Pratyay Nath - Ashoka University

Pratyay Nath

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Pratyay Nath

Associate Professor of History, Ashoka University

Ph.D. Jawaharlal Nehru University
https://ashokauniversity.academia.edu/PNath pratyay.nath@ashoka.edu.in

Pratyay Nath is Associate Professor of History, Ashoka University. He is a historian of early modern South Asia, with a focus on the Mughal Empire. His research lies at the crossroads of environmental history, military history, imperial history, animal history, and the history of kingship. He is the author of Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India (Oxford University Press, 2019). He is the guest editor of a special issue of the Journal of Early Modern History (2025), titled ‘Environment and Empire in the Early Modern World’. He is the co-editor of the books The Coveted Mount: The Horse in South Asian History (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2026) and The Early Modern in South Asia: Querying Modernity, Periodization, and History (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

His latest publications include ‘The Multispecies Empire of the Mughals’, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (2025) and ‘Strategies of the Mughal Empire’, in The Cambridge History of the Practice of Strategy, edited by Beatrice Heuser and Isabelle Duyvesteyn (Cambridge University Press, 2025), 384-402. He is one of the editors of The Medieval History Journal.

He also writes regularly in the vernacular. The first two of his six-parts monograph series in Bangla on war, culture, and society in world history, titled যুদ্ধ এবং [War and], is forthcoming in 2026 from Pratikshan Publications, Kolkata. These parts are যুদ্ধ এবং লিঙ্গসত্তা [War and Gender] and যুদ্ধ এবং মতাদর্শ [War and Ideology]. His edited book আদি-আধুনিকতাঃ ভারতীয় ইতিহাসের নতুন প্রসঙ্গ [Early Modernity: A New Topic of Indian History] is under editorial review in press. He has co-edited with Kaustubh Mani Sengupta ইতিহাসের বিতর্ক, বিতর্কের ইতিহাসঃ অতীতের ভারত ও আজকের গবেষণা [Debates of History, History of Debates: Past India and Present Research] (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 2022) and published academic essays in journals and edited volumes in Bangla.

Nath is currently writing his second monograph, which analyses the military campaigns during the reign of the third Mughal emperor Akbar, and their roles in the production of his kingship and empire. His other ongoing book-length projects include co-editing (with Kaustubh Mani Sengupta) a volume on recent methodological shifts and innovations in South Asian historiography (under contract with Routledge) and editing a volume in Bangla on the history of early modern South Asia for Ananda Publishers.

At Ashoka University, Nath’s courses focus on the history of empires and warfare in South Asia, and global histories of environment, warfare, and empire. Before joining Ashoka University in 2016, he taught medieval and early modern history at Miranda House, University of Delhi. He earned his MPhil and PhD in History from Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Prior to this, he completed his MA in History from University of Calcutta, and BA in History from Presidency College, Calcutta. He is the recipient of DAAD-funded ‘Short-Term Guest Professorship’ (2022) and DAAD-funded ‘A New Passage to India III’ fellowship (2013-14), both to Georg-August Universität, Göttingen, Germany.

Monographs

  • Nath, Pratyay. যুদ্ধ এবং লিঙ্গসত্তা [War and Gender] and যুদ্ধ এবং মতাদর্শ [War and Ideology] as the first 2 parts of a 6-parts series titled যুদ্ধ এবং [War and] (Kolkata: Pratikshan Publications, forthcoming in 2026).
  • Nath, Pratyay. Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019).

Journal Special Issue

Edited Volumes

Journal Articles

  • Nath, Pratyay. 2025. ‘Nonhuman Animals and the Transformation of the Mughal Empire under Akbar’, Journal of Early Modern History, Special Issue: ‘Environment and Empire in the Early Modern World’, vol. 29. nos. 5-6, 411-433. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-bja10108
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2025. ‘Introduction: Environment, Empire, and Early Modernity: Histories of Co-Constitution’, Journal of Early Modern History, Special Issue: ‘Environment and Empire in the Early Modern World’, vol. 29. nos. 5-6, 377–389. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-bja10112
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2025. ‘The Multispecies Empire of the Mughals’, Forum on Multispecies History, East Asian Science, Technology, and Society. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2025.2536926
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2023. ‘Pilgrimage, Performance, and Peripatetic Kingship: Akbar’s Journeys to Ajmer and the Making of the Mughal Empire’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 33, no. 2, 271-296. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186322000153
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2022. ‘War and the Non-Elite: Towards a People’s History of the Mughal Empire’, The Medieval History Journal 25, no. 1, 127-158. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0971945820961695
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2022. ‘Looking beyond the Military Revolution: Variations in Early Modern Warfare and the Mughal Case’, The Journal of Military History 86, no. 1, 9-31.
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2022. ‘What is Military Labour? War, Logistics, and the Mughals in Early Modern South Asia’, War in History 28, no. 4, 736-754.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0968344520918615
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2018. ‘Through the Lens of War: Akbar’s Sieges (1567-69) and Mughal Empire-Building in Early Modern North India’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 41, no. 2, 245-258. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2018.1430467

Book Chapters

  • Nath, Pratyay. Forthcoming. ‘War and Environment in the Mughal Empire’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Mughal World, edited by Richard M Eaton and Ramya Sreenivasan (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
  • Nath. Pratyay. Forthcoming. ‘Mughal Empire and the Natural Environment’, in Cambridge History of Modern India (2nd edition), edited by Prasannan Parthasarathi, Mrinalini Sinha and David Gilmartin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
  • Nath, Pratyay. Forthcoming. ‘Ecologies of War in the Mughal Empire’, in Oxford Handbook of Warfare in Asia, edited by Dennis Showalter and Kaushik Roy (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
  • Nath, Pratyay. Forthcoming. ‘The Pony Predicament: Equestrian Economy and Imperial Culture in the Mughal Empire’ in The Coveted Mount: The Horse in South Asian History, eds. Ranabir Chakravarti and Pratyay Nath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
  • Nath, Pratyay. Forthcoming. ‘The Making of the Northwestern Frontier of the Mughal Empire’, in The Baburid (Mughal) Empire: New Sources, New Approaches (Leiden: Brill).
  • Nath, Pratyay. Forthcoming. ‘Logistics of War in the Mughal Empire,’ in Routledge Companion on Logistics and Warfarein Southern Asia from the Ancient Period to the British Era, edited by Kaushik Roy (London and New York: Routledge).
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2025. ‘Not ‘A Rabble of Half-Armed Men’: Mughal Infantry in Early Modern South Asia’, in A Global History of Infantry, edited by Jeremy Black (Roma: Societa Italiana di Storia Militare), 275-306.
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2025. Strategies of the Mughal Empire’, in The Cambridge History of the Practice of Strategy, edited by Beatrice Heuser and Isabelle Duyvesteyn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2024. ‘War, Strategy, and Environment on South Asia’s Northwestern Frontier, 1000-1800’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), The Practice of Strategy: A Global History (Roma: Societa Italiana di Storia Militare), 229-262.
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2023. ‘Change and Continuity in Warfare: Military Early Modernity in South Asia’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), Global Military Transformations: Change and Continuity, 1450-1800 (Roma: Societa Italiana di Storia Militare), 481-506.
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2022. ‘Was Mughal Warfare ‘Early Modern’?’, in The Early Modern in South Asian History: Querying Modernity, Periodization, and History, edited by Pratyay Nath and Meena Bhargava (New Delhi, Cambridge University Press), 224-246.
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2020. ‘‘The Wrath of God’: Legitimisation and Limits of Mughal Military Violence in Early Modern South Asia’, in A Global History of Violence in the Early Modern World, edited by Peter Wilson, Erica Charters, and Marie Houllemare (Manchester, Manchester University Press), 161-176.
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2019. ‘Narratives of Akbar’s Sieges and the Construction of Mughal Universal Sovereignty’, in The World of the Siege: Representations of Early Modern Positional Warfare, edited by Jamel Ostwald and Anke Fischer-Katner (Leiden, Brill), 175-204.
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2016. ‘Warfare in Early Modern South Asia, c. 1520 – c. 1740’, in The Indian Ocean in the Making of Early Modern India, edited by Pius Malekandathil (London and New York, Routledge), 175-212.
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2015. ‘Battles, Boats and Bridges: Modalities of Mughal Amphibious Warfare, 1571-1612’, in Chinese and Indian Warfare: From Classical Age to 1870, edited by Peter Lorge and Kaushik Roy (London and New York, Routledge), 146-165.
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2014. ‘Building an Empire: Military Infrastructure and the Career of Muhammad Qasim Khan in Mughal North India’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 75th Session (Delhi,), 270-274.
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2012. ‘Rethinking Early Mughal Warfare: Babur’s Pitched Battles, 1499-1529’, in Warfare, Religion, and Society in Indian History, edited by Raziuddin Aquil and Kaushik Roy (New Delhi, Manohar), 109-145.
  • Nath, Pratyay. 2011. ‘Siege Warfare in Mughal India, 1519-1538’, in Warfare and Politics in South Asia from Ancient to Modern Times, edited by Kaushik Roy (New Delhi, Manohar), 121-144.

Media Pieces

Book Chapters and Articles in the Vernacular

  • নাথ, প্রত্যয়। ২০২৫। ‘কালবিভাজনের রাজনীতিঃ বাংলা সাহিত্যের ইতিহাসে মধ্যযুগ আর আধুনিকতার প্রসঙ্গ [Politics of Periodization: The Medieval and the Modern in the Histories of Bangla Literature]’, বাংলা বিভাগীয় পত্রিকা (২০২৩-২০২৪), যাদবপুর বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়, ৫২-৭৬।
  • নাথ, প্রত্যয়। ২০২৫। ‘বাংলা বিজয়ের হাঙ্গামাঃ মুঘল যুদ্ধ ও প্রাকৃতিক পরিবেশ [The Troubles of Conquering Bengal: Mughal Warfare and the Natural Environment]’, মধুশ্রী বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায় (সম্পাদিত), বঙ্গ ইতিহাস প্রবাহ (কলকাতাঃ সেতু প্রকাশনী), ১৬৯-১৮৫।
  • নাথ, প্রত্যয়। ২০২৩। ‘মধ্যযুগীয় ভাবনাঃ বিশ্বের ইতিহাসচর্চায় অন্ধকার যুগের ধারণা [Medieval Thoughts: The Idea of the Dark Age in Global Historiography]’, নিষ্পলক  ৫, ২-৩,  ১০৩-১১৯।
  • নাথ, প্রত্যয়। ২০২২। ‘‘লেভায়াথান না কাগুজে বাঘ?’ মুঘল রাষ্ট্রের চরিত্র [‘Leviathan or Paper Tiger?’: Nature of the Mughal State]’, প্রত্যয় নাথ ও কৌস্তুভমণি সেনগুপ্ত (সম্পাদিত) ইতিহাসের বিতর্ক, বিতর্কের ইতিহাসঃ অতীতের ভারত ও আজকের গবেষণা (কলকাতাঃ আনন্দ পাবলিশার্স), ১৫৬-১৮৮।
  • নাথ, প্রত্যয়। ২০২১। ‘সাম্রাজ্য ও পরিবেশঃ মুঘল ইতিহাসের পুনর্পাঠ [Empire and Environment: Re-Reading Mughal History]’, ইতিকথা ৯, ১, ১৫৩-১৮৫।

Media Pieces in the Vernacular

  • নাথ, প্রত্যয়। ২০২৪। ‘ধর্ষণ, পুরুষতন্ত্র, ও লিঙ্গসাম্যের লড়াই [Rape, Patriarchy, and the Fight for Gender Equality]’, নিষ্পলক (জুন), ১৮৫-১৯১।
  • নাথ, প্রত্যয়। ২০২৪।  ‘কার দখলে রাতের শহর [Who Controls the Urban Night?]’, আনন্দবাজার পত্রিকা, ২২শে আগস্ট।
  • নাথ, প্রত্যয়। ২০২২। ‘মূর্তি’মান ইতিহাস’ [Statues in History], ডাকবাংলা, ৯ই ডিসেম্বর।
  • নাথ, প্রত্যয়। ২০২২। ‘যুদ্ধ-যুদ্ধ খেলা’ [Playing War], ডাকবাংলা, ২৯শে জানুয়ারি।
  • নাথ, প্রত্যয়। ২০২১। ‘পিতৃতন্ত্রের হিংসাঃ যুদ্ধ, ধর্ষণ, নারী [Violence of Patriarchy: War, Rape, Women]’, বামা ১, ৮।

Book Reviews

  • Nath, Pratyay. Review of Sumit Guha, History and Collective Memory in South Asia (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019), The American Historical Review 127, no. 4 (2022): 1969-1970.
  • Nath, Pratyay. ‘Military History Meets Labour History’. Review of Radhika Singha, The Coolie’s Great War: Indian Labour in a Global Conflict 1914-1921 (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2020), Economic and Political Weekly 56, no. 29 (2021): 32-34.
  • Nath, Pratyay. Review of Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman and Mughal Empires: Social History in the Early Modern World (London and New York: IB Tauris, 2019), Medieval History Journal 23, no. 1 (2020): 170-174.
  • Nath, Pratyay. Review of Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, Fathpur Sikri Revisited (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013), South Asian History and Culture 5, no. 3 (2013): 389-393.

Pratyay Nath is currently writing

  1. his second monograph tentatively titled War and the Region: Military Campaigns in the Making of the Mughal Empire. It explores Mughal warfare vis-a-vis issues of techniques, geopolitics, logistics, and kingship. Using a comparative historical framework, it situates these South Asian processes vis-a-vis the global military and imperial tendencies of the sixteenth century.
  2. a chapter on the dynamics and diversity of military labour in South Asia between 1000 and 1800 for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Military History.
  3. a chapter on the everyday of Mughal military campaigns for a journal special issue titled ‘Everyday Life in Mughal India’.

Pratyay Nath is interested in supervising research on the following fields:

  • the Mughal Empire
  • state, kingship, political culture, warfare, or empire in medieval and early modern South Asia
  • medieval and early modern Bengal
  • history of music in India

Interested students are welcome to get in touch with him directly at pratyay.nath@ashoka.edu.in.

Ongoing and past supervision:

PhD Thesis:

  1. Nandita Goswami, ‘Heavenly Lords: Ahom Kingship and Political Culture in Early Modern Assam’ (2020-present)
  2. Akansha Singh, ‘Afghans in North India, 1556-1773: Political Culture, Identity, and State-Formation’ (2020-present)
  3. Karil Soral, ‘Body, Service, and Social Change: The Jyeshthimallas of Western India, c. 1674-1797’ (2021-present)
  4. Bidisha Sengupta, ‘Mughal Political Culture in Early Modern Bengal’ (2021-present)
  5. Mariyam Siddiqui, ‘Abdur Rahim Khan-i Khanan: The Life of a Mughal Noble’ (2022-present)

UG Thesis:

  1. Nithika Bopanna, ‘Interspecies and Ecological Interactions in the Seventeenth-Century Chronicle Tarikh-i Firishta’ (2025)
  2. Akshaj Awasthi, ‘Power as Patronage: Imperial Art and Architecture under the Mughals and the Ottomans’ (2020)
  3. Raghu Malhotra, ‘The Making of a Mughal: Ideas of Kingship and Authority’ (2017)
  4. Sadaf Bandeali, ‘Religion, Politics, and Conversion to Islam in the Ottoman Empire and Early Modern North India’ (2017)
  5. Aastha Singh, ‘The Emperor’s Voice: Babur’s Imperial Self-Identity through the Lens of Baburnama’ (2017)

MLS Thesis:

  1. Shabdita Tiwari, ‘Uncovering an Early Modern Selfhood: A Study of Banarasidas’s Ardhakathanak and Jahanara Begam’s Risala-i Sahibiya‘ (2023-2024)
  2. Anuraag Khaund, ‘Zamindars and the Formation of the Mughal Empire’ (2019-2020)

Capstone Thesis:

  1. Anushka Singh, ‘Travel and Cultural Encounter in Early Modern South Asia’ (2022-23)
  2. Shigraf Haque, ‘Non-Agrarian Communities in Sedentary South Asia, 1000-1850: The Case of the Ghakkars’ (2021-22)
  3. Tanveer Malik, ‘Nature of Mughal Kingship under Aurangzeb’ (2021-22)
  4. Raghu Malhotra, ‘The Military Labour Market of North India, 1500-1800′ (2018-19)
  5. Sadaf Bandeali, ‘Clothing Mughal India’ (2018-19)
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