This newest volume in the Mappings Series offers the first comprehensive balance-sheet of the Subaltern Studies Project, an intervention in South Asian history and politics, which has recently generated a powerful impact in Latin American, Irish, and African Studies. Initially inspired by Antonio Gramsci's writings on the history of subaltern classes, the Subaltern Studies authors adopted a "history from below" paradigm to contest "elite" history writing of Indian nationalists, from the left and right. Later the Project shifted away from its social history origins by drawing upon eclectic thinkers such as Edward Said, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. Brought together in these pages are classic essays and trenchant criticism from authors such as David Arnold, C. A. Bayly, Tom Brass, Partha Chatterjee, Ranajit Guha, Rosalind O'Hanlon, Gyanendra Pandey, Gyan Prakash, Sumit Sarkar, Gayatri Spivak and David Washbrook.