The Economic & Political History Review (EPHR) is an independent scholarly journal dedicated to fostering historical research on the economic and political trajectories of South Asia, with particular attention to India’s place within the region’s interconnected past. The journal was founded with the aim of creating a space for critical inquiry and reflection on the region’s historical developments, offering a platform for both established and emerging scholars engaged in serious historical work.
EPHR seeks to promote a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary approach to history. The journal invites scholarship on economic history in all its dimensions such as trade and commerce, labour relations, industrialization, financial systems, agrarian change, and the evolution of economic thought. Equally, it welcomes contributions in political history broadly conceived, including the study of state formation, governance, constitutional developments, political ideologies, social movements, and the contestations of power over time. The journal also seeks to encourage work in intellectual history and the history of political and economic ideas, particularly as they relate to South Asian societies and their interactions with wider global currents.
EPHR is a peer- reviewed journal and committed to maintaining a high standard of scholarly argumentation, historical rigor, and critical engagement with sources and debates. Submissions are evaluated for their originality, analytical depth, and relevance to the field. The journal aims to be a forum where historical research is presented in a manner accessible to a wide scholarly audience, without compromising on conceptual precision or historical nuance.
EPHR seeks to contribute to a richer and more critical understanding of India’s economic and political past, situating regional developments within broader historical processes and comparative perspectives. The journal encourages dialogue across disciplinary boundaries between history, economics, political science, and related fields and welcomes contributions that reflect diverse methodological approaches and intellectual traditions.
EPHR is interdisciplinary in scope, inviting submissions from historians, political scientists, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars in related fields. The journal is committed to expanding the range of voices, perspectives, and archives that inform the study of South Asia’s past, and it encourages scholarship that engages with sources and historiographies in regional languages as well as those produced outside traditional academic institutions. It encourages the use of oral histories, local records, and community-based knowledge systems to produce work that is both methodologically robust and politically conscious.
EPHR aspires to serve as a space where early-career researchers, independent scholars, and established academics alike can engage in meaningful dialogue about the past and its ongoing relevance. In centering regional histories through economic and political lenses, EPHR not only revisits the past, it reclaims it as a vital ground for scholarly reflection and critical public discourse.
The study of economic and political history is not solely of academic interest but is vital to understanding the origins and trajectories of contemporary structures of power, inequality, and governance. EPHR is committed to making such scholarship accessible to a broad scholarly readership and to contributing to ongoing debates on the historical roots of present-day challenges in South Asia and beyond.