This is a comprehensive introduction to the key streams of modern historical thought and history-writing in the West and in India. It explores the emergence, growth, climax, and partial decline of modernity in historical thoughts and writings, particularly in Europe and India. It traces the roots of modern historiography to illuminate the transformation that has taken place in history-writing over the centuries. 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

1. Introduction: The Past, History, and Historiography
I BACKGROUND: PREMODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY
2. Premodern Western Historiography
3. Traditional Chinese Historiography
4. Premodern Arabic Historiography
5. Representations of the Past in Precolonial India
II MODERN WESTERN HISTORIOGRAPHY
6. The Beginnings: Renaissance Historiography
7. Decline and Rise of History: Seventeenth and
Early Eighteenth Centuries
8. Enlightenment Historiography
9. Historicism and Positivism
10. German Historical Tradition in the
Nineteenth Century
11. Romantic History in the Nineteenth Century
12. Scientific History
13. Marxist Historiography
14. The Annales School
15. Some Other Important Trends
III HISTORIOGRAPHY IN MODERN INDIA
16. Colonialist Historiography
17. Nationalist Historiography
18. Indian Marxist Historiography
19. The Cambridge School
20. Subalternist Historiography
21. Some Important Themes in Indian Historiography
IV CRITIQUES OF MAINSTREAM HISTORIOGRAPHY
22. Early Critiques
23. Structuralism and Post-structuralism
24. Postmodernism and History
25. Postcolonialism
Conclusion