Real Birds In Imagined Gardens

Accounts of paintings produced during the Mughal dynasty (1526–1857) tend to trace a linear, “evolutionary” path and assert that, as European Renaissance prints reached and influenced Mughal artists, these artists abandoned a Persianate style in favor of a European one. Kavita Singh counters these accounts by demonstrating that Mughal painting did not follow a single arc of stylistic evolution. Instead, during the reigns of the emperors Akbar and Jahangir, Mughal painting underwent repeated cycles of adoption, rejection, and revival of both Persian and European styles. Singh’s subtle and original analysis suggests that the adoption and rejection of these styles was motivated as much by aesthetic interest as by court politics. She contends that Mughal painters were purposely selective in their use of European elements. Stylistic influences from Europe informed some aspects of the paintings, including the depiction of clothing and faces, but the symbolism, allusive practices, and overall composition remained inspired by Persian poetic and painterly conventions. Closely examining magnificent paintings from the period, Singh unravels this entangled history of politics and style and proposes new ways to understand the significance of naturalism and stylization in Mughal art.

Taking into account the destructive powers of globalization, Making Worlds considers the interconnectedness of the world in the early modern period. This collection examines the interdisciplinary phenomenon of making worlds, with essays from scholars of history, literary studies, theatre and performance, art history, and anthropology. The volume advances questions about the history of globalization by focusing on how the expansion of global transit offered possibilities for interactions that included the testing of local identities through inventive experimentation with new and various forms of culture. Case studies show how the imposition of European economic, religious, political, and military models on other parts of the world unleashed unprecedented forces of invention as institutionalized powers came up against the creativity of peoples, cultural practices, materials, and techniques of making. In doing so, Making Worlds offers an important rethinking of how early globalization inconsistently generated ongoing dynamics of making, unmaking, and remaking worlds.

"India retains one of the richest painting traditions in the history of global visual culture, one that both parallels aspects of European traditions and also diverges from it. While European artists venerated the landscape and landscape paintings, it is rare in the Indian tradition to find depictions of landscapes for their sheer beauty and mood, without religious or courtly significance. There is one glorious exception: Painters from the city of Udaipur in Northwestern India specialized in depicting places, including the courtly worlds and cities of rajas, sacred landscapes of many gods, and bazaars bustling with merchants, pilgrims, and craftsmen. Their court paintings and painted invitation scrolls displayed rich geographic information, notions of territory, and the bhāva, or feel, emotion, and mood of a place. This is the first book to use artistic representations of place to trace the major aesthetic, intellectual, and political shifts in South Asia over the long eighteenth century. While James Tod, the first British colonial agent based in Udaipur, established the region's reputation as a principality in a state of political and cultural deterioration, author Dipti Khera uses these paintings to suggest a counter-narrative of a prosperous region with beautiful and bountiful cities, and plentiful rains and lakes. She explores the perspectives of courtly communities, merchants, pilgrims, monks, laypeople, and officers, and the British East India Company's officers, explorers, and artists. Throughout, she draws new conclusions about the region's intellectual and artistic practices, and its shifts in political authority, mobility, and urbanity"--

In Mughal Occidentalism, Mika Natif elucidates the meaningful and complex ways in which Mughal artists repurposed Christian and Renaissance visual idioms to embody themes from classical Persian literature and represent Mughal policy, ideology and dynastic history from the 1580s-1630s

A richly illustrated history of textiles in the Mughal Empire In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a vast array of textiles circulated throughout the Mughal Empire. Made from rare fibers and crafted using virtuosic techniques, these exquisite objects animated early modern experience, from the intimate, sensory pleasure of garments to the monumentality of imperial tents. The Art of Cloth in Mughal India tells the story of textiles crafted and collected across South Asia and beyond, illuminating how cloth participated in political negotiations, social conversations, and the shared seasonal rhythms of the year. Drawing on small-scale paintings, popular poetry, chronicle histories, and royal inventory records, Sylvia Houghteling charts the travels of textiles from the Mughal imperial court to the kingdoms of Rajasthan, the Deccan sultanates, and the British Isles. She shows how the “art of cloth” encompassed both the making of textiles as well as their creative uses. Houghteling asks what cloth made its wearers feel, how it acted in space, and what images and memories it conjured in the mind. She reveals how woven objects began to evoke the natural environment, convey political and personal meaning, and span the distance between faraway people and places. Beautifully illustrated, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India offers an incomparable account of the aesthetics and techniques of cloth and cloth making and the ways that textiles shaped the social, political, religious, and aesthetic life of early modern South Asia.

Finalist for the Cundill History Prize ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal and NPR “Superb ... A vivid and richly detailed story ... worth reading by everyone.” -The New York Times Book Review From the bestselling author of Return of a King, the story of how the East India Company took over large swaths of Asia, and the devastating results of the corporation running a country. In August 1765, the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and set up, in his place, a government run by English traders who collected taxes through means of a private army. The creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Company ceased to be a conventional company and became something much more unusual: an international corporation transformed into an aggressive colonial power. Over the course of the next 47 years, the company's reach grew until almost all of India south of Delhi was effectively ruled from a boardroom in the city of London. The Anarchy tells one of history's most remarkable stories: how the Mughal Empire-which dominated world trade and manufacturing and possessed almost unlimited resources-fell apart and was replaced by a multinational corporation based thousands of miles overseas, and answerable to shareholders, most of whom had never even seen India and no idea about the country whose wealth was providing their dividends. Using previously untapped sources, Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before and provides a portrait of the devastating results from the abuse of corporate power. Bronze Medal in the 2020 Arthur Ross Book Award

Islamic art is often misrepresented as an iconophobic tradition. As a result of this assumption, the polyvalence of figural artworks made for South Asian Muslim audiences has remained hidden in plain view. This book situates manuscript illustrations and album paintings within cultures of devotion and ritual shaped by Islamic intellectual and religious histories. Central to this story are the Mughal siblings, Jahanara Begum and Dara Shikoh, and their Sufi guide Mulla Shah. Through detailed art historical analysis supported by new translations, this study contextualizes artworks made for Indo-Muslim patrons by putting them into direct dialogue with written testimonies.

Second edition of the leading textbook on India's art, architecture, literature, religions, political and economic history, c. 1200 to 1750.