Humanities and Languages

Professor Murari Jha studied early modern history at the Institute of History, Leiden University. He has developed expertise in working with the archival sources of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He has held research positions at Harvard University and the Department of History, National University of Singapore.

Murari is interested in understanding early modern economic, political and institutional change through environmental history. He has recently completed a book project. It is currently under consideration for publication. Murari is conceptualising his next book project on the comparative study of river deltas in the Indian Ocean region between 1500 and 1900. 

• “L’économie des objets d’art dans l’empire moghol,” in Les Arts Moghols, eds. Corinne Lefévre et Jean-Baptiste Clais (Paris: Citadelles & Mazenod, 2024).
• “Ideas of Peace and Practice of Peacemaking in Pre-Modern South Asia,” in Handbook of Peace in Early Modern Europe, eds. Irene Dingel et al. (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2021).
• “In Pursuit of Knowledge from Asia: François Valentijn on the Hindu Social Divisions in the Coromandel Region, c. Seventeenth–Eighteenth Century,” in Imagining Asia(s): Networks, Actors, Sites, eds. Andrea Acri et al. (Singapore: ISEAS, 2019).
• “South Asia, 1400-1800: The Mughal Empire and the Turco-Persianate Imperial Tradition in the Indian Subcontinent,” in Empire in Asia: A New Global History, eds. Brain P. Farrell and Jack Fairey (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).
• “Migration, Settlement, and State Formation in the Ganga Plain: A historical geographic perspective,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57:4 (2014). 
• “The Rhythms of the Economy and Navigation along the Ganga River,” in The Sea, Identity and History: From the Bay of Bengal to the South China Sea, eds. Satish Chandra and Himanshu Prabha Ray (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2013).
• (Co-edited) Imagining Asia(s): Networks, Actors, Sites (Singapore: ISEAS-Publishing, 2019).

Murari teaches courses on early modern empires, rivers, deltas, the Indian Ocean, the Silk Road, environmental history, and the history of economic and institutional change.  

• Commodity Frontiers Journal on the editorial board, section editor (2022 – present).
• “The Political Economy of the Ganga River: Highway of State Formation in Mughal India, c.1600–1800” was short-listed for the best prize in the early modern section of the World Economic History Congress, Kyoto.
•  “The Political Economy of the Ganga River: Highway of State Formation in Mughal India, c.1600–1800” was long-listed at International Convention of Asia Scholars, Adelaide.