Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. viii, 494 pp. (Tables.) US$70.00, cloth. ISBN 9780190129118.
To do justice to all the excellent contributions in this rich, multi-faceted, ambitious 500-page edited volume is a challenging task. As the title suggests, the editors aimed at moving beyond the oft-cited political unity and solidarity to which pan-Asianism supposedly had aspired in the face of Western imperialism. Instead, Beyond Pan-Asianism refocuses scholarly attention in two ways. First, the volume reduces the geographical lens from all of Asia to China and India. And second, it expands the focus from the voices of political leaders to a wider cast of religious, philosophical, literary, and political writers, and of journalists and newspapermen, private diplomats, and merchants. Fortunately, this long-needed refocusing relies greatly on extensive documentary and archival research undertaken by all contributors.
The reader of this volume will encounter a rich overview of the intellectual world of Chinese and Indian nationalists. While all these protagonists roughly fall under the pan-Asianist umbrella, their writings and activities reveal conflicting and even incoherent agendas. Hence Beyond Pan-Asianism corrects past scholarly perceptions of solidarity and unity by stressing bilateral competition and mutual suspicions. At other times, however, the volume reveals how perceived cultural commonalities and continuities emerged in opposition to Western military power and intellectual influence. Yet, the writings and activities of all these pan-Asianists were still deeply embedded in contemporaneous global discourses on colonialism, anti-imperialism, nation-state building, and various alternatives to Western modernity.
Beyond Pan-Asianism focuses on a period that witnessed not only the highpoint and decline of British imperialism but also the reconnection of India and China through imperial networks of information, communication, and travel. The book’s subtitle suggests that the Opium War of 1839–1842 forms the volume’s starting point, given that the drug of opium had connected South Asia and East Asia economically for over a century, with the Sino-Indian War over Tibet in 1962, which marked the collapse of pan-Asian solidarity, being a natural endpoint. Yet, while these periodical boundaries generally make sense, they play a less pronounced role in the overall structure of the volume. The editors wisely decided to divide Beyond Pan-Asianism into four thematic parts: literary visions, travel writings, personal encounters, and networks.
Part I on literary visions focuses exclusively on Chinese visions of India, from hostile interpretations of Indian complicity with British imperialism in China’s treaty ports (Adhira Mangalagiri) to interpretations of shared religious and philosophical traditions in opposition to Western concepts (Gal Gvili and Viren Murthy). Part II on travel writing includes both sides, with chapters on late Qing travel reports from British India (Zhang Ke), on Hindi-language, pan-Asianist writings about China from the 1880s to the 1920s (Kamal Sheel), and on the sympathetic writings of north Indian intellectuals and vernacular journalists about late Qing China in crisis (Anand A. Yang). Part III centers on personal encounters, like Rabindranath Tagore’s conversations with a select number of Chinese philosophers during the interwar period (Yu-Ting Lee), Kuomintang-Congress cultural relations before the late 1940s (Brian Tsui), the Sikh diaspora in Hong Kong (Yan Cao), and Chinese Islamic good will missions to South Asia during the Pacific War (Janice Hyeju Jeong). Finally, Part IV deals with the emergence of networks, such as those by exiled Indian nationalists in Republican China (Madhavi Thampi), Kuomintang relations with British India during the Pacific War (Liao Wen-shuo), Indian and Chinese shipping businesses competing with their British counterparts in Asia (Anne Reinhard), and PRC and ROC spying in Kalimpong from 1947 to 1962 (Tansen Sen).
This wide range of topics covered in this volume pushes the door wide open to a new, multi-levelled interpretation of pan-Asianism beyond the well-known political circuits—be it the Anti-Imperialist League of 1927 or the Asian Relations Conference in 1947. Pan-Asianist activities transcended the circles of self-appointed leaders of national liberation movements—be it the Kuomintang in China or Congress in India. It established deep roots among intellectuals and literate urbanites, who regularly consumed print products published locally and in vernacular languages. On the one hand, this helped to create political mass support for the anti-colonial movements; while on the other hand, also complicating and even undermining their coherence along ideological or religious lines, as seen in the Kuomintang-CCP split or the conflict between the Congress and the Muslim League.
While the editors organized the deeply researched contributions in a sensible manner, many of the chapters are narrow case studies. Hence, Beyond Pan-Asianism takes stock of the current state of research, while also formulating an ambitious agenda for the future. Given the development arch from the 1840s to the 1960s, how did popular images of the other change over time? To what degree did immigrants (Indians in treaty ports and Chinese in South Asia) influence popular perceptions in the host country? How did intellectual visions of commonalities in history, politics, philosophy, literature, art, etc., develop during the span of 120 years, and particularly when relations between the newly created nation states of Republican India and Communist China first blossomed and then collapsed over the course of the 1950s? What influence did British imperial trading, communication, and travel networks have in creating contacts in the first place, and then also controlling and maybe even inhibiting them? And, finally, how would the story look if we included Japan, Southeast Asia, Persia, and the Middle East?
Beyond Pan-Asianism is an inspiring collection of 14 deeply researched case studies. It will hopefully spur more research among area specialists, literary scholars, and historians into both the Sino-Indian relationship outside the well-studied circles of nationalist leaders and Pan-Asianist circles in general.
Lorenz M. Lüthi
McGill University, Montreal