FRINGE: A NEW HISTORY OF PROGRESS

Fringe is a bold reimagining of human history through the voices that have too often been silenced. Where conventional accounts of progress credit institutions, markets, or elites, Fringe insists that renewal has always begun at the margins: in the rebellions of heretics, women, workers, colonized peoples, queer communities, and poets who dared to speak against the grain.

Divided into three great ages—Tradition (10000 BCE–1500 CE), Reason (1500–1945), and Dignity (1945–today)—the book traces how the inclusion or exclusion of voices has shaped not just political and economic systems, but the very meaning of progress. From guilds, castes, and tribes to the Renaissance, Enlightenment, anti-colonial struggles, feminist and queer movements, Fringe asks a central question: who can speak, and who is heard?

Against traditional historiography that either celebrates Europe’s institutional leadership or condemns its colonial plunder , Fringe intervenes by highlighting the dialectic between domination and resistance, silence and voice. It shows how every step forward—be it the Bhakti poets in India, the printing revolution in Europe, Gandhi’s satyagraha, Ambedkar’s fight for equality, or the queer movement—was propelled by those on the margins who refused silence.

Today, in an era of AI, ecological crisis, and populist backlash, Fringe reframes progress as an epistemic struggle over voice. It argues that inclusion is not merely a moral good but the structural condition for sustaining human dignity and planetary survival.

By weaving political philosophy, economic history, and cultural analysis into a sweeping narrative, Fringe offers a new history of progress: one in which the fringes, not the center, are its true engine.

Key Events

Age of Tradition

• Antiquity: Shrutis and Smritis, Charavaka, Arjuna, Krishna, Rama, Sita, Taxila University I, Austronesian voyages C, Bible, Hammurabi MEA

• 6th – 5th c. BCE: Buddha, Kanada, Mahavira, Sushruta I, Zoroaster MEA, Confucius, Laozi C, Heraclitus, Hippocrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, E

• 4th c. BCE: Satapatha Brahmana, Chanakya I, Alexander, Aristotle,  Pyrrho, Platonic Academy E

• 3rd c. BCE: Spread of Buddhism, Ashoka I, Library of Alexandria MEA, Archimedes, Aristarchus E

• 2nd c. BCE: Charaka I, Opening of silk road C

• 1st c. BCE: Fall of Roman Republic, Roman Slave Uprising, Caesar, Cicero, Spartacus E

• 1st c. CE: Buddhism in China, Paper, Lun, Ming  C, Jesus MEA

• 2nd c. CE: Kama Sutra I, Empericus, Galen, Ptolemy E

• 3rd c. CE: Earliest reference to Zero I, Mani MEA, Woodblock printing C

• 4th c. CE: Gupta Empire I, Constantine, Christianity in Roman Empire E

• 5th c. CE: Surya Siddhanta, Destruction of Taxila university, Establishment of Nalanda university I, Bodhidharma, Shaolin Monastery C

• 6th c. CE: Aryabhata, Bhaskar, Fall of the Gupta Empire I, Gondishapur Academy, Philoponus MEA

• 7th c. CE: Brahmagupta, Bhakti poetry I, Muhammad MEA

• 8th c. CE: Andal, Shankaracharya I, Lushan Rebellion C, Abbasid Revolution, Baghdad House of Wisdom, Nuwas MEA

• 9th c. CE: Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Kindi, Zanj Slave Rebellion, Cutting of Cypress of Kashmar MEA, Gunpowder C

• 10th c. CE: Bhagwat Purana I, Hallaj, al-Haytham, Ibn Sina MEA, Song dynasty C,

• 11th c. CE: Chola maritime empire I, Al-Ghazali, Ghazni MEA, Kuo, Sheng, Compass, Printing Press, Jiaozi banknote C, European guilds and universities, Book of Gomorrah E

• 12th c. CE: Basava, Akka Mahadevi I, Genghis Khan C

• 13th c. CE: Khalji, Destruction of Nalanda I, Destruction of Baghdad MEA, Federal Swiss Charter, Fibonacci, Marco Polo E

• 14th c. CE: Madhava, Kerala School I, Timur C, Abu Bakr II, Battuta, Musa, Sankore Madrasa MEA, Black Death, Jewish prosecution, Decameron, Peasant uprisings, Boccaccio, Ball, Wycliff, Petrarch E

• 15th c. CE: Coffee, Kabir, Nanak I, Mehmed II, Ottoman Empire, Fall of Constantinople MEA, Nyakudō no kanjinchō, Zheng He, Closing of China C, Renaissance, Columbus, da Vinci, de Gama, Dias, Gutenberg, Hus, Kempis, Medicis, Pacioli, Savonarola Spagnuoli, Zacuto, E

Age of Reason

• 16th c. CE: Jyeṣṭhadeva, Meera, Nilkantha, Tulsidas, Ramcharitmanas I, Bacon, Copernicus, Erasmus, Luther, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Vesalius, Mona Lisa, Jesuit missionaries, Republic of Letters, Dutch Revolt, Reqerimiento E, Native American genocide, Transatlantic Slave trade, Atahualpa, Moctezuma A

• 17th c. CE: Aurangzeb, Dara, Sarmad, Guru Granth Sahib I, Ming Dynasty collapse, The Great Mirror of Male Love C, Thirty Years’ War, Barrow, Bernier, Bontius, Boyle, Bullialdus, Descartes, Fermat, Galileo, Gregory, Hobbes, Hooke, Huygens, Kepler, Leibniz, Lippershey, Locke, Newton, Papin, Pascal, Savery, Spinoza, European coffeehouses,  Republic of Letters, Royal Society, Amsterdam Stock Exchange, English Civil War, Glorious Revolution, Quakers E

• 18th c. CE: Dream of the Red Chamber C, Industrial Revolution, Colonial Empires, Encyclopedie, Seven Years War, French Revolution, Black, Catherine II, Darby, de Gouges, Diderot, Hastings, Lafayette, Linnaeus, Marat, Montesquieu, Newcomen, Robespierre, Rousseau, Senefelder, Smith, Voltaire, Watt, Wollstonecraft E, United States of America, Banneker, Franklin, Jefferson, Paine, Washington A

• 19th c. CE: Lithography, Fourdrinier process, Telegraph, Railways, Newspapers, Indian Renaissance, Indian famines, Criminal tribes, Bose, Iyer, Lytton, Munda, Naoroji, Phules, Roy, Sheikh, I, Taiping rebellion, Meiji Restoration, Choshu Five  C, Scramble for Africa, Anglo-Boer War, Ghezo MEA, Napoleonic civil law code, Paris commune, Bakunin, Bentham, Bismarck, Darwin, Engels, Galton, Kipling, Leopold, Marx, Mill, Pasteur, Proudhon, Risley, Snow, Stanley,  Tocqueville, Tolstoy, Wilde, Steam powered printing E, Haiti revolution, Decolonization of the Americas, Seneca Falls Convention, Indian Removal Act, Jim Crow laws, Antony, Bolivar, Bradwell, Dessalines, Lincoln, O’Sullivan, Scott, Stanton, Thoreau A

Age of Dignity

• 20th c. CE: Radio, Television, Eugenic laws, World Wars, Human Rights Charter, UNESCO race question, Feminist and Queer movement, Decolonization of Asia and Africa, Ambedkar, Annadurai, Azad, Bahuguna, Boses, Gandhi, Indira, Jinnah, Mahalanobis, Narayan, Nehru, Osho, Periyar, Raman, Savarkar, Spivak, Tagore I, Maji Maji Rebellion, İTC, Arab-Israeli War, Rwandan genocide, Benga, Kagame Mandela, Pasha, Reshid MEA, Chung-hee, Dalai Lama, Kai-shek, Mao, Xioaping C, Spanish Revolution, Nazi Germany, Chernobyl disaster, Rise and fall of USSR, Holocaust, Adenauer, Arondeus, the Beatles, Beauvoir, Derrida, Einstein, Flowers, Foucault, Hayek, Hindenburg, Hirschfeld, Hitler, Kautsky, Kekkonen, Lenin, Mazirel, Mussolini, Papen, Rohm, Russell, Scholl, Stalin, Stopes, Trotsky, Turing, Wiesel E, Marshall plan, Stonewall Riots, Chicago school, Angelou, Buck, Butler, DeLarverie, Earhart, Friedan, Ford, Grant, Johnson, Keller, Kennedy, King, Kinsey, McCarthy, Neumann, Parks, Roosevelt, Sanger, Sinclair, Tarbell, Till, Wallace A

• 21st c. CE: Internet, decline of newspapers, 9/11 Attacks, Climate change, Obama, Trump, COVID-19, Mahsa Amini protests, 7/10 Attacks, Gaza war.