile valley city of Qena.