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Nationality: Don't share

Affiliation: Graduate Institute, Geneva

Student status: Other

Level of education: Ph.D.

Field of Study: History

Joined: April 20, 2023

Atiya Hussain

CH

Member: Latin America, Core

Organizer: Economic History

Research Interests

  • Business
  • Capitalism
  • Currency
  • Economic Development
  • Economic History
  • Finance
  • Migration
  • Monetary Policy

About

I bring a connected, world history approach to decolonization and state-making, with a particular focus on the relatively understudied economic aspects of the transition from Empire.

About my research

At the intersection of economic history, and partition and memory studies, my thesis examines the economic implications of decolonization of British India. The transition to the ‘national economy’ – the bedrock of post-war global economic order – entailed the un-mixing of an economy whose bureaucratic and economic intermediation had been integral to the British Empire. Independence/Partition resulted in a post-colonial order mediated by economic units far more constrained than British India’s expansive trade and monetary ties, with under-researched implications for British Indian companies. My methodology combines a microhistory of a late colonial financial publication with corporate and business archives, as well as national archives. The world history approach offers new perspectives on and illustrates the limits of state-centered narratives that take the establishment of the Dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947 as the end-point of decolonization.