This is the first of a three-volume history of India, characterized by three main arguments: (a) Indian history has been crucially conditioned by the connections linking the Indian subcontinent to the remainder of the world; (b) Indian society was never static, but always crisscrossed by powerful currents of change; (c) colonialism caused both the crystalliza­tion of a ‘traditional’ society – which, in that shape, had never really existed before – and, at the same time, the rise of modernity. This volume examines the history of India from the first human settlements in the subcontinent up to the death of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1717. The political, military, economic and social developments are analysed against the backdrop represented by the rise, decline, fall and renais-sance of flourishing urban civilizations. While the economy remained mainly agrarian, long-distance trade and pre-modern, but quite sophisticated, manufacturing and service activities rose, declined and rose again.