India and the Silk Roads with Jagjeet Lally

India's caravan trade with Central Asia was at the heart of the complex web of routes making up the Silk Roads. But what was the fate of these overland connections in the ages of sail and steam?

India and the Silk Roads by Jagjeet Lally, Professor at University College London, is a global history of a continental interior, the first to comprehensively examine the textual and material traces of caravan trade in the 'age of empires'. By showing how no single ruler could control the nebulous yet durable networks of this trading world, which had its own internal dynamics even as it evolved in step with global transformations, the book forces us to rethink the history of globalisation and re-evaluate our fixation with empires and states as the building blocks of historical analysis.

Catch author Jagjeet Lally LIVE on LHI Circle as he takes us on a journey into the past through the Silk Roads. Jagjeet Lally is a Lecturer in the History of Early Modern and Modern India at University College London, where he is also Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of South Asia and the Indian Ocean World. He is also interested in the work of museums and public institutions in narrating South Asian history through their collections, having organised a conference on this theme in 2018 at the British Museum.

Here's the recording of the LIVE session that took place on 11th August 2021-