Christopher Alan Bayly, an eminent historian and teacher, whose work on colonial and post-colonial India has made a lasting imprint on the way India’s past has been understood, died in Chicago on April 20 of a heart attack.
Tributes have poured in for the scholar from friends, associates and students on hearing of his sudden death. Professor Bayly was Vere Harmsworth Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge, Professor of History, Queen Mary University of London and Vivekananda Professor, University of Chicago, 2014-15.
Much of Professor Bayly’s work was on 18th and 19th century India and on the transformation that colonialism wrought on pre-modern societies and structures. He argued that Indian society, particularly its local structures, institutions and networks, had far greater resilience and dynamism in withstanding the onslaught of British colonialism than what existing scholarship held was the case.
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His early books — like
Professor Bayly’s interests included intellectual history and the history of ideas, which he explored on a global canvas in his book The Birth of the Modern World: Global Connections and Comparisons 1780-1914 (2004). In it he established the often unseen interconnectedness of events and crises taking place in different theatres of the world, from the late 18th century through to the start of the First World War.
Knighted in 2007ADVERTISEMENT
Professor Bayly was knighted in 2007 for his contribution to historical scholarship.
Paying tribute to his colleague as one among “the leading British historians of his generation,” David Washbrook, a historian of modern India and presently Research Professor in South Asian History, Trinity College, Cambridge said: “Sir Bayly pioneered a broad ranging transformation away from narrow concern with the politics of colonialism and nationalism and onto the deeper analysis of South Asian society and culture in the longue duree .”