https://indianpedia.org/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Eric_Thomas_StokesEric Thomas Stokes - Revision history2026-07-30T13:14:04ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.45.4https://indianpedia.org/index.php?title=Eric_Thomas_Stokes&diff=452224&oldid=prevKelashi123 at 13:56, 28 April 20252025-04-28T13:56:49Z<p></p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>{{Short description|British historian (1924–1981)}}<br />
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}<br />
'''Eric Thomas Stokes''' (1924–1981) was a historian of [[South Asia]], especially [[early-modern]] and [[colonial India]], and of the [[British Empire]]. Stokes was the second holder of [[Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History|Smuts Professorship of the History of the British Commonwealth]] at the [[University of Cambridge]].<br />
<br />
He was the author of ''The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India'' and ''The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857''.<br />
<br />
==The Peasant Armed==<br />
''The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857'', as per note of editor [[Christopher Bayly]], represented a major historical revision typical of British historians of the 1960-1970s, and were to be studies in the Lower [[Doab]], Indian agrarian tracts covered by Chief Commissioner of [[Oudh]], the Commissioner of [[Benares]] and Western [[Bihar]] in mid nineteenth century. The detailed treatment of the social origins of the revolt would have extended to all regions where mutiny was complemented by civil rebellion in 1857–59. Stokes however had not begun to write his conclusion at the time of his death in 1981.<br />
<br />
As per Bayly, "in Stokes [[hierarchy]] of conditions for historical events of [[Indian Mutiny of 1857]], [[ecology]] was the [[longue durée]] of Indian agrarian history in [[Colony|colonial]] period. Above this clustered a whole range of social and economic forces which determined the propensity to revolt and it was the specific decisions of British officers and Indian leaders which helped translate these propensities into historical action." "Stokes felt that history was generally a 'harmless pursuit' from which few general conclusions could emerge. His own view of political and social priorities derived not from historical [[theory]] but from a [[notion (philosophy)|notion]] of [[natural law]] and from [[revealed religion]].<br />
<br />
The book chapters discuss the [[Military]] dimension of [[United Kingdom|British]] strategy and tactics, as well of Sepoy Rebels, the Peasant World and British Administration. Stokes' own passion for the links between sepoy mutiny and civil rebellion in 1857, are explored in detail, with reference to [[Delhi]] region, [[Haryana]] countryside, [[Meerut]] District, [[Muzaffarnagar]] District and [[Saharanpur]] district.<br />
<br />
==The India Connection==<br />
Bayly notes that, "Stokes returned again and again to the peasant world of India, by whose color and vitality he had been enthralled when serving as a [[Subaltern (military)|subaltern]] in the Indian Mounted Artillery during the War. He completed detailed work on the Delhi area after visiting India in 1975-6. This visit seemed to prove to him the vacuousness of the broad caste categories."<br />
<br />
===Stokes and Caste as Category of Analysis===<br />
Bayly mentions that the chapters in "The Peasant Armed", demonstrate a slow modification of the notion that caste was the key category of revolt or, in any simple sense, the basic unit of Indian rural society. Anthropologists in Britain and America were themselves moving away from the monolithic view of caste.<ref>Page 228 - 229, The Peasant Armed, Editor's Concluding Note</ref><br />
<br />
==Selected bibliography==<br />
*{{Citation| last=Stokes| first=Eric | year=1980 | title=The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India| publisher=Cambridge University Press| pages=316| isbn = 978-0-521-29770-7}}.<br />
*{{Citation | last1=Stokes| first1=Eric | last2 = Bayly |first2 = C.A.| year = 1986 | title = The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857 | place=Oxford| publisher=Clarendon | pages=280 | isbn = 978-0-19-821570-7}}.<br />
*{{Citation|last=Stokes|first=Eric|title=The English Utilitarians and India|year=1990|publisher=New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 372|isbn=978-0-19-562355-0}}<br />
<br />
==Other references==<br />
*[[Christopher Bayly]], [https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/61613 "Stokes, Eric Thomas (1924–1981)"], ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', first published Sept 2004.<br />
*{{Citation|editor1-last=Hasan|editor1-first=Mushirul|editor2-last=Gupta|editor2-first=Narayani|title=India's Colonial Encounter: Essays in Memory of Eric Stokes|year=2004|publisher=New Delhi: Manohar Publishers. Pp. xv, 484.|isbn=978-81-7304-536-3}}<br />
<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
==See also==<br />
*[[Company rule in India]]<br />
*[[Thomas R. Metcalf]]<br />
<br />
{{s-start}}<br />
{{s-aca}}<br />
{{succession box|title=[[Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History]] [[Cambridge University]]|years=1970 - 1981|before=[[Philip Nicholas Seton Mansergh]]|after=[[Donald Anthony Low|Anthony Low]]}}<br />
{{s-end}}<br />
<br />
{{Authority control}}<br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stokes, Eric}}<br />
[[Category:Historians of South Asia]]<br />
[[Category:1981 deaths]]<br />
[[Category:Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge]]<br />
[[Category:1924 births]]<br />
[[Category:Smuts Professors of Commonwealth History]]<br />
[[Category:20th-century English historians]]<br />
[[Category:Fellows of the British Academy]]</div>Kelashi123