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

Category: Essay 0

“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

Book Spotlight “Kontroverse Gewalt. Die imperiale Expansion in der englischen und deutschen Presse vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg [Contested Violence: The Imperial Expansion in the English and German Press before the First World War], Wien 2019”

In the decades prior to the First World War, as the imperialist powers sought to increase their influence around the world, both Great Britain and Germany frequently employed military force to uphold colonial rule or to expand the territory or influence of their empires. In the colonizing states, newspapers often covered these military actions at length and the imperialist ambitions … Read More

The Myth of “Liberal” Fascism at the Transimperial Volta Congress on Africa in Rome, 1938

Category: Essay 0

The inclination of fascist regimes to settler colonization is a comparably new field of research, yet it is hardly surprising that settler colonialism was part of fascism’s destructive repertoire. It played a crucial role in the violent occupation of Eastern Europe (Germany), Libya and Ethiopia (Italy), as well as Korea and Manchuria (Japan).[1] Whether settler colonialism’s paramount purpose was the … Read More

Afro-Asian States, the Congo Crisis, and the United Nations: Solidly United in an Anti-imperial Agenda?

Category: Essay 0

On 21 November 1960, in the United Nations General Assembly debate the representative of Liberia expressed his regret about “the bitterness that has characterized the discussion” – a bitterness that had come “from the recently independent African States”.[1] The hostile discussions the Liberian delegate referred to were over current events in the Congo. Since its independence on 30 June, the … Read More