2 Aug 2023

Japanese Past, Nepalese Future: Pan-Asian Diplomacy and Japan-Nepal Relations, 1931–1939

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“Nepal is a closed country.” These were the first lines penned by Byodo Tsushō, a Japanese Buddhist monk who published an account of his travels in Nepal in the 1935 issue of the Pan-Asianist journal, Dai Ajiashugi.[1] Three years earlier, Byodo Tsushō was sponsored by the Hongan-ji sect of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism to study in India and traveled throughout Burma, … Read More
30 Apr 2023

Together against the “Winds of Change”: Cooperation between South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal during the Decolonization of Southern Africa

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With the end of the Second World War began the final stage of formal European colonialism – the age of decolonization. In the 1950s and 1960s, several states in Asia and Africa gained independence and European colonial empires began to crumble. By the mid-1960s, only Southern Africa seemed to have been forgotten by this development. In the Portuguese colonies of … Read More
22 Nov 2022

Indians and Koreans in Crosscolonial Solidarity: Part II. Rabindranath Tagore and His Transimperial Encounters

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Introduction Part II of my blog series continues to explore Indian feelings of “crosscolonial solidarity” with Korea, focusing on how such feelings are manifested in the emotions, ideals, and deeds of one person, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941)―a polymath intellectual most famous for his poetry, which won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Tagore visited Japan multiple times, in 1916, … Read More
13 Oct 2022

The Dawn of Asian-African Internationalism: India, China, and the 1947 Asian Relations Conference

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Between 23 March and 17 April 1947, the Asian Relations Conference was convened in New Delhi. In the aftermath of WWII, a moment in which the declining Western empires and the emerging independent states intersected, entangled, and collided, this Conference arguably sparked the rise of Asian-African Internationalism.[1] The latter movement soon became a distinctive political force during the early Cold … Read More
25 Jan 2022

Indians and Koreans in Crosscolonial Solidarity: Part 1. The Indian Press on Japanese Rule and Korean Independence

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Introduction: “Crosscolonial Solidarity?” In a series of essays on this blog, my intention is to explore some aspects of what I will call “crosscolonial solidarity.” It refers to a feeling of solidarity entertained by and among different colonized peoples across different empires. It bears similarities to, but is not identical with, the sense of anti-colonial solidarity circulating within one given … Read More

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