“Examining the high costs of India's success in managing water resources in a tropical monsoon climate, Tirthankar Roy guides historians and economists alike along a fresh path for interpreting the past and future environment.”
Alan Mikhail, Chace Family Professor of History, Yale University; author of Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History
“Monsoon seasonality provides the framework for Roy to bring together the histories of modern India's economy with its experience with water scarcity. The book provides a model for integrating economic and environmental history.”
David Gilmartin, Professor of History, North Carolina State University
“In Monsoon Economies, Tirthankar Roy has turned his formidable talents to the environment, showing geography's crucial role in modern India's economic development.”
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Professor of History, Boston College
“Roy shows how water shaped India's development path by constraining the utility of land, labor, and capital, hence the nature of capitalism.”
Kaoru Sugihara, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, Japan
“Roy examines the economic life of South Asia through the prism of water, and shows his readers how this simple move requires a rethinking of much that we think we know about development, environment, and fairness. This is an eye-opening book.”
Jan de Vries, Professor Emeritus of History and Economics, University of California, Berkeley
