Ian Talbot's new and revised account of the broad sweep of modern South Asian history reframes the region's recent past in light of concerns animating the turn to transnational histories, and places far greater emphasis on the histories of Pakistan and Bangladesh. A History of Modern South Asia accomplishes these two goals admirably, albeit within the many constraints posed by the genre, and will surely join the small and privileged number of introductory surveys to which instructors routinely turn for scaffolding. Talbot sees his work as “one of the few accounts to bring together histories of overseas South Asians and their homelands” (p. 3)—a timely effort, in more ways than one, especially given the growing awareness of and interest in the region's history and connections with the rest of the world in institutions of higher education, and cultural and geopolitical domains more generally.

Composed of fifteen brisk chapters divided into five parts, the book interweaves the more familiar narratives of colonial and postcolonial South Asia's political, social, and cultural history, with three chapters that bear directly on themes of diaspora, transnationalism, and international relations. The first, “The South Asian Diaspora,” comes at the end of the introductory first part of the book, which provides a broad contextualizing sketch of the region as a whole. The second, “The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Anticolonial Struggle,” is one of two chapters constituting the third part of the book. The third, “The Contemporary International Relations of South Asia,” serves as the closing chapter. Coupled with the extensive and consciously nonstereotypical focus on Pakistan and Bangladesh, the book effectively destabilizes the India-centricity of other introductory surveys, and as importantly, suggests the crucial influence that exchanges and interactions with the many worlds beyond South Asia exerted on the course of developments therein.

Of particular interest is the chapter on transnational anticolonial struggle, for Talbot argues, as one might expect, for a greater acknowledgment of the role of historical actors throughout the world in the struggle for freedom from British colonial rule. As he puts it: “The triumph of territorial nationalism overshadowed the long history of transnational revolt.… [T]here was, in fact, a strong transnational element to Indian nationalism” (p. 118). He thus draws our attention to a variety of individuals, movements, and initiatives—migration within the British Empire, the “India-house,” pan-Islamism, Gandhi's experiences in colonial South Africa, and Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army—to suggest that the “narrowing down” of the anticolonial mind only came on the eve of independence, when the imperatives of a centralized state-form worked its logic in an ethnically heterogeneous yet communally polarized society. Charting the transnational sources of nationalist movements of the region is therefore integral to Talbot's effort to reframe the transformation of modern South Asia through the lens of the wider world.

In the remaining chapters, Talbot largely follows the traditional thematic foci and periodization assumed by other textbooks, and diplomatically rehearses several of the key debates that have featured prominently amongst historians of South Asia in recent decades, whether regarding the role of colonial knowledge production in society and politics, the causes of the partition of British India, or the nature of the transition to colonial rule, among others. Inevitably, there are some important omissions, yet the overall narrative does indeed attend to events, developments, and personalities of widest significance. Unlike some other contenders within the genre, the prose is less burdened with excessive detail, and could likely make for greater accessibility for undergraduates entirely unfamiliar with the history if not the existence of South Asia—a fairly widely observed predicament shared by students in the United States—who are occasionally overwhelmed by the plethora of names, concepts, and developments they encounter in such texts.

Despite the many merits of Talbot's achievement, there remain some issues that may perhaps be addressed in future editions. While the book helpfully closes with an assessment of the region's international relations, a note of conclusion might have enabled a tying together of the various threads of analysis pursued over the preceding chapters and, in particular, the unique angle of vision pursued. As it stands, the account ends a touch abruptly. More cosmetically, a number of minor errata could easily be pruned by a slightly more mindful editorial staff: one learns, for instance, of “Kerela” or “Moraji Desai,” or that Bangladeshi, Indian, Sri Lankan, and Pakistani migrant workers remitted billions of dollars over the early years of the twentieth century. None of these aspects, however, compromise this reviewer's sense of the immense value of Talbot's A History of Modern South Asia to introductory courses and to generating a more global-historical awareness about the modern South Asian past. Students, instructors, and lay readers alike will gain in equal measure from an engagement with Talbot's impressive synthesis.