David Washbrook

David Anthony Washbrook (25 April 194824 January 2021) was a British historian and author who studied modern India with a specific focus on the socio-political and economic conditions of South India between the 18th and 20th centuries. He was the director of the Centre for Indian Studies and a member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford and later a research professor and fellow of South Asian history at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Early life and education Washbrook was born on 25 April 1948 and was raised in a less-affluent part of South London. His mother was born in India, and his father served there during World War II.

Washbrook studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he completed his fellowship dissertation in 1971 and followed it up with a PhD in 1974. He held a pre-research linguistic studentship (19691970) and the JRF research fellowship (19711975) from Trinity College, Cambridge, and also held the Hayter Studentship (19701971) as a grant from the UK's Department of Education and Science. His research centred on the localized provincial history of the region and built on colonial-bureaucratic records. His research also covered the socio-political and economic structures of South India of this period including social history of capitalism in the region.

From 1974 to 1992, Washbrook was a member of the History Department at the University of Warwick. Discussions with colleagues specialising in French, British, German, American and Russian history nurtured his, and his colleagues, developing global perspective. Despite being offered a chair after a year-long sojourn at Harvard, Washbrook returned to Warwick where he pioneered the teaching of India outside of specialist centres. After moving on, he remained a frequent visitor and member of the Global History and Culture Centre.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, he continued developing his viewpoints in his essays, many of which would go on to serve as guides to the history of modern South Asia. Speaking about the role of the princely states in the social development of the region, he considered their contributions had been relegated to the margins in modern Indian history despite leading the nation on education, social development, and public health investments and outcomes.

Washbrook was a part of a group of over 180 historians who wrote in protest to the UK Home Office in July 2020, asking them to reverse the "misrepresentation of slavery" and glorification of the British Empire and colonial India in a book that immigrants had to study before passing the 'Life in UK' test for permanent residency in the UK and UK citizenship. The letter went on to state that the book had false and misleading information including claims of an orderly decolonization process, which the historians noted was "demonstrably false".

Published works