This volume is a comprehensive introduction to the key streams of modern historical thought and history-writing in the West and in India. Focusing on major theoretical perspectives and historical methods, it primarily concerns itself with the emergence, growth, climax, and partial decline of modernity in historical thoughts and writings, particularly in Europe and India. Premodern historiographical traditions, Oriental and Occidental, have also been examined in detail in order to trace the roots of modern historiography and to illuminate the transformation that has taken place in history-writing over the centuries.

Tracing the origins of the dominant traditions of history-writing to the dawn of modernity in Europe, the author outlines the global spread of historiography and provides an account of the impact of colonial experiences and decolonization on modern historiography in different parts of the world. He emphasizes the changing patterns and traditions of history writing in, and the contestations between, Western and non-Western perspectives -- especially Indian -- with their internal contradictions and confrontations, external associations, and mutual influences over three centuries. The impacts of post-modernism and post-colonialism have also been explored to underline the various critiques of modern historiography and to examine their bearing on historical practice in the subcontinent.