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
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
23 Jul 2021

Book Spotlight “Asiaten in Europa. Begegnungen zwischen Asiaten und Europäern 1880–1914 [Asians in Europe: Encounters between Asians and Europeans, 1880–1914], Paderborn 2016”

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European imperial expansion was, in many regards, strongly connected to the concept of modernity. In my book, I deal with Asian contributions to European debates around the concept of modernity and decadence, thereby exploring interactions between Indians, Chinese, Japanese on the one side, and Europeans in turn-of-the-century England and Germany, on the other. The question of modernity had a special … Read More

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