Provincial Metropolis

Intellectuals and the Hinterland in Colonial India

David Boyk (Northwestern University)

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Hardback

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English

Cambridge University Press
04 September 2025

General studies; Social groups

This book tells the story of Patna, in the north Indian region of Bihar, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A century and more earlier, Patna had been an important and populous city, but it came to be seen by many-and is still seen today-as merely part of the mofussil, the provincial hinterland. Despite Patna's real decline, it continued to nurture a vibrant intellectual culture that linked it with cities and towns across northern India and beyond. Urdu literary gatherings and other Islamicate traditions inherited from Mughal times helped animate the networks sustaining institutions like scholarly libraries and satirical newspapers. Meanwhile, English-educated lawyers sought to bring new prominence to their city and region by making Patna the capital of a new province. They succeeded, but as Patna's political influence grew, its distinctive character was diminished. Ultimately, Provincial Metropolis shows, Patna's intellectual and cultural life thrived not despite its provinciality but because of it.

By: David Boyk (Northwestern University)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
ISBN: 9781009510837
ISBN 10: 1009510835
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 04 September 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

David Boyk is a scholar of Indian history and culture. He teaches courses on the Hindi-Urdu language and on South Asian history, literature, and film, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at Northwestern University.

Reviews for Provincial Metropolis: Intellectuals and the Hinterland in Colonial India

'David Boyk's insightful and readable study of the city of Patna offers ringing proof that long scholarly neglect of this 'provincial metropolis,' as he aptly names it, is undeserved. Boyk traces the vicissitudes of political control, economic development, and infrastructure change the city experienced, telling Patna's story with an inclusive and original eye. Barbara Metcalf, University of California, Davis Provincial Metropolis presents a fresh and nuanced framework for interpreting the layered lives of South Asia's 'tier-2' cities. Through a history of modern Patna, David Boyk provides a lively, masterful account of 'the mofussil' as space and idea, revealing the many cities and histories that inhabit urban spaces beyond the subcontinent's metropolises. Drawing on a wealth of English, Hindi, and Urdu sources and changing urban geography, Boyk establishes Patna's emergence in colonial India as a provincial capital, but also as a hub of cosmopolitan intellectual and literary networks, that diminished gradually with the receding of its older Islamicate cultures. This persuasive reassessment of how provincial cities have shaped South Asia's contemporary landscapes is a must-read for everyone interested in colonial modernity, urbanism and regional history. Prachi Deshpande, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta