In “Military Households Across Court and Frontier: Indo-Afghans in South India 1630-1796,” Hannah Archambault (South & Southeast Asian Studies) explores the relationship between courtly centers and frontier zones in southern India. Archambault follows two influential and closely affiliated Indo-Afghan military households, Miyana and Panni, as they navigated the shift from Sultanate governance to Mughal administration, to the reassertion of regionally rooted “successor states,” and finally to colonial power. While taking account of the state, Archambault offers an alternate vision of South Indian history by focusing on affiliations of kinship, friendship, and service that transcended state power to structure India’s militarized precolonial society. The Panni and Miyana households, based within ecological and political frontier zones, cultivated diverse recruitment networks and staked their claims to power on leading members’ reputations. Archambault argues that this moral framework of household relations provided the important element of stability in an era of considerable disruption.

Hannah Archambault is the 2016-17 Una's Fellow.