UC Irvine

I became interested in Subaltern Studies in the late 1980s, not long after the volumes began to appear, and began lobbying our university library to purchase them in 1987. The task turned out to be an immense hassle, because even though the volumes were being produced under the Oxford University Press imprint, they were assembled and printed in Delhi. At the time, Oxford University Press (New York) had less than perfect connections with their Delhi office. Eight months was the time it would take to order a Subaltern Studies volume from Delhi, and at that speed they had to be sending the books by elephant to Bombay, and then by dhow to Aden, and possibly by trireme to Gibraltar, and by glass bottle to New York via the Florida Gulf Stream.