The Internationalist Moment

South Asia, Worlds, and World Views 1917–39

The years between the First and Second World Wars comprise a critical moment in the history of the world. In the aftermath of the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution, individuals and countries sought new solutions and blueprints for a world of greater stability, equality, and interdependency. Their divergent ends and objectives were held together, if temporarily, by a euphoria for the vastness and integratedness of the world and the desire and optimism to remake it and shape the future of humanity.

This volume highlights this period in the political and social mobilization that comprises the “internationalist moment,” through the lens of South Asians’ interactions with a wider world and the wider world’s interactions with South Asia. The essays contribute to a growing, but as yet, inadequate field of the intellectual history of South Asia.