A single history of India, much less in only one volume, must then be highly selective as to what topics it covers. To compound this difficulty, written records do not exist in Indian history until much later than elsewhere, forcing modern historians to rely only on what archaeological evidence exists for more than two millennia of India’s past. Before its conquest at the hands of the British, India was simply the geographic expression for a subcontinent that was home to myriad kingdoms, empires, languages, religions, and peoples. Unlike China, ‘India’ as a unified historical or even political entity has only existed for perhaps two hundred years, if that. The fault for this lies not so much with any factor under Keay’s control but rather the nature of his subject. This was unfortunately not to be the case, though it did entertain. In so doing, I became perhaps the most aware of how difficult an undertaking such a history must necessarily be.īased upon my delight previously reading Keay’s history of China, I had expected to immensely enjoy India: A History. When I learned that, before his history of China (reviewed here on Concerning History), John Keay had composed a history of the South Asian subcontinent, I decided to rectify this situation. I recently realized that, despite my familiarity with its later imperial history, I had little acquaintance with the history of India before the early modern era (and even that was pushing it).
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