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, and the history of kingship. He is the co-editor (with Ranabir Chakravarti) of the forthcoming book The Coveted Mount: The Horse in South Asian History (Cambridge University Press). He is the author of Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India (Oxford University Press, 2019); with Meena Bhargava, the co-editor of The Early Modern in South Asia: Querying Modernity, Periodization, and History (Cambridge University Press, 2022). and with Kaustubh Mani Sengupta, the co-editor of ইতিহাসের বিতর্ক, বিতর্কের ইতিহাসঃ অতীতের ভারত ও আজকের গবেষণা [Debates of History, History of Debates: Past India and Present Research] (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 2022). His latest publications include ‘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 and ‘War, Strategy, and Environment on South Asia’s Northwestern Frontier, 1000-1800’, in The Practice of Strategy: A Global History, ed. Jeremy Black (Roma: Societa Italiana di Storia Militare, 2024), 229-262. He is one of the editors of The Medieval History Journal and of ইতিহাস প্রসঙ্গ [Itihash Proshongo], a history book-series in Bangla for Ananda Publishers, Calcutta.

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 ongoing projects include editing a journal special issue on ‘environment and empire in the early modern world’ for the Journal of Early Modern History; co-editing (with Ranabir Chakravarti) a volume on the history of the horse in South Asia (under contract with Cambridge University Press); 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.

Monograph

Journal Special Issue

  • Nath, Pratyay (ed.), ‘Environment and Empire in the Early Modern World’, Journal of Early Modern History (forthcoming in 2026).

Edited Volumes

Journal Articles

  • Nath, Pratyay. Forthcoming. ‘The Multispecies Empire of the Mughals’, Forum on Multispecies History, East Asian Science, Technology, and Society.
  • Nath, Pratyay. Forthcoming in 2026. ‘Nonhuman Animals and the Transformation of the Mughal Empire under Akbar’, Journal of Early Modern History.
  • 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. ‘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, যাদবপুর বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়।
  • 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 (সেতু প্রকাশনী)।
  • 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

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.

Monograph under Preparation

  • Nath, Pratyay. War and the Region: Military Campaigns in the Making of the Mughal Empire.
  1. Nath is currently writing his second monograph tentatively titledWar 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. He is writing a chapter on the comparative history of early modern imperial expansion into Central Eurasia for the Cambridge History of Colonialism and Decolonization.
  3. He is writing a chapter on military labour in South Asia between 1000 and 1800 for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Military History.
  4. He is writing an article on the idea of the global in the writing of military history for the ‘Global Military History Essay Forum’ of the Journal of Global History.
  5. He is writing an essay on the politics of representation of military labour in Mughal courtly paintings for an edited volume titled Military Labour History from the Early Modern Period to the Twentieth Century – Imagery and Visuality.
  6. He is writing a chapter on infantry warfare in South Asia between 1500 and 1800 for an edited volume titled History of Infantry and Infantry Warfare.

Spring 2025

  • History of India III: c. 1000-1764 (Gateway Course)
  • The World of War in South Asia, 1000-1800 (History Elective)

Monsoon 2024

  • Introduction to Mughal History (History Elective)
  • War in the Early Modern World (History Elective)

Spring 2024

  • History of India III: c. 1000-1764 (Gateway Course)
  • Kingship and Courtly Culture in the Early Modern World (History Elective)

Monsoon 2023

  • Design Histories (ISM)
  • Introduction to Mughal History (History Elective)
  • Texts and Power in the Early Modern World (History Elective)

Summer 2023

  • War: History, Politics, Society (History Elective)

Spring 2023

  • On sabbatical

Monsoon 2022

  • Making Space: History, Politics, Society (History Elective)
  • Introduction to Mughal History (History Elective)

Spring 2022

  • Negotiating Nature in the Early Modern World (History Elective)
  • The World of War in South Asia, 1000-1800 (History Elective)

Monsoon 2021:

  • War and Empire in the Early Modern World (History Elective)
  • Introduction to Mughal History (History Elective)

Summer 2021:

  • War, Politics, Society (History Elective)

Spring 2021:

  • Environment and Empire in the Early Modern World (History Elective)
  • The World of War in South Asia, 1000-1800 (History Elective)

Monsoon 2020:

  • War and Empire in the Early Modern World (History Elective)
  • Introduction to Mughal History (History Elective)

Spring 2020:

  • Environment and Empire in the Early Modern World (History Elective)
  • History of India III (Gateway Course)

Monsoon 2019:

  • The World of War in South Asia, 1000-1800 (History Elective)
  • Age of Empires: A Global History of Early Modern Imperialism (History Elective) 

Summer 2019:

  • War, Culture, Society (History Elective)

Spring 2019:

  • Introduction to Mughal History (History Elective)
  • History of India III (Gateway Course)
  • War and Empire in Central Eurasia, 1000-1700 (Independent Study Module)

Monsoon 2018:

  • War in the Early Modern World (History Elective)

Summer 2018:

  • Gender, War, History (History Elective)
  • War, State, and Society in Early Modern Europe (Independent Study Module)

Spring 2018:

  • Twentieth Century-Wars and the Politics of Representation (History Elective)
  • A Royal Performance: Kingship and Political Culture in South Asia, 1000-1700 (History Elective)
  • Space and Cartography in the Early Modern World (Independent Study Module)

Monsoon 2017:

  • Age of Empires: A Global History of Early Modern Imperialism (History Elective)
  • Medieval India (History Gateway Course)
  • War and Empire in Central Eurasia (Independent Study Module)

Summer 2017:

  • Trends in History (Foundation Course)

Spring 2017:

  • Introduction to Mughal History (History Elective)
  • War in History (Critical Thinking Seminar)

Monsoon 2016:

  • Trends in History (Foundation Course)
  • Medieval India (Gateway Course)
  • War, State, and Society in Early Modern Europe (Independent Study Module)

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

  • the Mughal Empire
  • state, kingship, political culture, warfare, and empire in medieval and early modern South Asia
  • medieval and early modern Bengal

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)

MLS Thesis:

  1. Shabdita Tiwari, ‘The Notion of Individuality in Banarasidas’s Ardhakathanak’ (2023-2024)
  2. Anuraag Khaund, ‘Zamindars and the Formation of the Mughal Empire’ (2019-2020)

ASP 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)

UG Thesis:

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