Murari K. Jha

Murari Kumar Jha (b. 1977, Kahua, Bihar, India) is an Indian historian and researcher applying an interdisciplinary approach, including environmental factors, to explain historical change in global history and particularly in the Indian Ocean area.

With a BA in history at Bhagalpur University (Bihar, India), and higher studies in medieval history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Leiden University, The Netherlands, from 1999 to 2012, leading to his Phd thesis The Political
Economy of the Ganga River: Highway of State Formation in Mughal India, c.1600 – 1800 (Leiden University, 2013), Dr. Murari Jha completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of History, National University of Singapore, becoming Assistant-Professor at Nalanda University (Rajgir, India) and at the School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, (Gujarat, India), where he specialized in early modern (c. 1500 – 1800) South Asian history.

His latest research has focused on the commercial integration of eastern India (Ganga River) with the Indian Ocean global economy and its implications for the Mughal Empire, in particular the intersection of environment and economy during the so-called Little Ice Age (c. 1400 – 1850), for which he joined the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University.

Publications

“The Mughal state and the merchant groups at Surat in the 17th century: hostility and mutual adjustment.” Indica 41,2, 2004 : 151 – 164.
“The Mughals, merchants and the European Companies in the 17th century Surat.” Asia Europe Journal 3,2, 2005 : 269 – 283.
“Review of: M. N. Pearson, The Indian Ocean, London 2003”. Asia Europe Journal 4,4, 2006: 625 – 628.
“The social world of Gujarati merchants and their Indian Ocean networks in the seventeenth century”, in The South Asian Diaspora: Transnational Networks and Changing Identities, Rajesh Rai & Peter Reeves eds., London/New York, Routledge, 2008: 28 — 44.
The political economy of the Ganga river: highway of state formation in Mughal India, c.1600 – 1800, PhD thesis Leiden University, 2013 [forthcoming as ebook].
“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 & Himanshu Prabha Ray, New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2013: 221 – 47.
“Migration, Settlement, and State Formation in the Ganga Plain: A historical geographic perspective,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 2014: 57:4.
Steamboats on the Indus: The Limits of Western Technological Superiority in South Asia, by Clive Dewey: New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2014, xvii+ 296 pp.(including maps, figures, 59 coloured and black and white plates, appendix and glossary), Rs2, 395 (hardback), ISBN 9780198092193}, author= {Jha, Murari}, year= {2016}, publisher= {Taylor \& Francis}}
“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.
(co-ed. with Andrea Acri, Kashshaf Ghani, and Sraman Mukherjeeited) Imagining Asia(s): Networks, Actors, Sites, Singapore: ISEAS-Publishing, 2019, 438 p.
“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, 2019.
“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 FR] “L’économie des objets d’art dans l’empire moghol,” in Les Arts Moghols, eds. Corinne Lefévre & Jean-Baptiste Clais, Paris, Citadelles & Mazenod, 2024.
“Sugar in eastern India: Commercial agriculture and the Indian Ocean trade, c. 1600 – 1800”, The Indian Economic and Social History Review (IESHR) 12, 2025.
[forthcoming] The Ganga River and Mughal India: Economy, Environment and Empire, c. 1500 – 1800, Cambridge University Press, 2026.