Inda eaton biography examples

India has suffered much from stereotyping, particularly at the hands of Western historians. It has been dismissed as being almost stagnant until Western encroachments somehow woke it up, and it’s been regarded as isolated from surrounding territories, somehow evolving on its own first as “a self-generated Hindu and Sanskritic civilization”, as Richard M Eaton puts it in this new book. From 1000 to 1800 CE historical convention labels this time-span “the Muslim period”, although the inhabitants of India habitually referred to their conquerors not as Muslims but “Turks”, an ethnographical term rather than a religious one. Eaton notes that in the case of Central and South America, historians usually refer to the “Spanish” (or Portuguese) conquest, rather than the “Christian” conquest, and he rightly wonders why this should be the case, since forced conversion of native populations was almost as important as gold and silver.

India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765, an ambitious, magisterial and monumental book, written in accessible language and thoroughly-grounded in the latest research, seeks to provide not just a survey of the period, but a re-evaluation of it from the point of view of an historian who does not accept the conventional wisdom and finds what Eaton calls the sometimes mistaken “hidden assumptions” behind views of India during this fascinating and exciting period. Of particular interest to interested readers, specialists and non-specialists, is Eaton’s relation and analysis of medieval (pre-Mughal) Indian history.

Rather than the Hindu-Muslim competition in which this period is usually contextualized, Eaton instead posits interaction between  two “transregional” worlds, a “Sanskrit” world and a “Persianate” one. The Sanskrit world was not centered in any one place, nor did it spread through conquest, as Islam and Christianity were to do in later centuries. A large number of people—particularly in Southeast Asia—simply decided, for one reason or ano

Praise for India in the Persianate Age

British merchant and politician c. 1590–1658

Theophilus Eaton (c. 1590—January 7, 1658) was a wealthy New EnglandPuritan merchant, diplomat and financier, who took part in organizing and financing the Great Puritan Migration to America. He was a founder of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and a founder and eventual governor of New Haven Colony. He also cofounded Boston, Massachusetts, Greenwich, Connecticut and Eaton's Neck in New York.

His brother, Nathaniel Eaton, became the first headmaster of Harvard college, building Harvard Yard and Harvard Library, and his son, Samuel Eaton, became one of the seven founders of the Harvard Corporation.

Early life and first marriage

He was born at Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire, England about 1590, to Rev. Richard Eaton and his wife, Elizabeth. His father was a graduate of the University of Oxford in 1599, at Lincoln College, and may have been the curate at that time. He later became in 1607 Prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral and Vicar of Great Budworth, Cheshire. Theophilus married Grace Hiller, and had two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth Eaton, who died young. Grace Hiller died in 1626.

Second marriage and children

See also: Yale (surname)

In 1627 he remarried, this time to a widow, Anne Yale, who was the daughter of George Lloyd, the Bishop of Ches