Dr Sood usually teaches the following courses in the Department:

At the undergraduate level:

HY118: Faith, Power and Revolution: Europe and the Wider World, c. 1500-c. 1800 (taught jointly with other faculty members)

HY243: Islamic Empires, 1400-1800

At postgraduate level:

HY478: Genesis of the Modern World: Europe, China and India, 1550-1840

HY4A4: MSc Dissertation with an Asian Focus

Dr Sood recently finished a major project which sought to recapture a vanished and forgotten world from the eighteenth century, spanning much of today’s Middle East and South Asia. Based on the daily lives of traders, pilgrims, clerics and other footloose types, it helps us better understand this region during a pivotal moment in its history, and offers new answers to old questions concerning early modern Eurasia and its transition to colonialism. Findings from this project have appeared in a number of scholarly journals, including Past & Present, with its culmination being a monograph published by Cambridge University Press (2016). Since then, Dr Sood has begun work on a new project which investigates the realities of governance under the Mughal and Ottoman empires over the seventeenth century.

His main publications include:

• (with Ewout Frankema and Heidi Tworek), ‘Editors’ note - Global history after the Great Divergence’, Journal of Global History 16:1 (2021), 1-3
• ‘Knowledge of the Art of Governance: The Mughal and Ottoman Empires in the Early Seventeenth Century’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 30:2 (2020), 253-282.
• ‘Through a Persian Looking Glass: Malabar’s World in the Middle of the Eighteenth Century’, in Michael N. Pearson & Mahmood Kooria (eds), Malabar in the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism in a Maritime Historical Region (Oxford University Press, 2018), 201-231.
• ‘A World Revealed’, History Today 68:2 (February 2018), 58-69
• India and the Islamic Heartlands: An Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)
• ‘Sovereign Justice in Precolonial Maritime Asia: The Case of the Mayor’s Court of Bombay, 1726-1798’, Itinerario 37:2 (2013), 46-72
• ‘An Islamicate Eurasia: Vernacular Perspectives on the Early Modern World’, in Michael E. Bonine, Abbas Amanat and Michael E. Gasper (eds), Is there a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 152-169 & 262-265
• ‘Circulation and Exchange in Islamicate Eurasia: A Regional Approach to the Early Modern World’, Past & Present 212 (2011), 113-162
• ‘Asking about origins’, Science 326:5957 (2009), 1190-1191
• ‘The Informational Fabric of Eighteenth-century India and the Middle East: Couriers, Intermediaries and Postal Communication’, Modern Asian Studies 43:5 (2009), 1085-1116
• ‘“Correspondence is Equal to Half a Meeting”: The Composition and Comprehension of Letters in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Eurasia’, Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient 50:2-3 (2007), 172-214

2021

On the End of History and the Great Divergence

Dr Sood was interviewed by MSc Alumnus in History of International Relations (2019) Shane McLorrain for his Tocqueville 21 podcast. In their 2-part interview, they discussed Francis Fukuyama’s notion of the End of History and the nature of the field of Global History. Listen to part 1 and part two.

Journal of Global History

Recently named a co-editor of the Journal of Global History, Dr Sood's co-authored piece, ‘Editors’ Note – Global History after the Great Divergence’ introduces the new issue under new editorship. The note contains an important statement, particularly about global history as a field and the role of the journal within it. The Journal of Global History publishes high-quality articles which circulate very widely, a good proportion of which make a meaningful contribution to the historiography. Read more

2018

 New essay in History Today

Dr Sood has published a new essay in History Today (vol. 68, no. 2, Feb. 2018) entitled “A World Revealed”. Written using research conducted for his book India and the Islamic Heartlands: An Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange (Cambridge University Press, 2016), the article is meant to appeal to a general audience of history students, teachers and aficionados interested in extra-Western, pre-modern history. The essay focuses on an 18th-century world, spanning the Middle East and South Asia, populated by a kaleidoscope of "ordinary" people. It was a moment “of remarkable changes, politically, intellectually, culturally, economically and demographically; it was a moment of unscripted possibilities”, says Dr Sood. This world was historically significant in its own time, but it suddenly vanished and was subsequently forgotten. The aim of the piece is to recapture a sense of this world in the manner of a detective story, and what is revealed is, in many ways, unexpected.

2016

New Book Out Now

Dr Sood's new book, India and the Islamic Heartlands: An Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange, was published by Cambridge University Press on 31 March 2016. Based on the chance survival of a remarkable cache of documents, India and the Islamic Heartlands recaptures a vanished and forgotten world from the eighteenth century spanning much of today's Middle East and South Asia. The book helps us better understand the region during a pivotal moment in its history, and offers new answers to old questions concerning early modern Eurasia and its transition to colonialism. Read more about about the book on CUP's website. Order it on Amazon.