School of History, Classics and Archaeology
Staff

Reader, History subject area

Crispin.Bates@ed.ac.uk
0131 650 3765
Room 352, William Robertson Building

Crispin Bates is a graduate of Sidney Sussex College Cambridge, where he also completed his PhD on the social and economic history of colonial central India. He was first appointed to a lectureship in modern South Asian History at Edinburgh University in 1989. Previously, he held a Research Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge. He has also been a visiting Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris (1992), a Visiting Professor at Calcutta University, a JSPS Research Fellow at the Institute for Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo (2002-3), and is currently - whilst on research leave - a Visiting Professor (2009-10) at the National Museum of Ethnology, Japan. He was until recently the Director of Edinburgh University's Centre for South Asian Studies (of which he remains a member) and a member of the modern and medieval history research panel of the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council.

Dr Bates has conducted many years of full-time research in provincial and district archives in the subcontinent, mostly in Madhya Pradesh (the largest state in central India), and has written numerous research articles and book contributions on the social and economic history of this region, with particular reference to the peasants and adivasis or tribals who live there. His other research interests include Indian labour and labour migration, Gandhi and the Indian Independence Movement, Orientalism and colonial discourse, and the study of social, economic and political movements in contemporary India.

In the late 1990s Dr Bates was part of a Edinburgh consortium engaged in a major project on village participation in Indian forest management, funded by the ESRC. Most recently he has been the principal investigator in a (£360k) AHRC-funded research project entitled 'Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857'. He is also the coordinator of an international network of scholars working on 1857, funded by the British Academy. For further details see www.csas.ed.ac.uk/mutiny.

Outcomes from the ‘Mutiny at the Margins’ project will include a source book and six edited volumes – which will appear in print in 2009. 'Savage Attack' - a conference on adivasi (tribal) insurgency in July 2008, will lead to a further volume on this theme, co-edited with Dr. Alpa Shah (Goldsmith’s College, London).

Dr Bates's future publications will include a monograph on adivasis and migration in colonial India. Other plans include a co-authored volume with Dr Marina Carter addressing the legacies of 1857, A Handbook of Modern South Asian History (to be published by Routledge), and A Political History of India since Independence to be co-authored with Dr Subho Basu.

Other Activities

Dr Bates has presented at numerous international conferences and has twice visited Calcutta University with sponsorship from the British Council and as a Visiting Fellow of the Netaji Institute for Asian Studies. He is South Asia editor for the online journal History Compass, co-editor of a new series on South Asian Histories/Anthropologies published by Manohar, New Delhi, and series editor Routledge Edinburgh South Asian Studies. He has previously edited the 'South Asia' series for Anthem Press and the series 'New Historical Perspectives on Migration' published by Leicester University Press. Dr. Bates is a member of the Advisory Board of the journal Rethinking History, a member of the the Indian Association of Labour Historians and the British Association for South Asian Studies, committee member European Association for South Asian Studies, and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. He makes regular appearances, discussing current events in South Asia on both B.B.C. TV and Radio.

Dr. Bates supervises research students in modern and contemporary South Asian (particularly Indian) history as well as more general topics in imperial and colonial history. He has also organised and taught the M.Sc. programme in South Asian Studies in the School of Social and Political Studies. The 20-credit interdisciplinary modules offered here - South Asian Studies: Conceptual And Theoretical Underpinnings [P02320] and Contemporary South Asian Issues And Debates [P02321] - are also open to History students.

• India 1700-1947: Raj, Rebellion and Ryot (3/4 MA)
• Postcolonial South Asia (3/4 MA)
• Gandhi and Popular Movements in India 1915-1950 (4MA)
• History in Theory
• History in Practice

• South Asian Studies: Issues and Debates
• South Asian Studies: Concepts and Theoretical Underpinnings
• Gender and Empire