David Ludden

David Ludden

Professor of History

Education

University of Pennsylvania, PhD 1978

Areas of Research/Interest

South Asia; Middle East; East Asia; World History; Globalization; Agrarian History; Economic Development

Fellowships and Honors

  • 2018-2024 Luce Foundation Grant for NYU Center for Global Asia program “Port city environments in Global Asia,” based in NYUAD, NYUSH, and NYUNY
  • 2009 Fulbright Research Fellowship
  • 2003 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fund
  • 2002-2003 President of the Association of Asian Studies
  • 2002 American Council of Learned Societies
  • 1990 National Endowment for the Humanities

Books

  • India and South Asia: A Short History
    Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2013.
    Translated and published in German and Italian.
    India and South Asia: A Short History
  • India and South Asia: A Short History
    Oxford: OneWorld Publishers, 2002.
    Translated and published in German and Italian.
    India and South Asia: A Short History
  • An Agrarian History of South Asia
    Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
    The New Cambridge History of India, IV. 4. General Editor: Gordon Johnson. (digital edition online)
    An Agrarian History of South Asia
  • Peasant History in South India
    Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Paperback edition, Delhi: Oxford University Press: 1990, reprinted 1993, 1995, 1997.
    ACLS History E-Book. http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;;idno=heb02438
    Peasant History in South India

Articles and Chapters

  • Spatial History in Southern Asia: Mobility, Territoriality, and Religion
    Flows and Frictions in Trans-Himalayan Spaces
    Edited by Gunnel Cederlöf and Willem van Schendel (forthcoming)
  • Mobility and Migration around the Bay of Bengal
    Cambridge History of Global Migrations
    General Editor, Donna Gabaccia, Vol.1, edited by C.A.P. Antunes and Eric Tagliacozzo (forthcoming)
  • Empire and Agriculture
    The Cambridge History of the Indian Subcontinent, Volume 2
    Edited by Mrinalini Sinha, Prasannan Parthasarathi, and David Gilmartin (forthcoming)
  • The Centrality of Indo-Persia in Global Asia and Historical Formation of Afghanistan
    Afghanistan (Edinburgh University Press, 2021)
    Association of Asian Studies Roundtable Volume, edited by Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, 4, 1, 57-59
  • Perilous Homelands: The Rohingya Crisis and the Violence of National Territory
    The Daily Star (Dhaka, 2019)
    InFocus Column, April 1
  • Cowry Country: Mobile Space and Imperial Territory
    Asia Inside Out. Volume III, Itinerant People (Harvard University Press, pp.75-100)
    Edited by Eric Tagliacozza, Helen F. Siu, and Peter Perdue
  • India’s Spatial History in the Brahmaputra-Meghna River Basin
    Re-Writing the Northeast (pp.21-35)
    Edited by Neeladri Bhattacharya and Joy L.K. Pachuau
  • The Decline of Buddhism, Revisited: The Rise of Hindu Territorial Hegemony, c.950-1250
    Clio and Her Descendants: Essays for Kesavan Veluthat (Primus Books, pp. 132-162)
    Edited by Manu V. Devadevan, Delhi
  • Frontiers of Agrarian Bengal: Sylhet in the 1780s
    Agrarian and Other Histories: Essays for Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri (New Delhi, Tulika Books, pp. 65-89)
  • Country Politics and Agrarian Systems: Land Grab on Bengal Frontiers, 1750-1800
    Modern Asian Studies. 51, 2 (March 2017, pp. 319-349. Published online: April 2017)
    New Directions in Social and Economic History: Essays in Honour of David Washbrook
  • Subaltern Studies
    The Encyclopedia of Empire
    John MacKenzie, Editor-in-Chief, Wiley
  • Empire Meets Globalisation: Explaining Historical Patterns of Inequity in South Asia
    Economic and Political Weekly, 47, 30, 28 (July 2012, pp.213-221)
  • Imperial Modernity: History and Global Inequity in Rising Asia
    Third World Quarterly, 33, 4, 2012, pp. 581-602. Republished in Identity, Inequity and Inequality in India and China: Governing Difference
    Edited by Ravinder Kaur and Ayo Wahlberg, Routledge, New York, 2014, pp. 9-30.
  • Imperial Transitions in Agrarian South Asia: Sylhet and Tirunelveli, 1770-1820
    The Eighteenth Century in South Asia: New Terrains (Kolkata: The Asiatic Society, 2012, pp.105-129)
    Terrains.A Centennial Tribute to Pratul Chandra Gupta. Edited by Subash Ranjan Chakravorty
  • Spatial Inequity and National Territory: Remapping 1905 in Bengal and Assam
    Modern Asian Studies, 46, 3, May, pp. 483 – 525
  • The Politics of Independence in Bangladesh
    Economic and Political Weekly, August 27, 46, 35, pp, 79-85
  • The Process of Empire: Frontiers and Borderlands
    Tributary Empires in Global History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp.132-150)
    edited by Peter Fibiger Bang and CA Bayly
  • Spatial Inequity and National Territory: Remapping 1905 in Bengal and Assam
    Modern Asian Studies, 2011, pp. 1-43.
  • Investing in nature around Sylhet: An Excursion into Geographical History
    Contested Grounds: Essays on Nature, Culture and Power (Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 77-105)
    Edited by Amita Baviskar
  • History and the Inequality Predicament
    ” Wertheim Lecture, University of Amsterdam, School of Social Science Research
    Excerpted in the International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter, 28, Autumn, 28-9
  • A Usable Past for a Post-National Present: Governance and Development in South Asia
    Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Golden Jubilee Volume (1956-2006), 50, 1-2, pp. 259-292
  • Development Regimes in South Asia: History and the Development Conundrum
    Economic and Political Weekly, 40, 37 (pp. 42-51
  • Where is Assam?
    HIMALSouthAsia, November 2005

Edited Volumes

  • Capitalism in Asia
    Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies
  • Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical Histories, Contested Meanings, and the Globalisation of South Asia
    New Delhi: Permanent Black Publishers and London: Anthem Press
  • Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India
    Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Paperback edition
    New Preface. Additional Bibliography. Oxford University Press, Delhi
  • Agricultural Production and Indian History
    New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 2005
    Second paperback edition published as Agricultural Production and South Asian History. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2005

Translations

  • The Kuruntokai: An Anthology of Classical Tamil Love Poetry in Translation
    Koodal Publishers, Madurai, 1976
    With M.Shanmugam Pillai