Originally planned as a festschrift for Dharma Kumar, this collection of outstanding essays has recently appeared as a special issue of IESHR. The essays represent a diversity of views and methods, all of which are brought to bear on issues concerning various aspects of the economy, society and culture of colonial India.

Particular topics focused on include the agrarian history of South India, common lands in western India, the nexus between trade and production, the textile trade in twentieth-century South India, the nature of collaboration and conflict between the Dutch East India Company and private Portuguese traders in the Indian Ocean, adventurers who accompanied and participated in the colonial transition in South India and the rise of the "coffee house" in colonial Tamil Nadu.

In the Introduction Sanjay Subrahmanyam attempts to carry out the difficult exercise of "making sense of indian historiography". For the book version, the editor has expanded on this Introduction, and he has also added two more essays: Ravi Ahuja's 'State Formation and "Famine Policy" in Early Colonial India', and Thomas Trautmann's 'Dr Johnson and the Pandits: Imaging the Perfect Dictionary in Colonial Madras'.