Thomas R. Metcalf (born May 31, 1934) is a historian of South Asia, especially colonial India, and of the British Empire. Metcalf is the Emeritus Sarah Kailath Professor of India Studies and Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920 (2008), A Concise History of Modern India (with Barbara Metcalf, 2006), Forging the Raj: Essays on British India in the Heyday of Empire (2005), Ideologies of the Raj (1997), and other books on the history of colonial India.