What explains variation in political conflict and competition in South Asia? In his compelling book, Patchwork States: The Historical Roots of Subnational Conflict and Competition in South Asia, Adnan Naseemullah addresses this complex and critical question through comparative historical case studies of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, relying on both archival research and contemporary data to support his theory. Naseemullah argues that the patterns of violence and political contestation that we have seen—and continue to see today—are a consequence of the diverse historic authority of the state and how it governed. Examining a dizzying array of governance arrangements during the colonial era and since independence, the book traces how distinct governing structures led to differences in state capacity and state–society relations. He shows that “the state is powerful and autonomous in some places, weak and captured in others” (22). This, in turn, has important downstream consequences for distinct patterns of political violence and related outcomes of development and political competition.

Patchwork States makes a number of important theoretical claims, which it unveils over the course of the first five chapters, before turning systematic attention to its three outcome variables. It begins by providing distinct motivations for colonial conquest and argues that these mandates varied subnationally within the colony. Colonizers were motivated by greed (satisfied by trade or taxation), by fear of rebellion and the resultant “existential insecurity” (29), and by the need for frugality to limit the costs involved in the colonial project. The spatial distribution of these mandates, coupled with the responses of the colonized—who Naseemullah rightly points out were not merely passive actors—shaped governance arrangements during the last century of British rule in India. Naseemullah’s typology of governance categories allows for significantly more nuance than the often-cited “direct vs. indirect rule” dichotomy and is based on important differences in practices of land tenure in rural parts of the colony. These categories range from “exceptional” governance arrangements that involved fully indirect rule for parts of today’s former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan and the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh to “metropolitan” structures that include Bombay and Calcutta.

These colonial governance structures, in turn, led to four distinct orders in the postcolonial patchwork states, orders that reflect both colonial legacies and the postcolonial states’ efforts either to integrate or revise these legacies. Of course, as Naseemullah demonstrates, the newly independent states of India and Pakistan in 1947 had varying success in extending their own administrative control over a sometimes resistant citizenry and elite. India was able to dismantle entrenched social structures and extend administrative control through both land and agriculture reforms and the “deployment of blunt, coercive force” (193), but even so, the effect was uneven across the state. Neighboring Pakistan, meanwhile, faced myriad challenges after independence, chose to privilege stability early on, and accordingly saw a greater persistence of colonial traditions and governance structures, particularly in its northwestern and western regions. In contrast to both India and Pakistan, Bangladesh arose, Naseemullah argues, not from disparate patchworks but rather from “whole cloth” (205) in 1971 through secession from Pakistan and has tended to see patterns of politics and of violence that are “national in scope and centrifugal in character” (174).

Although the book’s theory accounts for variations in development trajectories and electoral politics at the district level, it shines most in its exploration of political violence as a central outcome of interest. All three countries of the subcontinent have seen numerous manifestations of violence across various political, ethnic, sectarian, or religious cleavages, and the book nicely weaves evocative examples of such violence throughout its narrative. This violence has taken not only the form of larger spectacles such as deadly ethnic riots, terror attacks, and armed clashes between insurgents and the state but has also been a part of everyday life and quotidian politics in the region. It has varied in intensity not only across time but also spatially within the countries.

The book is primarily concerned with the distinction between sovereignty-contesting and sovereignty-neutral violence, a cleavage that is useful for understanding overall patterns of violence across the states. Nonetheless, a singular focus on it means that we lose some of the complexity and nuance inherent to the different types and repertoires of violence that mark the region. As Naseemullah himself acknowledges, his theory cannot adequately account for some important instances or episodes of violence, such as long-standing party and ethnic violence in Karachi, and it may not be the most informative typology in the case of the more homogeneous Bangladesh, where much of the violence converges on national ideological issues. Still, few other existing works have provided a singular, compelling theory accounting for this very wide range of political violence, marking this book’s clear contribution to the vast literature on conflict, violence, and warfare.

Patchwork States provides a three-country comparative case study but does so through subnational comparisons within each country. This gives the argument both breadth and depth, which is no small feat. Its analytical focus on the district level is a refreshing departure from other works that address topics related to violence and development at the national or provincial levels. The book also pays significant attention to the mechanisms through which governance arrangements led to distinct forms of both state capacity and state–society relations, which gives the argument a granularity that is not always expected of far-ranging theories spanning many decades and many thousands of miles. Distilling his ambitious theory into testable implications, Naseemullah meticulously uses contemporary quantitative data to provide evidence to back up his qualitative case studies. In his final chapter, Naseemullah also extends his argument beyond the three countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, examining what the book’s insights tell us about the rest of South Asia, as well as countries farther afield. This discussion reflects on how various postcolonial countries inherited distinct governance structures that, in turn, affected national trajectories.

In sum, the book is a masterful historical account of variation in political violence in South Asia. It is especially relevant to contemporary debates on political order and disorder in South Asia, a region of the world that has seen increasing manifestations of violence across various cleavages. By skillfully using conceptual typologies backed by convincing empirical evidence, Patchwork States introduces necessary complexity without ever getting lost in the details. It is a must-read for those interested in colonial legacies and historical state formation, political violence, and South Asia.