DR. BYAPTI SUR

Assistant Professor

PhD in History, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Assistant Professor, TSLAS, Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology Bhadson Road, Patiala-147004, Punjab

byapti.sur@thapar.edu

Byapti received her PhD in History from Leiden University in the Netherlands. She specialises in the early-modern history of Indo-Dutch socio-economic connections (1600-1800). In her doctoral research, she examined the networks of informal interactions between the Mughal administrators, the brokers and the Dutch East India Company officials in Bengal in the seventeenth century. She studied these through cases of corruption accusations brought against Company officials in alliance with the locals. She has also worked on the pattas or documents of leases involving the land administration of the Dutch East India Company in Bengal in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By taking a regional perspective, she tries to locate the forces of the local in the larger global connections. Byapti has published essays in peer reviewed journals and book chapters and has taught briefly at the Institute for History at Leiden University and Liberal Arts at the Leiden University College. Her teaching interests include early-modern history of Indo-European connections and Dutch overseas history. She has also worked as a researcher for the National Archives in Den Haag and has worked for the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. She was granted the Erasmus Mundus IBIES scholarship for pursuing her doctoral research and COSMOPOLIS scholarship for a foundation year in History at Leiden University. She has pursued her M.A. at the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Medieval History and her B.A. at Jadavpur University in History.
 

PUBLICATIONS
Book Chapters

• Sur, B. (2019), Beyond the Company and its Commerce: Reviewing the Presence of the VOC in Mughal Bengal, 1600-1700. In Raziuddin Aquil and Tilottoma Mukherjee (Eds.) An Earthly Paradise: Early-Modern Bengal. Delhi: Manohar Publications.
• Sur, B. (2016), The Story of Bengal’s Urbanization: Role of Trade in the Early Modern Period. In: Pius Malekandethil. (Ed.) The Indian Ocean in the Making of Early Modern India. Delhi: Manohar Publishers.
• Journal Articles
• Sur, B. (2018), Individual Interests Behind the Institutional Façade: The Dutch East India Company’s Legal Presence in Seventeenth-Century Mughal Bengal. Itinerario 42(2): 279-94.
• Sur, B. (2017), The Dutch East India Company through the Local Lens: Exploring the Dynamics of Indo-Dutch Relations in Seventeenth Century Bengal. Indian Historical Review 44(1): 62-91.

 
Book Reviews

• Sur, B. (2017), Review of: Maxine Berg, Felicia Gottmann, Hanna Hodacs, and Chris Nierstrasz (2015). Goods from the East, 1600-1800, Itinerario 41 (2): 408-10.
• Sur, B. (2017), Historical Specificities of the ‘Colonial’ State Review of: Sabysachi Bhattacharya (2016) The Colonial State: Theory and Practice, The Book Review XVLI (3): 10-11.
• Sur, B. (2016), Forces that Made History Review of: S.Z. H. Jafri (2014) History, Ideas and Society: S.C. Mishra Memorial Lectures in History, The Book Review XL (2): 14-15.
• Sur, B. (2015), Review of: Roísín Healy, Enrico Dal Lago (2014). The Shadow of Colonialism on Europe’s Modern Past, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, Itinerario 39(3): 548-550.

 
Other Outputs

• Sur, B., Sinha, K. (2016), “And then the government fell. But the books continued!”: An Interview with Romila Thapar. IIAS newsletter 74: 12-13.