Pratyay Nath

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Pratyay Nath

Associate Dean, AshokaX. Assistant Professor of History Ashoka University

Ph.D. Jawaharlal Nehru University
pratyay.nath@ashoka.edu.in

Pratyay Nath is Assistant Professor of History, Ashoka University, Sonipat, India. He is a historian of the Mughal Empire, interested particularly in environment, warfare, and kingship. He writes in English and Bengali. His first book Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India (Oxford University Press, 2019) offers a new interpretation of the Mughal Empire from the vantage point of war-making and environmental engagements. He is currently working on his second monograph titled War and the Region: Military Campaigns in the Making of the Mughal Empire. It is a study of Mughal campaigns and military techniques under Akbar and their role in the emergence of the empire.

He is editing a journal special issue on ‘Environment and Empire in the Early Modern World’ for JESHO and a reader on war, society, and culture in South Asia for Orient Blackswan Pvt. Ltd. He is co-editing three volumes – the first on periodisation of history and the meanings of ‘early modernity’ for Cambridge University Press; the second (in Bengali) on the evolution of academic debates on South Asian history for Ananda Publishers; and the third on the history of the horse in South Asia for Routledge.

Pratyay earned his PhD from Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 2016. Before this, he completed his MPhil in History from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2011, Master’s in History from University of Calcutta in 2008, and Bachelor’s in History from Presidency College, Calcutta in 2006. He was awarded the DAAD-funded ‘A New Passage to India III’ fellowship at Georg-August Universität, Göttingen, Germany for the academic year 2013-14. 

At Ashoka University, his teaching focuses on Mughal history, histories of medieval and early modern South Asia, and global histories of early modern empires, environment, warfare, and kingship. He has recently been awarded a DAAD-funded ‘Short-Term Guest Professorship’ by the Georg-August Universität, Göttingen. Prior to joining Ashoka, Pratyay taught medieval and early modern history at Miranda House, University of Delhi.

Monograph:

Edited Volumes:

  • ইতিহাসের বিতর্ক, বিতর্কের ইতিহাসঃ অতীতের ভারত ও আজকের গবেষণা [Debates of History, History of Debates: Past India and Present Research], co-edited with Kaustubh Mani Sengupta (Ananda Publishers Pvt. Ltd., forthcoming in 2021).
  • War and Society in South Asia, 1000-1800: A Reader (Orient Blackswan, manuscript under review).
  • The Early Modern in South Asian History, co-edited with Meena Bhargava (Cambridge University Press, under preparation).
  • History of the Horse in South Asia, co-edited with Ranabir Chakravarti (Routledge, under preparation).

Journal Special Issue:

  • Environment and Empire in the Early Modern World (for Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, under preparation).

Articles (forthcoming)

  • ‘War and the Non-Elite: Towards a People’s History of the Mughal Empire’, The Medieval History Journal.

  • ‘Looking beyond the Military Revolution: Variations in Early Modern Warfare and the Mughal Case’, The Journal of Military History.

  • ”লেভায়াথান না কাগুজে বাঘ?’ মুঘল রাষ্ট্রের চরিত্র’ [”Leviathan or Paper Tiger?’ The Nature of the Mughal State’], in Pratyay Nath and Kaustubh Mani Sengupta (eds), ইতিহাসের বিতর্ক, বিতর্কের ইতিহাসঃ অতীতের ভারত ও আজকের গবেষণা  [Debates of History, History of Debates: Past India and Present Research] (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers).

  • ‘Physical Geography and Mughal Expansion’ in Dennis Showalter and Kaushik Roy (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Warfare in Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Articles:

Articles (under review):

  • ‘Pilgrimage, Performance, and Peripatetic Kingship: Akbar’s Journeys to Ajmer and the Formation of the Mughal Empire, 1562-1579’

  • ‘Mughal Empire and the Natural Environment’, in Prasannan Parthasarathi et al (eds), Cambridge History of Modern India (2nd edition).

  • ‘Was Mughal Warfare ‘Early Modern’?’ in Nath and Bhargava (eds), The Early Modern in South Asian History (Cambridge University Press).

Short Pieces

Book Review

  • Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman and Mughal Empires: Social History in the Early Modern World, London and New York: IB Tauris, 2019, Medieval History Journal, vol. 23, no. 1, 2020, pp. 170-174.

  • Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, Fathpur Sikri Revisited, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013, South Asian History and Culture, vol. 5, no. 3, 2014, pp. 389-393.
    Climate conquest:

What can war tell us about empire? In Climate of Conquest, Pratyay Nath seeks to answer this question by focusing on the Mughals. He goes beyond the traditional way of studying war in terms of battles and technologies. Instead, he unravels the deep connections that the processes of war-making shared with the society, culture, environment, and politics of early modern South Asia.

Climate of Conquest closely studies the dynamics of the military campaigns that helped the Mughals conquer North India and project their power beyond it. The author argues that the diverse natural environment of South Asia deeply shaped Mughal military techniques and the course of imperial expansion. He also sheds light on the world of military logistics, labour, animals, and the organisation of war; the process of the formation of imperial frontiers; and the empire’s legitimisation of war and conquest. What emerges is a fresh interpretation of Mughal empire-building as a highly adaptive, flexible, and accommodative process.

See more here.

1. Pratyay is currently working on his second monograph titled War and the Region: Military Campaigns in the Making of the Mughal Empire. It is the first detailed analysis of military campaigns undertaken under the third Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605). It explores issues of tactics, strategy, geopolitics, logistics, and representation of war. It also studies the interaction between military campaigns and the different regions of South Asia, the processes of conversion of military conquest into administrative control, and the making of the suba as an administrative unit. Using a comparative historical framework, it situates these South Asian processes vis-a-vis the global military and imperial tendencies of the sixteenth century.

2. He is editing a special issue titled ‘Environment and Empire in the Early Modern World’ for Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient. It brings together eight different essays that explore the complex interactions between the natural environment and processes of early modern empire-building. In terms of areas covered, the essays range from Ming China, Choson Korea, Habsburg Spain, the Russian Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Ottoman Empire, European colonial empires, and maritime polities of the Indian Ocean.

3. He is co-editing a collection titled The Early Modern in South Asian History under an agreement with Cambridge University Press. It brings together ten essays that explore the meanings of the category of ‘early modernity’ for South Asian history. They cover themes ranging from environment to religion, warfare to society, economy to state-formation. Together, they comprise the first book-length interrogation of the idea of the early modern and its relevance for South Asian history-writing.

4. He is co-editing a volume titled The History of the Horse in South Asia with Ranabir Chakravarti for Routledge. It presents a long-term, multi-dimensional history of the animal through a mix of landmark published articles and new commissioned essays.

Spring 2021:

  • Environment and Empire in the Early Modern World (History Elective)
  • The World of War in South Asia, 1000-1800 (History Elective)

Monsoon 2020:

  • War and Empire in the Early Modern World (History Elective)
  • Introduction to Mughal History (History Elective)

Spring 2020:

  • Environment and Empire in the Early Modern World (History Elective)
  • History of India III (Gateway Course)

Monsoon 2019:

  • The World of War in South Asia, 1000-1800 (History Elective)
  • Age of Empires: A Global History of Early Modern Imperialism (History Elective)

Summer 2019:

  • War, Culture, Society (History Elective)

Spring 2019:

  • Introduction to Mughal History (History Elective)
  • History of India III (Gateway Course)
  • War and Empire in Central Eurasia, 1000-1700 (Independent Study Module)

Monsoon 2018:

  • War in the Early Modern World (History Elective)

Summer 2018:

  • Gender, War, History (History Elective)
  • War, State, and Society in Early Modern Europe (Independent Study Module)

Spring 2018:

  • Twentieth Century-Wars and the Politics of Representation (History Elective)
  • A Royal Performance: Kingship and Political Culture in South Asia, 1000-1700 (History Elective)
  • Space and Cartography in the Early Modern World (Independent Study Module)

Monsoon 2017:

  • Age of Empires: A Global History of Early Modern Imperialism (History Elective)
  • Medieval India (History Gateway Course)
  • War and Empire in Central Eurasia (Independent Study Module)

Summer 2017:

  • Trends in History (Foundation Course)

Spring 2017:

  • Introduction to Mughal History (History Elective)
  • War in History (Critical Thinking Seminar)

Monsoon 2016:

  • Trends in History (Foundation Course)
  • Medieval India (Gateway Course)
  • War, State, and Society in Early Modern Europe (Independent Study Module)

Pratyay Nath is interested in supervising research on the following fields:

  • the Mughal Empire
  • state-formation, empire-building, warfare, or political culture in medieval and early modern South Asia
  • medieval and early modern Bengal

Ongoing and past supervision:

PhD Thesis:

  • Akansha Singh, Change, Continuity, and Co-Existence: Social Structure and Agrarian System of Katehar (Rohilkhand) (2020 onward)
  • Nandita Goswami, Islam in the Brahmaputra Valley: Western Assam from the Late Seventeenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries (2020 onward)
  • Madhumita Chatterjee, Mental Landscapes in the Medieval Western Indian Ocean, 1000-1500 (2018-2019)

MLS Thesis:

  • Anuraag Khaund, Zamindars and the Formation of the Mughal Empire (2019-2020)

ASP Thesis:

  • Joydip Chatterjee, Text and Traditions: The Bharat Panchali (2020-2021)
  • Raghu Malhotra, The Military Labour Market of North India, 1500-1800 (2019)
  • Sadaf Bandeali, Clothing Mughal India (2019)

UG Thesis:

  • Akshaj Awasthi, Power as Patronage: Imperial Art and Architecture under the Mughals and the Ottomans (2020)
  • Raghu Malhotra, The Making of a Mughal: Ideas of Kingship and Authority (2017)
  • Sadaf Bandeali, Religion, Politics, and Conversion to Islam in the Ottoman Empire and Early Modern North India (2017)
  • Aastha Singh, The Emperor’s Voice: Babur’s Imperial Self-Identity through the Lens of Baburnama (2017)
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