Michael H Fisher
Biographic Data
| ID | 378146 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael H Fisher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael H |
| FAMILY NAME | Fisher |
| SIGNATURE | FISHER M H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Oberlin College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 118 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Empire of Contingency: How Portugal Entered the Indo-Persian World By Jorge Flores
Sindh under the Mughals: Origin and Development of Historiography (1591-1737 ce) by Humera Naz
To explicate the long and complex development of historiography in and about the cultural region of Sindh (currently Pakistan’s southeastern province), Naz has comprehensively researched and analyzed written sources from a wide array of traditions, genres, and methodologies. Most of her book concentrates on the period when Sindh was under the sovereignty of Mughal emperors (1591–1737). She asserts that during this period “we find a qualitative ch…
Grief and the Shaping of Muslim Communities in North India, c. 1857–1940s by Eve Tignol
The author of this book deploys and enriches methodologies from the history of emotions, particularly deep literary analysis, to explore how and why elite north Indian Muslims evoked grief and related concepts during the British Raj (1858–1947). In her largely chronological exposition, Tignol extensively translates and analyzes Urdu-language poetry, sometimes with prose commentary, published in partisan newspapers and journals of that period. She…
Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths by Taylor C. Sherman
Revisiting the political and economic history of India’s early transition from colony to nation-state, Sherman critiques other scholars from several disciplines for attributing dominant leadership to Prime Minister (and leader of the Congress Party) Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964). She also identifies and debunks what she asserts are seven prominent “myths” about India during this period—that it was nonaligned, secular, socialist, strongly centraliz…
Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy: India 1947 and Beyond by Tirthankar Roy and Anand V. Swamy
India’s vast and complex economy can be most productively analyzed through a range of interdisciplinary methodologies. Roy and Swamy identify themselves as “economists, not legal scholars” (108). Yet, all the major topics about India’s post-independence economy examined in this thoughtful and informative volume are linked to the law codes inherited in 1947 from the British colonial government and then slowly adapted by India’s policymakers, judge…
England Re-Oriented: How Central and South Asian Travelers Imagined the West, 1750–1857 . By Humberto Garcia
Of the tens of thousands of Muslim men and women of all classes who travelled to or settled in Britain from the Indian subcontinent during the 1750–1857 period, Humberto Garcia has thoughtfully selected for his insightful literary reading the written works of five Muslim men (plus Emin Joseph Emin, an Armenian Christian born in Iran but raised in Calcutta). Chapters 2–7 and the Epilogue focus deeply on one or two of these Indian men, each of whom…
India's Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy by Madhav Khosla
An Imperial Disaster: The Bengal Cyclone of 1876, by Benjamin Kingsbury
Conflicting Meanings of Persianate Culture: An Intimate Example from Colonial India and Britain
Conflicting Meanings of Persianate Culture: An Intimate Example from Colonial India and Britain
Persian language and Indo-Persianate culture carried great prestige in north India during the long transition between the Mughal Empire and the British Empire. This paper considers the life of D.O. Dyce Sombre (1808-51), the doomed, mixed-race heir to a north Indian principality who struggled to maintain his identity in both the old Mughal imperial world as it fragmented and the rising British one as it conquered. His private manuscript diary and…
An Environmental History of India: From Earliest Times to the Twenty-First Century
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh contain one-fifth of humanity, are home to many biodiversity hotspots, and are among the nations most subject to climatic stresses. By surveying their environmental history, we can gain major insights into the causes and implications of the Indian subcontinent's current conditions. This accessible new survey begins roughly 100 million years ago, when continental drift moved India from the South Pole and across the …
Environmental History of India: From Earliest Times to the Twenty-First Century
Lascars and Indian Ocean seafaring, 1780–1860: Shipboard life, unrest and mutiny
During the Age of Sail, a composite maritime culture and society developed in the Indian Ocean aboard European-commanded ships with largely Asian crews. Aaron Jaffer’s fine book, published in the p
Indian ghat sarangs as maritime labour recruiting intermediaries during the age of sail
As European ships created and expanded direct sea links with Asia by venturing around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, increasing numbers of Asian seamen also sailed intercontinentally. But the prevailing recruitment and service patterns for seamen in the Indian Ocean differed significantly from those in European waters. In the Indian Ocean, lascars (Asian seamen) customarily served collectively in maritime labour gangs recruited by an Indian broker, …
Diplomacy in India, 1526–1858
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Sweatshops at Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World's First Globalized Industry, from 1812 to the Present
Sweatshops at Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World's First Globalized Industry, from 1812 to the Present." South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 35(2), pp. 495–496
Finding Lascar ‘Wilful Incendiarism’: British Ship-Burning Panic and Indian Maritime Labour in the Indian Ocean
From the 1790s to the 1850s, three dozen major merchant ships burned in India's important ports. Panic-stricken British shipowners, merchants and East India Company officials apprehended disruption of their intercontinental trade, so vital to the burgeoning British Empire. In all these cases, they accused Indian seamen (lascars) of selfish ship-burning. As a context, the lascars had, for centuries prior to European arrival in the Indian Ocean, wo…
Postcolonial Travel Writing: Critical Explorations (review)
Reviewed by: Postcolonial Travel Writing: Critical Explorations Michael H. Fisher (bio) Justin D. Edwards and Rune Graulund, eds. Postcolonial Travel Writing: Critical Explorations. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 208 pp. ISBN 978-0230241190, £50/$80.00. This thoughtful, provocative, and theoretically sophisticated collection of essays examines the complex relationships between contemporary travel writing and the genres of bio…
India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (“India Book”)
Book Review| December 01 2009 India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (“India Book”) India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (“India Book”) S. D. Goitein and Mordechai A. Friedman Leiden: Brill, 2008 xxxii + 918 pp., $336.00 (cloth) Michael H. Fisher Michael H. Fisher Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2009) 2…
Visions of Mughal India: An Anthology of European Travel Writing
The Mughal Empire, which conquered and ruled virtually all of today's India, Pakistan and Bangladesh over several centuries, created one of the richest and most colourful of all historical periods. Peoples of different cultures - including Muslims, Christians, Hindus and others, originating from Iran, Central Asia, Europe and South Asia itself worked, traded and travelled throughout the Empire, contributing to its dynamism and power. A few of the…
A South-Asian History of Britain: Four Centuries of Peoples from the Indian Sub-Continent
People from India have been coming to Britain - risking their lives in voyages across the 'Kala Pani' (Black waters) - since the beginning of the seventeenth century. Their story has both grand historical sweep and the intimate drama of individual lives. They came as sailors, servants, wives, merchants, ambassadors and scholars, sometimes for betterment or profit, sometimes for adventure, and sometimes for justice. Occasionally, they became famou…
Excluding and Including “Natives of India”: Early-Nineteenth-Century British-Indian Race Relations in Britain
Research Article| August 01 2007 Excluding and Including "Natives of India": Early-Nineteenth-Century British-Indian Race Relations in Britain Michael H. Fisher Michael H. Fisher Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2007) 27 (2): 303–314. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-2007-007 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Pe…
Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century: Filling the Blank Spaces
Working across the Seas: Indian Maritime Labourers in India, Britain, and in Between, 1600–1857
The advent and expansion of trans-oceanic shipping aboard wooden, wind-powered vessels between India and Europe created uniquely onerous working conditions for the Indian seamen who volunteered to labour aboard – conditions distinct from either coastal or land-based employment in either India or Europe. Indian (and European) seamen on such vessels may have been “free labour” prior to boarding ship, but they were in many respects “unfree labour” w…
Migration to Britain from South Asia, 1600s–1850s
Men and women from South Asia (what would become India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) have chosen to settle in the British Isles since the early seventeenth century. By the mid‐nineteenth century, tens of thousands had arrived, some remaining permanently, more returning home. Their complex and often contested relationships with the native British population shifted with the onset and expansion of imperialism. Early settlers had expe…
The Office of Akhbār Nawīs: The Transition from Mughal to British Forms
The persistence and yet transformation of the office of akhbār nawīs ('newswriter') reflected fundamental aspects of the transition from the Mughal to the British Empires. The Mughals appointed akhbār nawīs to collect and transmit specific kinds of information. This office continued, albeit with new functions, through the decentralizing of political power that characterized eighteenth-century South Asia. The expansion fo hte English East India Co…
Indirect Rule in the British Empire: The Foundations of the Residency System in India (1764-1858)
The British Empire established itself and expanded largely through its incorporation of existing indigenous political structures. A single British Resident or Political Agent, controlling a regional state through 'advice' given to the local prince or chief, became the norm for much of the Empire. India's princely states, where from the mid-eighteenth century the British first employed and developed this system of indirect rule, stood as the consc…
Working across the Seas: Indian Maritime Labourers in India, Britain, and in Between, 1600–1857
The advent and expansion of trans-oceanic shipping aboard wooden, wind-powered vessels between India and Europe created uniquely onerous working conditions for the Indian seamen who volunteered to labour aboard – conditions distinct from either coastal or land-based employment in either India or Europe. Indian (and European) seamen on such vessels may have been “free labour” prior to boarding ship, but they were in many respects “unfree labour” w…
Mughal India and Central Asia
The Imperial Coronation of 1819: Awadh, the British and the Mughals
The interaction among the expanding British, the regional rulers of the Gangetic plain, and Mughal Emperors stands central to Indian history during the first half of the nineteenth century. Each of these three groups determined to advance its own political and cultural values in the face of the conflicting expectations and assumptions of the other two. The English East India Company regarded itself as under the authority of the British Parliament…
Finding Lascar ‘Wilful Incendiarism’: British Ship-Burning Panic and Indian Maritime Labour in the Indian Ocean
From the 1790s to the 1850s, three dozen major merchant ships burned in India's important ports. Panic-stricken British shipowners, merchants and East India Company officials apprehended disruption of their intercontinental trade, so vital to the burgeoning British Empire. In all these cases, they accused Indian seamen (lascars) of selfish ship-burning. As a context, the lascars had, for centuries prior to European arrival in the Indian Ocean, wo…
India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (“India Book”)
Book Review| December 01 2009 India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (“India Book”) India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (“India Book”) S. D. Goitein and Mordechai A. Friedman Leiden: Brill, 2008 xxxii + 918 pp., $336.00 (cloth) Michael H. Fisher Michael H. Fisher Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2009) 2…
Excluding and Including “Natives of India”: Early-Nineteenth-Century British-Indian Race Relations in Britain
Research Article| August 01 2007 Excluding and Including "Natives of India": Early-Nineteenth-Century British-Indian Race Relations in Britain Michael H. Fisher Michael H. Fisher Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2007) 27 (2): 303–314. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-2007-007 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Pe…
The Resident in Court Ritual, 1764-1858
The exchanges that comprised the formal meetings between Indian Rulers and the British Residents attached to their courts both reflected and, in some measure, determined the changing political relationships between the Indian states and the English East India Company. As the Resident and his staff introduced new symbols and meanings into his ritual intercourse with an Indian Ruler, these new elements affected the attitudes and actions taken by th…
Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia
Environmental history is a fast developing field of critical enquiry. In both ecological and cultural terms, South Asia is characterized by its diversity. Ecological degradation, and the social conflicts that have come in its wake, have underlined the need for historical research in this field. This work should be of value to ecologists, environmentalists, historians, sociologists and those interested in peasant studies and India's environment
Indian Political Representations in Britain during the Transition to Colonialism
During the transition to colonialism, over thirty Indian political missions ventured to London. Representing the interests of Indian royalty directly in British public discourse, these Indian diplomats strove to reshape colonial policies. They also gathered first-hand intelligence, unmediated by Britons, for their Indian audiences; some later Indian diplomats evidently learned from their precursors. Nonetheless, they increasingly struggled agains…
The East India Company's 'suppression of the native dak
Political Marriage Alliances at the Shi'i Court of Awadh
A marriage expresses a mutual recognition of some degree of shared identity. The wedding ceremony confirms these links and creates new ones, although to an extent variable with the culture and the specific case. The affinity can be between individuals acting for themselves, for families, or for larger social or national groups. At one extreme would be the temporary liason, stemming from personal whim or passion, between individuals who share litt…
British Expansion in North India: The Role of the Resident in Awadh
Our acquisition of India was made blindly. Nothing great that has ever been done by Englishmen was done so unintentionally, so accidentally, as the conquest of India. [The Empire was acquired] in a fit of absence of mind. J. R. SEELEY
Indian ghat sarangs as maritime labour recruiting intermediaries during the age of sail
As European ships created and expanded direct sea links with Asia by venturing around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, increasing numbers of Asian seamen also sailed intercontinentally. But the prevailing recruitment and service patterns for seamen in the Indian Ocean differed significantly from those in European waters. In the Indian Ocean, lascars (Asian seamen) customarily served collectively in maritime labour gangs recruited by an Indian broker, …
Persian Professor in Britain: Mirza Muhammad Ibrahim at the East India Company's College, 1826-44
Research Article| August 01 2001 Persian Professor in Britain: Mirza Muhammad Ibrahim at the East India Company's College, 1826-44 Michael H. Fisher Michael H. Fisher Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2001) 21 (1-2): 24–32. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-21-1-2-24 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Michael H. Fisher; Per…
Representing 'his' women: MirzĀ Abū Talib KhĀn's 1801 'Vindication of the liberties of Asiatic women
British Expansion in North India: The Role of the Resident in Awadh
Our acquisition of India was made blindly. Nothing great that has ever been done by Englishmen was done so unintentionally, so accidentally, as the conquest of India. [The Empire was acquired] in a fit of absence of mind. J. R. SEELEY
Peasant, State and Society in medieval South India
Political Marriage Alliances at the Shi'i Court of Awadh
A marriage expresses a mutual recognition of some degree of shared identity. The wedding ceremony confirms these links and creates new ones, although to an extent variable with the culture and the specific case. The affinity can be between individuals acting for themselves, for families, or for larger social or national groups. At one extreme would be the temporary liason, stemming from personal whim or passion, between individuals who share litt…
Robe and Plough: Monasticism and Economic Interest in Early Medieval Sri Lanka
Indirect Rule in the British Empire: The Foundations of the Residency System in India (1764-1858)
The British Empire established itself and expanded largely through its incorporation of existing indigenous political structures. A single British Resident or Political Agent, controlling a regional state through 'advice' given to the local prince or chief, became the norm for much of the Empire. India's princely states, where from the mid-eighteenth century the British first employed and developed this system of indirect rule, stood as the consc…
The Imperial Coronation of 1819: Awadh, the British and the Mughals
The interaction among the expanding British, the regional rulers of the Gangetic plain, and Mughal Emperors stands central to Indian history during the first half of the nineteenth century. Each of these three groups determined to advance its own political and cultural values in the face of the conflicting expectations and assumptions of the other two. The English East India Company regarded itself as under the authority of the British Parliament…
The New Cambridge History of India. Volume II.1. Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire
A Clash of Cultures: Awadh, The British and the Mughals
A Clash of Cultures: Awadh, the British, and the Mughals.
Patanjali and Cognitive Science
Punjab and the Raj, 1849-1947
The Resident in Court Ritual, 1764-1858
The exchanges that comprised the formal meetings between Indian Rulers and the British Residents attached to their courts both reflected and, in some measure, determined the changing political relationships between the Indian states and the English East India Company. As the Resident and his staff introduced new symbols and meanings into his ritual intercourse with an Indian Ruler, these new elements affected the attitudes and actions taken by th…
The Last Maharani of Gwalior, An Autobiography
Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume 1, Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam, 7th-11th Centuries
The Office of Akhbār Nawīs: The Transition from Mughal to British Forms
The persistence and yet transformation of the office of akhbār nawīs ('newswriter') reflected fundamental aspects of the transition from the Mughal to the British Empires. The Mughals appointed akhbār nawīs to collect and transmit specific kinds of information. This office continued, albeit with new functions, through the decentralizing of political power that characterized eighteenth-century South Asia. The expansion fo hte English East India Co…
The East India Company's 'suppression of the native dak
The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945
Marathas, Marauders, and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century India
This set of historical essays challenges assumptions about the century between the Mughal Empire and the British colonial period. The author rejects the theory of chaos and anarchy, documenting instead a highly sophisticated form of administration. He also questions whether India's villages were isolated and static societies, providing evidence to the contrary, based upon archival material in the Old Marathi language. The text concludes by explor…
The Travels of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth-Century Journey Through India
This unusual study combines two books in one: the 1794 autobiographical travel narrative of an Indian, Dean Mahomet, recalling his years as camp-follower, servant, and subaltern officer in the East India Company's army (1769 to 1784); and Michael H. Fisher's portrayal of Mahomet's sojourn as an insider/outsider in India, Ireland, and England. Emigrating to Britain and living there for over half a century, Mahomet started what was probably the fir…
Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia
Environmental history is a fast developing field of critical enquiry. In both ecological and cultural terms, South Asia is characterized by its diversity. Ecological degradation, and the social conflicts that have come in its wake, have underlined the need for historical research in this field. This work should be of value to ecologists, environmentalists, historians, sociologists and those interested in peasant studies and India's environment
Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1870-1920
Indian Muslims in the 19th century lived in an era of great political, social and economic change brought about by colonial rule. North Indian scholars of the Islamic sciences attributed the Muslim loss of political power to moral weaknesses within their own community. This study examines the ways in which one important school of theologians attempted to shape the renewal of their community, and is based on a close examination of the works of its…
Representations of India, the English East India Company, and Self by an Eighteenth-Century Indian Emigrant to Britain
By writing about the late eighteenth-century revolution which led to the East India Company rule, members of a largely Muslim pre-colonial administrative elite in eastern India sought take control over their own history. They explained the society and ancien régime of India, as well as themselves, to the new British rulers for whom they worked. In so doing, they strove to inform and guide the new British colonial authorities into employing them i…
Mughal India and Central Asia
Empire of Free Trade: The East India Company and the Making of the Colonial Marketplace
Challenges recent histories of the East India Company arguing that from the beginning the company attempted to build a strong and intrusive state in India
Representing 'his' women: MirzĀ Abū Talib KhĀn's 1801 'Vindication of the liberties of Asiatic women
History (40 works) · Ancient history (31 works) · Political science (30 works) · History (23 works) · Law (21 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Archaeology (15 works) · Geography (15 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (14 works) · Politics (14 works)