Dr Sood usually teaches the following courses in the Department:

At the undergraduate level:

HY243: Islamic Empires, 1400-1800

At postgraduate level:

HY478: Genesis of the Modern World: Europe, China and India, 1550-1840 

Dr Sood’s previous project was about everyday connexions spanning the Middle East and South Asia in the eighteenth century. It sought to recapture a vanished and forgotten regional world at a pivotal moment in its history. The findings, which culminated in India and the Islamic Heartlands (Cambridge University Press, 2016), reframe our understanding of that regional world, and offer new answers to old questions concerning early modern Eurasia and the transition to colonialism. Building on this work, Dr Sood’s current project is about sovereign governance in the Mughal and Ottoman worlds over the seventeenth century. Early results have appeared in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (2020) and Modern Asian Studies (2022).

His main publications include:

• ‘A Political Sociology of Empire: Mughal Historians on the Making of Mughal Paramountcy’, Modern Asian Studies 56:4 (2022), 1253-1294
• (with Ewout Frankema and Heidi Tworek), ‘Editors’ note - Global history after the Great Divergence’, Journal of Global History 16:1 (2021), 1-3
• ‘Knowledge of the Art of Governance: The Mughal and Ottoman Empires in the Early Seventeenth Century’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 30:2 (2020), 253-282.
• ‘Through a Persian Looking Glass: Malabar’s World in the Middle of the Eighteenth Century’, in Michael N. Pearson & Mahmood Kooria (eds), Malabar in the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism in a Maritime Historical Region (Oxford University Press, 2018), 201-231.
• ‘A World Revealed’, History Today 68:2 (February 2018), 58-69
• India and the Islamic Heartlands: An Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)
• ‘Sovereign Justice in Precolonial Maritime Asia: The Case of the Mayor’s Court of Bombay, 1726-1798’, Itinerario 37:2 (2013), 46-72
• ‘An Islamicate Eurasia: Vernacular Perspectives on the Early Modern World’, in Michael E. Bonine, Abbas Amanat and Michael E. Gasper (eds), Is there a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 152-169 & 262-265
• ‘Circulation and Exchange in Islamicate Eurasia: A Regional Approach to the Early Modern World’, Past & Present 212 (2011), 113-162
• ‘Asking about origins’, Science 326:5957 (2009), 1190-1191
• ‘The Informational Fabric of Eighteenth-century India and the Middle East: Couriers, Intermediaries and Postal Communication’, Modern Asian Studies 43:5 (2009), 1085-1116
• ‘“Correspondence is Equal to Half a Meeting”: The Composition and Comprehension of Letters in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Eurasia’, Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient 50:2-3 (2007), 172-214

2021

On the End of History and the Great Divergence

Dr Sood was interviewed by MSc Alumnus in History of International Relations (2019) Shane McLorrain for his Tocqueville 21 podcast. In their 2-part interview, they discussed Francis Fukuyama’s notion of the End of History and the nature of the field of Global History. Listen to part 1 and part 2.

Journal of Global History

Recently named Co-Editor of the Journal of Global History, Dr Sood’s co-authored piece, ‘Editors’ Note – Global History after the Great Divergence’ introduces the new editorial team’s vision for the journal. This note contains an important statement about global history as a field and the role of the journal within it. The Journal of Global History publishes high-quality articles which circulate widely, frequently making signal contributions to the historiography. Read more

2018

 New essay in History Today

Dr Sood has published a new essay in History Today (vol. 68, no. 2, Feb. 2018) entitled ‘A World Revealed’. Based on research undertaken for his book India and the Islamic Heartlands: An Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange (Cambridge University Press, 2016), the essay is intended to appeal to a broad audience of students, teachers and aficionados interested in extra-Western, pre-modern history. It focuses on a regional world from the mid-18th century, spanning the Middle East and South Asia, and populated by a kaleidoscope of “ordinary” people. That particular moment was one “of remarkable changes, politically, intellectually, culturally, economically and demographically; it was a moment of unscripted possibilities”, writes Dr Sood. The regional world was of considerable historical significance at the time, but it soon thereafter vanished and was subsequently forgotten. This essay aims to recapture that vanished, forgotten world in the manner of a detective story, and what is revealed is, in many ways, unexpected.

2016

New Book Out Now

Dr Sood's new book, India and the Islamic Heartlands: An Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange, was published by Cambridge University Press on 31 March 2016. Based on the chance survival of a remarkable cache of documents, India and the Islamic Heartlands recaptures a vanished and forgotten world from the eighteenth century spanning much of today's Middle East and South Asia. The book helps us better understand the region during a pivotal moment in its history, and offers new answers to old questions concerning early modern Eurasia and its transition to colonialism. Read more about about the book on CUP's website. Order it on Amazon.