Penumbral Visions: Making Politics in Early Modern South India (review)

Penumbral Visions is a re-publication of a series of articles with a new conclusion. In these essays, Subrahmanyam seeks to establish what is "early modern" about four local polities in south India during the period of early European colonization. Subrahmanyam builds on his previous interests in political economy as they relate to the arrival of, particularly, the Portuguese to the subcontinent. Like his work on the Portuguese, his work in Penumbral Visions is marked by the use of a wide variety of local and colonial source materials that give his insights considerable authority and value.

In "Warfare and State Finance in Wodeyar Mysore," Subrahmanyam seeks to fill in the "historical spaces" before the rise of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan in the latter half of the eighteenth century. In analyzing the state that was displaced by Hyder and Tipu, Subrahmanyam wants to set the record straight about what "early modern" actually is. One of his major points is that "while fire arms ... became nearly ubiquitous [in Wodeyar Mysore], they were rarely if ever used to decisive effect, and very seldom used in situations other than those of siege." He also shows that by the end of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century, armies in peninsular India had become relatively efficient in attacking fortified places. At the same time they were much less capable of defending them with the same weapons. The use of weapons in field situations even in the 1730s was very rare." According to Subrahmanyam, the ratios of cavalry to infantry in the armies of the day seem to have been remarkably high (88-89).

In this chapter and others in this collection, Subrahmanyam engages explicitly with the source materials that inform his writing. In the case of Wodeyar Mysore, he calls the Jesuit writing about this period "political ethnography." Yet, he dislikes the notions of "ethnographic history," such as that found in Dirks' writing, and "positivistic history" (223-224). ¹

In this chapter about the rise of the Arcot nizamat state of Sa 'adatullah Khan, Subrahmanyam looks at the importance that Sa 'adatullah Khan placed on access to the sea for commercial reasons. When Sa 'adatullah Khan was trying to establish his state, "the [Tamil] Karnatak was still a frontier area, not only on account of the Marathas, but because of the [Telugu] Velama, Reddi, and other warrior clans of the region remained unsubdued" (100-101). This fact affected not only Sa 'adatullah Khan but also the attempt by the Mughals to convert faujdaris into regional kingdoms with court-centers in Cuddapah, Kurnoool, and what later became the "Ceded Districts" under the British. Maharashtrian brahmans, who had already established themselves in Golconda, replaced scribal khatris, and, to an extent, kayasthas and Gujaratis from north India, in the polities of the time. These brahmans, mostly Deshasthas, were not replaced by the British until the early nineteenth century (96, 120). Subrahmanyam's general thesis is that as the Mughal center weakened under Farrukhsiyar and Muhammad Shah, "the strategies and institutions associated with Mughal rule were often gaining hold in the peripheries [my emphasis]" (140-141). He seems to agree with Manning that Sa 'adatullah Khan "'efficiently centralized and organized his administration,' controlled all the key strategic nodes in his domain, and campaigned energetically to raise resources so that he could 'maintain his army and bureaucracy and pay the necessary tribute to Hyderabad'" (141). ² But Sa 'adatullah Khan, according to Subrahmanyam, came to the historical stage too late to be successful in his attempts to weld a state to ports and trade. The Europeans had established themselves too securely on the Coromandel coast.

These essays do not necessarily advance the definition of early modern in any significant way. However, they do demonstrate that Subrahmanyam's main talents are in the area of political economy rather than in cultural history.