Indian Chiefs

Indian Chiefs Review

Russell Freeman is a great children's writer about historical topics. He brings many topics to life and makes them accessible for older kids. This is a very moving book about several great Indian Chiefs during the Indian Wars in the 1800s. I highly recommend it. Biographies of six Western Indian chiefs who led their people in a historic moment of crisis, when a decision had to be made about fighting or cooperating with the white pioneers encroaching on their hunting grounds.

Indian Art: An Overview

Indian Art: An Overview Review

The Book is a seminal study on Indian Art's entry through Modernism into Post-Modernism. Through fifteen essays, leading tendencies in Indian art traced from the period of the 1850s onwards, leading critics and art historians analyse the contributions of Kalighat Paintings, the Bengal School, Santiniketan, and the Madras aesthetic. Through essays on the influence of Raja Ravi Varma, Amrita Sher-Gil and the Progressive Artist's Group, the volume comes uptodate with Indian Art in contemporary period. The volume also provides substantial essays on the History of Print Making and Sculpture in India and contains some thematic essays that analyse ten trends in contemporary social context.

Edited by Art Critic Gayatri Sinha, the Book contains essays by Jyotindra Jain, Geeti Sen, Shivaji Panikkar, Ranjit Hoskote and other leading writers on Indian Art.

Ports and Political Power in the Periplus: Complex societies and maritime trade on the Indian Ocean in the first century AD (bar s)

Ports and Political Power in the Periplus: Complex societies and maritime trade on the Indian Ocean in the first century AD (bar s) Review

In the centuries around the turn of our era, long distance trade based on the monsoon winds connected all coasts of the western Indian Ocean. Ships from India, Arabia, Egypt, East Africa and Mesopotamia conveyed luxuries such as silk, spices and slaves, but also subsistence goods including grain and inexpensive textiles between coasts separated by thousands of kilometres of water. In the same period the first complex societies emerged in parts of Africa and Southern India. In other regions existing states reorganised or were replaced or marginalised by new polities. This study aims at exploring the significance of maritime commerce to societies on the Indian Ocean rim, by examining how rulers adjusted their policy in order to control and profit from trade. The point of departure is the anonymous Greek first century AD Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. This is a guide to navigation and trade on the Indian Ocean, covering the coasts of the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, East Africa and India. The unknown author, who to a large extent relied on personal experience, included not only sailing directions, but also a wealth of information on local products, markets and political conditions. Chapter 1 introduces the subject and the setting. Chapter 2 discusses how to measure the impact of trade on complex societies. Chapter 3 deals with the content and reliability of the Periplus. Other chapters survey the situation along the coasts of Arabia, Africa and western / southern India in detail, and argue that rulers and states utilised a range of policies in order to profit from the monsoon trade.