Cities in Turmoil: The 1960s in India/Indonesia

By the mid-1960s, crises gripped the ruling regimes throughout South and Southeast Asia. The postcolonial promise, articulated at the end of WW II and the retreat of European empires, began to come apart under the pressures of popular unrest, social and political cleavages, and the Cold War realities. Cities became stages for violent turmoil. This talk charts the historical roots of urban tumult in India and Indonesia.

Educated in India and the United States, Gyan Prakash is Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton, specializing in the history of modern India. His general field of research and teaching interests concerns urban modernity, the colonial genealogies of modernity, and problems of postcolonial thought and politics. Prakash advises graduate students on modern South Asian history, colonialism and postcolonial theory, urban history, global history, and history of science.

Michael Laffan is a professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of History at Princeton. He studies the history of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, focusing at present on Islam, nationalism, Dutch colonialism and orientalism. 

This event is part of the 1968/2018 Cities on the Edge series, co-sponsored with the Humanities Council. The conversation is co-sponsored by the Center for Collaborative History.