On the Mughal State

Some level of familiarity with Indian geography and Mughal history and terminology is crucial for making sense of this book. There is only one map, which is quite inadequate, and there is no glossary or chronology to make sense of the order of events discussed or the meaning of Hindi/Telegu/Kannada/Bengali/other terms (which are used quite often!). I personally could not make sense of it. This is a mix of the authors’/editors’ fault, and my own. I’ll revisit this work later after reading some other pieces on Indian history to glean what insights I can.

For those more familiar with Indian history, I doubt this will be much of an issue, but I will edit this review in the future when I come back to Alam and Subrahmanyam’s book.