India Pakistan History

In the late 1800s, British engineers building some of the first railways in the Dominion of India discovered large numbers of bricks buried in the dusty plains of the Punjab. This was odd because historians were not aware of any cities or civilizations which might have constructed buildings in this area. It wasn’t until archeological expeditions in the 1920s that it was finally realized that these bricks were the remains of mighty cities built by a previously unknown ancient civilization.

La Compañía Británica de las Indias Orientales fue uno de los factores clave en la formación del Imperio Británico. Desde sus orígenes como compañía comercial luchando por mantenerse a la altura de sus superiores competidores holandeses, portugueses y españoles, a su ejercicio como la autoridad gobernante del subcontinente indio a su espectacular caída final, la Compañía de las Indias Orientales sirve como un lente a través del cual se puede explorar las fuerzas económicas y sociales que moldearon la formación del Imperio Británico global.

Kim Barker is not your typical, impassive foreign correspondent—she is candid, self-deprecating, laugh-out-loud funny. At first an awkward newbie in Afghanistan, she grows into a wisecracking, seasoned reporter with grave concerns about our ability to win hearts and minds in the region. In The Taliban Shuffle, Barker offers an insider’s account of the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan and Pakistan, chronicling the years after America’s initial routing of the Taliban, when we failed to finish the job.

"I thought the nation was coming to an end", wrote Khushwant Singh, looking back on the violence of Partition that he was witness to over half a century ago. He believed then that he had seen the worst that India could do to herself. But after the violence in Gujarat in 2002, he felt that the worst, perhaps, is still to come. Analysing the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, the burning of Graham Staines and his children, the targeted killings by terrorists in Punjab and Kashmir, Singh confronts the absolute corruption of religion that has made us among the most brutal people on earth.

Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) was an established Urdu short story writer and a rising screenwriter in Bombay at the time of India's partition in 1947, and he is perhaps best known for the short stories he wrote following his migration to Lahore in newly formed Pakistan. Ayesha Jalal draws on Manto's stories, sketches, and essays, as well as a trove of his private letters, to present an intimate history of partition and its devastating toll.

The British East India Company served as one of the key players in the formation of the British Empire. From its origins as a trading company struggling to keep up with its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish competitors ,to its tenure as the ruling authority of the Indian subcontinent, to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company serves as a lens through which to explore the much larger economic and social forces that shaped the formation of a global British Empire.

Thanks to its commercial complexion and the power invested in a board of directors, British rule in India was characterized by economic monopolies, aggressive trade practices, punitive taxation, and the impoverishment of vast regions of India. Much of the company's industry was based on a policy of producing and exporting raw materials from India, and importing manufactured goods to satisfy an almost unlimited local market.

For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi--Bhutto's birthplace and Pakistan's other great metropolis--Rafia Zakaria's family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death.

From about 1858 to 1947, the British ruled over India. The Raj carried out orders and came up with them. There was public mistrust and dissatisfaction with their regime, which led to protests, riots, and controversial events. India was a big part of the British Empire for a long time, until the country gained its independence. Let’s explore how the rule of the British Raj evolved, how their power became stronger and weaker, what the impact of the world wars was, the nationalist groups in India, and significant figures like Mahatma Gandhi.

Pakistan's pathway to developing nuclear weapons remains shrouded in mystery and surrounded by misconceptions. While it is no secret why Pakistan became a nuclear power, how Pakistan became a nuclear state has been obscured by mythmaking. In Pakistan's Pathway to the Bomb, Mansoor Ahmed offers a revisionist history of Pakistan's nuclear program and the bureaucratic politics that shaped its development from its inception in 1956 until the 1998 nuclear tests.

The Elements of Cricket is a cricket book unlike any other published before, an extraordinary, eccentric guide and charming visual representation of the game, from the weather and wood that make it possible to the achievements of its greatest and most famous players. The book is divided into the three parts that make up the fundamental elements of cricket: bat, ball and field. Their harmony produces cricket’s unique environment; their centuries’ long conflict provides its innovation, adaptability and vast psychological hinterland.

Kashmir, Gujarat, and the Punjab: The Ancient and Modern History of India’s Politically Divided States on the Border with Pakistan examines the various regions, the different civilizations that lived there, and what took place there over the last 5,000 years. You will learn about Kashmir, Gujarat, and the Punjab like never before.

In recent years, Pakistan has changed from being a state of regional strategic significance to one of major global importance. Its geographical position and delicate religious mix, coupled with a complex political structure and its status as a nuclear power, have ensured that its actions - and inactions - have attracted close scrutiny since 9/11 and the declaration of the "War on Terror". Yet there remains widespread disagreement among political and military analysts as to the real position of this enigmatic nation.

Eight years ago we chased the Taliban from Kabul and forced al-Qaeda to find a new home. One by one the militants crossed the border into Pakistan and settled in its tribal areas, building alliances with locals and terrorizing or bribing their way to power. This place---Pakistan's lawless frontier---is now the epicenter of global terrorism. It is where young American and British jihadists go to be trained, where the kidnapped are stowed away, and where plots are hatched for deadly attacks all over the world.

Shahan Mufti’s family history, which he can trace back 1,400 years to the inner circle of the prophet Muhammad, offers an enlightened perspective on the mystifying history of Pakistan. Mufti uses the stories of his ancestors, many of whom served as judges and jurists in Muslim sharia courts of South Asia for many centuries, to reveal the deepest roots - real and imagined - of Islamic civilization in Pakistan.

Munoz provides new insight into Benazir Bhutto’s unprecedented rise and an unflinching, minute-by-minute narrative of the assassination itself. With impeccable research, Munoz also situates Bhutto in the decades-long history of U.S.-Pakistan relations and the emergence of global terrorism, pinpointing her death as the moment when those relations changed forever. The result is a gripping narrative of Pakistan’s turbulent political realities and the death of its leading politician.