I can hardly wait to read Sanjay Subrahmanyam's Explorations in Connected History coming out next month. This review in The Hindu is enticing: "enriches historical writing and contributes to historiographical advance," "new vistas of analysis can reveal different trajectories of history," "he situates micro-level developments in the larger context." Best of all:... adopts a very high level of methodological sophistication and nuanced analysis. They mark a significant advance in the historiography of the intellectual history of the early modern period.Subrahmanyam is reacting to the primitive state of South Asian history in a disciplined, creative way. Can his field be worse off than Civil War history? We read binary nonfiction: North vs. South. Military vs. Political. Social vs. Economic. Democrat vs. Republican. Land vs. Sea. It seems as if in order to transcend the binary pairing of topics in one book, a second or third book must be read.
On Civil War Talk Radio, I despaired of our writers reaching the level of a Geoffrey Parker, who covers in a single volume, 30 years of political, military, dynastic, geostrategic, colonial, and ecclesiastic crises. Meanwhile, we're stuck on "Is this a political or military study?"
Perhaps Subrahmanyam will surpass even such as Parker. Let's hope whatever breakthroughs Connected History holds, they can work for the worst kind of history as well as the best.
