Professor Nandini Chatterjee
Professor of South Asian History
5067
01392 725067
Overview
I am a historian of South Asia. I work on law and cultural exchanges in the British and Mughal empires - with particular attention to religion and family. My first book was on the shaping on the minority religious community of Indian Christians, through legal, political, racial and theological contests over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My second book is a rare micro-history of a family of zamindars (landlords) and their negotiation of the laws of the Mughal empire.
I have a long-standing interest in Digital Humanities, and in making historical research materials widely available. When studying the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, erstwhile final court of appeal of the British empire, I created an online catalogue of historic Privy Council papers in collaboration with Dr Charlotte Smith of Reading University, and the Digital Humanities lab at the University of Exeter.
I have taken these interestes further back in time, into the early modern Islamic and Persian-writing world. From 2017-2022, I directed an international and collaborative five-year ERC-funded project on Persian and bi-lingual legal documents from India, Iran and the northern Indian Ocean. The project is called Forms of Law in the early modern Persianate World, 17th-19th centuries. As part of this project, my colleagues and I have created Lawforms, a free online repository of legal documents from India and the Indian Ocean, written in Persian and various Indian languages. This is an innovative digital humanities project that I hope will produce a useful teaching and research tool, besides acknowledging and encouraging the work of family historians in South Asia. Also checkout the Lawforms blog here.
I was the director of the Exeter Centre for South Asia 2016-22. In the year 2020-21, I worked as joint chair of the History Decolonising Working Group at Exeter. Here are some blog posts in relation to our ongoing work and conversations.
I am currently the Director of Research and Impact for the Department of Archaeology and History.
Research
I am currently directing a project titled Cast in Stone: Statues and Memories of Empire in Post-imperial France and Britain. This project is jointly funded by the AHRC and by Labex, and has two PIs based in France, Emmanuelle Sibeud and Julie Marquet. This is a public facing project related to colonial heritage, which will entail work with heritage professionals, activists, artists and legal authorities.
I have recently completed work on an ERC Starting Grant-funded project called "Forms of Law in the Early Moderm Persianate World, 17th-19th centuries."
This was a project about the writing of legal documents in the Persian language, which was common practice in a geographically vast and ethnically diverse cultural zone stretching from present-day Bangladesh up Yemen and east Africa. In many cases, Persian was combined with local vernaculars, and as such, this project is both the study of law in practice as well as multi-lingualism in operation.
Full details may be found on the project web-pages. I welcome communication from individuals with associated interests and anticipate developing further projects in this connection.
Research collaborations
I have worked with the Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany and the University of Virginia in connection with the ERC-funded project, Forms of Law in the Early Modern Persianate World, 17th-19th centuries, of which I am the PI. Prof Christoph Werner, University of Bamberg and Dr Fahad Bishara of the Department of History, University of Virginia were core members of the project team. Professor Chander Shekhar, Department of Persian, Delhi University, is senior advisor of the Forms of Law project. I am currently co-editing, with Prof. Crispin Bates, an exciting multi-volume book project with Bloomsbury Academic, on the Cultural History of South Asia.Supervision
I am open to discussing research proposals on any relevant subject within my research expertise. I am especially happy to consider working with candidates with interests in Mughal history, Indo-Islamic history more broadly, and the history of British colonial rule in South Asia. I particularly welcome candidates from the countries of South Asia to get in touch with me.
Research students
First supervisor
Shreya Gupta, "Decolonising Collections: Decolonizing Collections: Investigating Knowledge Formation Networks in Colonial India with specific reference to Numismatics."
Prashant, "Gender and Law in the eighteenth-century Maratha Empire."
Second supervisor
Daniel Phillips, "The Proximity of Purpose in Colonial Zoological Gardens: An Entangled History of Empire and the Establishment of the Calcutta Zoological Gardens, 1867-1908' First supervisor: Dr Gajendra Singh
Completed
Sonia Wigh, "The Body of Words: A Social History of Sex and the Body in Medieval India." First supervisor: Prof. Sarah Toulalan
Lewis Wade, "Maritime Trade and State Regulationn: Maritime Averages in France during the Seventeenth Century." First supervisor: Prof. Maria Fusaro
Publications
Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.
| 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 |
2023
- Chatterjee N, Schrikker A, Lyna D. (2023) Paper Empires: Layers of Law in Colonial South Asia and the Indian Ocean, Law and History Review, volume 41, no. 3, pages 417-426, DOI:10.1017/S0738248023000081.
- . P. (2023) Legalising and Enforcing Socio-Religious Norms: The State, Caste and Positions of Women in the Maratha Empire, 1674-1818.
- Chatterjee N. (2023) Changing regimes of law in the age of competing empires in South Asia, Cambridge History of the Modern Indian Subcontinent, Cambridge University Press.
2022
- Hodges LH, Chatterjee N. (2022) The power of parwanas: Indo-Persian grants and the making of empire in eighteenth-century southern India, Law and History Review, volume 41. [PDF]
- Chatterjee N. (2022) Uncolonised Islam. The Textual Field of Shariʿa Within and Beyond the Colonial Legal System in India, Revue d'histoire du XIXe siècle, no. 64, pages 71-96, DOI:10.4000/rh19.8237. [PDF]
2021
- Chatterjee N. (2021) Sharīʿa translated: Persian documents in English courts, Islamic Law in the Indian Ocean World: Texts, Ideas and Practices, 88-110, DOI:10.4324/9781003185741-5.
- Bishara FA, Chatterjee N. (2021) Introduction: The Persianate bazaar, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, volume 64, no. 5-6, pages 487-512, DOI:10.1163/15685209-12341544.
- Wigh S. (2021) The Body of Words: A Social History of Sex and the Body in Early Modern South Asia.
- Chatterjee N. (2021) Sharīʿa translated? Persian documents in English courts, Islamic Law in the Indian Ocean World Texts, Ideas and Practices, Routledge.
- Chatterjee N. (2021) Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, by Javed MajeedNation and Region in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, by Javed Majeed, The English Historical Review, volume 136, no. 581, pages 1086-1088, DOI:10.1093/ehr/ceab147.
- Chatterjee N. (2021) Archives as windows. A Zamīndār’s records in a colonial court, Quaderni storici, volume 2, pages 309-339, DOI:10.1408/102878. [PDF]
- Wade L. (2021) Privilege at a Premium: Insurance, Maritime Law and Political Economy in Early Modern France, 1664-c. 1710.
- Chatterjee N. (2021) Translating obligations: Tamassuk and Fārigh-khai in the Indo-Persian world, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, volume 64, no. 5-6, pages 541-582, DOI:10.1163/15685209-12341546.
2020
- Chatterjee N. (2020) Negotiating Mughal Law: A Family of Landlords Across Three Indian Empires, Cambridge University Press, DOI:10.1017/9781108623391. [PDF]
2019
- Chatterjee N. (2019) Boundaries of the International: Law and Empire, by Jennifer Pitts, The English Historical Review, volume 134, no. 571, pages 1576-1577, DOI:10.1093/ehr/cez335.
2017
- Chatterjee N. (2017) The Love of Strangers: What Six Muslim Students Learned in Jane Austen’s London by Nile Green, The English Historical Review, volume 132, no. 557, pages 998-1000, DOI:10.1093/ehr/cex194. [PDF]
2016
- CHATTERJEE N. (2016) Anthony Webster, Ulbe Bosma, and Jaime de Melo, eds., Commodities, ports and maritime trade in Asia after 1750 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Pp. xv+318. ISBN 9781137463913 Hbk. £63), The Economic History Review, volume 69, no. 3, pages 1040-1041, DOI:10.1111/ehr.12406.
2015
- Chatterjee N. (2015) Narendra Subramanian , Nation and Family: Personal Law, Cultural Pluralism, and Gendered Citizenship in India. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014, pp. 377 + xvii; ISBN 978-0-8047-8878-6, Comparative Studies in Society and History, volume 57, no. 4, pages 1092-1094, DOI:10.1017/s0010417515000511.
- Chatterjee N. (2015) "Liberty as Recognition", Politics of Religious Freedom, University of Chicago Press.
2014
- Chatterjee N. (2014) Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772–1843, by Andrea Major, The Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History, volume 42, no. 3, pages 583-584, DOI:10.1080/03086534.2014.934012.
- Chatterjee N, Subramanian L. (2014) Law and the Spaces of Empire: Introduction to the Special Issue, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, volume 15, no. 1, DOI:10.1353/cch.2014.0012. [PDF]
- Chatterjee N. (2014) Hindu city and just empire: Banaras and India in Ali Ibrahim Khan's legal imagination, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, volume 15, no. 1, pages n/a-n/a, DOI:10.1353/cch.2014.0010.
- Chatterjee N. (2014) Reflections on Religious Difference and Permissive Inclusion in Mughal Law, Journal of Law and Religion, volume 29, no. 3, pages 393-415, DOI:10.1017/jlr.2014.20.
2013
- Chatterjee N. (2013) Review of Scottish Orientalists and India: The Muir Brothers, Religion, Education and Empire, by Avril A. Powell, Canadian Journal of History, volume 48, no. 2, pages 403-403.
- Chatterjee N. (2013) Images of Islam: a murder in colonial Calcutta, Journal of Comparative Law, volume 7, no. 2, pages 78-95.
2012
- Chatterjee N. (2012) Review of Mithi Mukherjee. India in the Shadows of Empire: A Legal and Political History 1774–1950. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press. 2011, American Historical Review, volume 117, no. 3, pages 837-838.
- Chatterjee N. (2012) Muslim or Christian? Family quarrels and religious diagnosis in a colonial court, American Historical Review, volume 117, no. 4, pages 1101-1122, DOI:10.1093/ahr/117.4.1101.
2011
- Chatterjee N. (2011) The Making of Indian Secularism: Empire, Law and Christianity, 1830-1960, Palgrave Macmillan.
2010
- Chatterjee N. (2010) English law, Brahmo marriage, and the problem of religious difference: Civil marriage laws in Britain and India, Comparative Studies in Society and History, volume 52, no. 3, pages 524-552, DOI:10.1017/S0010417510000290.
- Chatterjee N. (2010) Religious change, social conflict and legal competition: The emergence of Christian personal law in colonial India, Modern Asian Studies, volume 44, no. 6, pages 1147-1195, DOI:10.1017/S0026749X09990394.
External impact and engagement
In 2013-14, I led a panel of scholars for curating a temporary public exhibition on empire, law and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, for the UK Supreme Court. The exhibition was hosted in the UK Supreme Court July-September 2014, and was visited by approximately 26,000 people. The exhibition was associated with a number of lectures and other public-oriented actvities. See: A Court at the Crossroads of Empire.
Contribution to discipline
I am one of the editors of English Historical Review
Member, AHRC Peer Review College
I was one of the judges for the Jane Burbank essay prize of the American Society for Legal History, 2023
I was one of the judges for the inaugural book prize awarded by the British Association for South Asian Studies, 2022
Media
I was honoured to deliver the inaugural Rex Nettleford lecture on 'Colonialism and its legacies' at Oriel College, Oxford, on 20 May 2022. You can watch a recording here.
In January 2022, I discussed my book Negotiating Mughal Law in an interview and podcast hosted by the Bangalore International Centre.
In 2021, I discussed household archives as sources of Mughal history in a talk hosted by Aligarh Society for History and Archaeology and Ganga Jamuni.
Teaching
Modules taught
- HIH1420 - Understanding the Modern World
- HIH2236 - Post-Colonial South Asia
- HIH3298 - Law, Politics and Society across the British Empire, 1750-1960: Sources
- HIH3299 - Law, Politics and Society across the British Empire, 1750-1960: Context
- HISM482 - Empire and Globalisation
Biography
I studied in universities in India, The Netherlands and the UK. I took my first degree in History from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India; then I studied in what I still consider to be the best university in the world: Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. My PhD in history was from Cambridge, with a brief interlude at the University of Amsterdam, where I tried to become an anthropologist, and failed.