The introductory essay to this special double issue on “Repossessing Property in South Asia: Land, Rights and Law Across the Early Modern/Modern Divide” reviews existing historical scholarship on land control and proprietary right in the Indian subcontinent in order to contextualize the contribution made by the articles that follow. Dividing earlier writings—by historians and anthropologists since the 1950s—into three phases/thematics, the introduction shows how work on South Asia has long grappled with property both as a material relation and as an alien cultural category. Making the case that we must think about property’s conceptual history as being necessitated by more than just the critique of Eurocentrism, the essay clarifies how the articles that follow both continue and extend past discussion. Overall, it argues that by providing integrated perspectives on property’s material and ideational dimensions, our articles will be illuminating both to scholars of Afro-Asia and those interested in law, political economy and political culture more generally.

中文翻译：

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在早期的近代/现代鸿沟中收回南亚的财产：土地，权利和法律

本期特别双期的介绍性文章“收回南亚的财产：近代/近代早期的土地，权利和法律”回顾了印度次大陆现有的关于土地控制和所有权的历史学术研究，以便将所作的贡献与背景联系起来由随后的文章。引言将早期的著作（自1950年代以来的历史学家和人类学家）分为三个阶段/主题，介绍了在南亚开展的工作如何长期以来一直将财产视为物质关系和外来文化类别。这篇文章阐明了我们不仅必须要考虑对欧洲中心主义的批判，还必须考虑财产的概念史，这一点澄清了随后的文章如何继续并延伸到过去的讨论中。总体，