Author: Ian Talbot
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 432
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195664434
Description
In this comprehensive study, Ian Talbot charts the problems that have beset Pakistan since its chaotic birth in 1947. This trenchant volume will interest scholars and students of Pakistani history, sociology and politics, as well as general readers interested in contemporary South Asia.
Although Pakistan is a nuclear power, to some observers it remains a failed state, mired in violence, corruption and economic crisis. However, despite its chequered history of martial law and civil strife, it has always confounds its obituary-writers.
Beginning with conditions in British India in the late 1930s, he surveys how the legacy of colonialism and conflicting regional and cultural interests, compounded by the refugee situation and the collapse of Indo-Pakistan relations after Partition, created entrenched difficulties for Jinnah's new state.
Successive Pakistani regimes and the second Partition of 1971 (the creation of Bangladesh) are discussed in the context of these and other institutional and social fault-lines, which have undermined democracy and consolidated the hegemony of unelected institutions like the military.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Glossary
Introduction
PART I: THE HISTORICAL INHERITANCE
PART II: THE DESTRUCTION OF PAKISTAN'S DEMOCRACY AND UNITY
PART III: FROM BHUTTO TO ZIA
PART IV: EVER-DECREASING CIRCLES: PAKISTAN POLITICS SINCE 1988
Appendixes
Pakistan Heads of State and Government
Biographical Notes
Pakistan political Parties and Organisations
Select Bibliography
Index