Tapan Raychaudhuri

Tapan Raychaudhuri is an Indian historian specialising in British Indian history, Indian economic history and the History of Bengal.

Biography

He is the second son of Amiya Kumar Raychaudhuri, former zamindar of Kirtipasha in Barisal, a district of East Bengal, currently known as Bangladesh.Tapan Raychaudhuri, "Romanthan Athoba Bhimrotiprapter Paracharitcharcha" (Calcutta, 1992)] He is a nephew of the prominent Congress politician, Kiran Shankar Ray, who was a Home Minister of West Bengal after independence. He is also a nephew of the distinguished historian Hem Chandra Raychaudhuri, who became the Vice Chancellor of Patna University.

Education

He studied at Scottish Church College, Calcutta (for his Intermediate in Arts), and at the Presidency College, Calcutta for his BA and MA degrees, in which he was awarded first class second. He received his PhD in History firstly from the University of Calcutta under the supervision of the eminent historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar, and then his D.Phil from Balliol College, Oxford under the supervision of Dr. C. C. Davies. He was conferred the Doctor of Letters "honoris causa" by the University of Oxford, University of Calcutta and University of Burdwan. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honour bestowed by the Indian government.

Positions

In his illustrious career he has held several very important academic posts: he started his career, before leaving for Oxford, as a Lecturer in the Department of Islamic History and Culture, Calcutta University. After his return to India, he was appointed as the Deputy and Acting Director of the National Archives of India, New Delhi. He became Reader and Professor of History at University of Delhi. Later, he was Professor of Economic History and Director at the Delhi School of Economics under Delhi University, at a time when his colleagues in the Delhi School included Amartya Sen, Manmohan Singh, Sukhomoy Chakravarty, Jagdish Bhagwati and Mrinal Datta Chaudhuri. He was also First-Editor of Indian Social and Economic History Review a leading Indian history journal which has its head office in Delhi. He became Reader and then Ad Hominem Professor of Indian History and Civilisation and Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he has supervised generations of Indian history students. Presently he is Emeritus Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford and was until recently the Editor-in-Chief of "Autumn Annual", the scholarly journal published by the Alumni Association of Presidency College, Calcutta.

He has been a Guest Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, Collegio de Maxico, Ecole Pratique de Hautes Etudes, University of Sydney and University of Perth and a Visiting Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Awards

*Watumull Prize awarded by the American Historical Association, 1982. (jointly with Irfan Habib) for the "Cambridge Economic History of India". [cite web | title = AHA Award Recipients:Discontinued Prizes | publisher = American Historical Association | accessdate = 2007-07-28 | url = http://www.historians.org/prizes/AWARDED/DefunctWinner.htm]
*He was awarded the Padma Bhushan - India's third highest civilian honour in 2007 in recognition to his contributions to history. [cite news | title = Padma Vibhushan for Bhagwati, V. Krishnamurthy | publisher = The Hindu | date = January 27, 2007 |page = 1 | url = http://www.hindu.com/2007/01/27/stories/2007012705931300.htm]

Publications

*"Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities: Essays on India's Colonial and Post-colonial Experiences" (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), [cite web | url = http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780195678949 | publisher = Oxford University Press | title = UK General Catalogue]
*"The Cambridge Economic History of India", Vol. I, (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2004), (jointly edited with Irfan Habib),
*"Romanthan Athoba Bhimrotiprapter Paracharitcharcha", (Calcutta: Ananda Publishers, 1992) (in Bengali)
*"Europe Reconsidered: Perception of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal", (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988) [Indian Economic & Social History Review, Vol. 27, No. 3, 370-372 (1990)DOI: 10.1177/001946469002700314 [http://ier.sagepub.com/cgi/content/citation/27/3/370] ]
*"Bengal Under Akbar & Jahangir: An Introductory Study in Social History", (1969), [cite web | url = http://www.coronetbooks.com/books/b/beng3566.html | publisher = Coronet Books | title = Bengal Under Akbar & Jahangir]
*"Jan Company in Coromandel", (Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), [Walter C. Neale, "The Journal of Asian Studies", Vol. 23, No. 2 (Feb., 1964), pp. 318-320. doi:10.2307/2050166]

References

External links

* [http://www.victoriamemorial-cal.org/prof_trc.html Tapan Raychaudhuri Profile]