Andrew Sartori

Talk Title: The Monetary Landscape of State Formation in the Eighteenth-Century Eastern Subcontinent: Coasts, Rivers, Deltas, and Highlands

April 23, 2026, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm CT
In-person: 206 Ingraham Hall
Watch YouTube recording here

Presentation Description: The monetary world of the eighteenth-century eastern subcontinent was fundamentally pluralistic: in any given district, taxes might be stipulated in one currency, textile advances made in another, wholesale contracts for specific commodities in others again, and everyday marketplace purchases in yet another. The social geography of currencies was shaped by both the functional differentiation among payment concatenations, and the ecological conditions that channeled their circulation. The monetary landscape of the eighteenth-century eastern subcontinent was in that sense a landscape of coasts, rivers, deltas, and highlands — and this geography correlatively shaped the possibilities of state formation in the period of the emergence of the post-Mughal Nizamat and East India Company regimes.

About the Speaker
Andrew Sartori is professor of history at New York University. He is the author of two monographs, Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital (2008) and Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History (2014). He is also the co-editor of several volumes, including (with Samuel Moyn) Global Intellectual History (2013), and of the journal Critical Historical Studies.