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Book Description

Within Asia, the period from the 1840s to 1960s had witnessed the rise and decline of Pax Britannica, the growth of multiple and often competing anti-colonial movements, and the entrenchment of the nation-state system. Beyond Pan-Asianism seeks to demonstrate the complex interactions between China, India, and their neighbouring societies against this background of imperialism and nationalist resistance. The contributors to this volume, from India, the West, and the Chinese- speaking world, cover a tremendous breadth of figures, including novelists, soldiers, intelligence officers, archivists, among others, by deploying published and archival materials in multiple Asian and Western languages. This volume also attempts to answer the question of how China–India connectedness in the modern period should be narrated. Instead of providing one definite answer, it engages with prevailing and past frameworks— notably ‘Pan-Asianism’ and ‘China/India as Method’—with an aim to provoke further discussions on how histories of China–India and, by extension the non-Western world, can be conceptualized.

Editors

Tansen Sen is professor of history and director of the Center for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai, China, and Global Network Professor at NYU, Shanghai, China. He received his MA from Peking University, China, and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. He specializes in Asian history and religions and has a special academic interest in India–China interactions, Indian Ocean connections, and Buddhism. He is the author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400 (2003, 2016) and India, China, and the World: A Connected History (2017). He has co-authored (with Victor H. Mair) Traditional China in Asian and World History (2012), edited Buddhism Across Asia: Networks of Material, Cultural and Intellectual Exchange (2014), and co-edited (with Burkhard Schnepel) Travelling Pasts: The Politics of Cultural Heritage in the Indian Ocean World (2019). He is currently working on a book about Zheng He’s maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century and co-editing (with Engseng Ho) The Cambridge History of the Indian Ocean, Volume 1.

Brian Tsui teaches at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China, and is interested in the intersection between revolutionary politics and mobilization of cultures on both the left and the right in China’s twentieth century. His first book, China’s Conservative Revolution: The Quest for a New Order, 1927–1949 (2018), studies mass politics under the Guomindang, the dilemmas confronting Chinese liberal intellectuals caught between an authoritarian state and a supposedly untam- able populace, and the Nationalist Party’s appeal to pan-Asianism as a strategy to garner international support. His current research focuses on the advent of ‘New China’ as an Asia-wide event, zeroing in on how the early People’s Republic of China was interpreted by Indian nationalists and Asian Christians in the 1950s.

Contributors (Speaking at Book Launch)

Yin Cao is Associate Professor and Cyrus Tang scholar in the Department of History, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Adhira Mangalagiri is Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London, UK.

Anne Reinhardt is Professor of History, Williams College, Massachusetts

Zhang Ke is Associate Professor in the Department of History, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.