Richard J. Cohen

Bio: Richard J. Cohen is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Civilization & Honor. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 8 publications receiving 94 citations.

A Concise History of India

Abstract: The recovery of India's immense history owes much to Western and particularly British researches; yet attempts to compress it often concentrate on the brief Imperial period. This up-to-date survey treats the latter as merely the penuitimate chapter in a story that begins in the 3rd millennium BC with the Indus Valley civilization. The influx of pastoral nomads - first in a long series of invasions from the north established the Vedic religion, whose assimilation of popular cults and formalization in Sanskrit writing and social castes supplied the cohesion which subsequent events - the Moghul incursions, the British Empire, the rise of modern India - did little to change. The enduring distinctiveness of India, its often bewildering "diversity of unity", emerges as a product of geographical simplicity and great historical complexity.

The Adventures of Hir and Ranjha

Abstract: The Adventures of Hir and Ranjha, the immortal love story, is regarded as a classic of Punjabi literature. It speaks of the unbounded love that two souls have for each other, how they defy the taboos of their society, face the vicissitudes of fortune and yet remain true to each other. But they are also star-crossed lovers and ultimately united only in death. More than the story, it is the presentation of Waris that has immortalised the romance in the classical literature of India. The tragic love story of Hir and Ranjha has been a favourite theme with poets and writers for centuries. It was a well-known story that existed long before Waris Shah penned it down (around 1766) in the same way as the Faust legend existed long before Goethe.

Colonialism and Development: a Comparative Analysis of Spanish and British Colonies

Abstract: Recent research shows that colonialism reversed levels of development in much of the non‐European world. To explain this reversal, analysts focus on conditions within the colonized areas. By contrast, drawing on evidence from Spanish and British colonialism, the authors show that the economic models of the colonizing nations also affected the reversals of fortune. Mercantilist Spain tended to colonize most extensively precolonial regions that were populous and highly developed; in turn, extensive Spanish colonization had negative consequences for postcolonial development. In comparison, liberal Britain tended to colonize most extensively precolonial regions that were sparsely populated and underdeveloped; in turn, extensive British colonialism had comparatively positive effects. Thus, both Spain and Britain reversed the fortunes of precolonial regions, but in largely opposite ways.

Strange parallels : Southeast Asia in global context, c 800-1830

Abstract: Blending fine-grained case studies with overarching theory, this book seeks both to integrate Southeast Asia into world history and to rethink much of Eurasia's premodern past. It argues that Southeast Asia, Europe, Japan, China, and South Asia all embodied idiosyncratic versions of a Eurasian-wide pattern whereby local isolates cohered to form ever larger, more stable, more complex political and cultural systems. With accelerating force, climatic, commercial, and military stimuli joined to produce patterns of linear-cum-cyclic construction that became remarkably synchronized even between regions that had no contact with one another. Yet this study also distinguishes between two zones of integration, one where indigenous groups remained in control and a second where agency gravitated to external conquest elites. Here, then, is a fundamentally original view of Eurasia during a 1,000-year period that speaks to both historians of individual regions and those interested in global trends.

Climate, Race, and Imperial Authority: The Symbolic Landscape of the British Hill Station in India

Abstract: Nostalgia for home is quite natural among expatriates. The English country life recreated in the hill stations of India, however, was elaborated on by the greater prestige of an imperial people. This paper examines the hill station as a landscape type tied to nineteenth-century discourses of imperialism and climate. Both discourses serve as evidence of a belief in racial difference and, thereby, the imperial hill station reflected and reinforced a framework of meaning that influenced European views of the non-western world in general. Because the hill station was seen as a resource to be protected for use by the British ruler, the standards used in colonial settlement planning are framed in these discourses of privilege and difference. Primary attention is given to the high imperial age from 1870 to 1914 when construction activity was greatest. Ootacamund, the summer capital of the Madras presidency in southern India, serves as the case study for evaluating this landscape type.

Sufism and the 'Modern' in Islam

Abstract: The conference 'Sufism and the 'Modern' in Islam' was held in Bogor, Indonesia, on 4-6 September 2003 and was a collaborative effort of the ISIM, Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia) and the Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) of Jakarta's State Islamic University The aim of the conference was to explore current developments in Sufism and related movements over the globe

One hundred first critical bibliography of the history of science and its cultural influences (to January 1976).

Abstract: The present Critical Bibliography,* whiclh includes 2622 citations, is the twenty-second to be classified according to the system established in 1953. Thte main purpose of the classification has always beeni in the words of its founder, George Sarton, \"to satisfy the needs of historians of science in general rathier tthan those of historians of particular sciences\". While the classification is both chronological and by subject, preference is given to the former. The reader who wishes to find all references to a particular subject, therefore, must examine several sections of the bibliography.