A comparative study of courtly politics in four early modern kingdoms in South India.

When Dutch traders arrived on the Indian subcontinent in the early seventeenth century, they encountered a courtly culture they perceived to be traditional, peaceful, and static. In reality, the kings and Brahmins they met were engaged in a fresh power struggle following the recent collapse of the Vijayanagara empire. In The Heirs of Vijayanagarai, Lennart Bes marshals a wealth of untapped sources from both Indian and Dutch archives to recover the dynamic complexity of political life in early modern India. By comparing four kingdoms—Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnand—across the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, this book offers a captivating analysis of political culture, power relations, and dynastic developments in south India.
 

The Republic of Turkey was founded a hundred years ago on 29 October 1923. Turkey holds a unique position between Europe and the Middle East. It continues to captivate international attention, evoking hopes and fears in the hearts and minds of contemporary observers. As a critical commemoration of its centenary, this book presents a mosaic of one hundred carefully curated fragments by expert authors, shedding light on politics, economy, society, culture, gender, and arts in a hundred years of Turkey. Each fragment offers a glimpse into a specific aspect of Turkey’s development, revealing the complexities of Turkey’s historical reality. Through exhibiting a diverse range of historical sources like laws, speeches, essays, letters, newspaper articles, poems, songs, memoirs, photos, posters, maps, and diagrams, each fragment brings the voices and images of Turkey’s past and present to readers. A Hundred Years of Republican Turkey: A History in a Hundred Fragments is an invaluable resource for researchers, educators, students, and anyone interested in Turkey’s fascinating history since 1923.