This volume covers nearly eleven weeks, from October 6, 1948, when Nehru left India for London to attend the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, to December 19, when the annual session of the Indian National Congress at Jaipur concluded. It collects Nehru's addresses and articles related to this stressful time in world history. Among his articles are support for the causes of Indonesia and the Africans in their battles against alien rulers; arguments for the continued membership of India in the Commonwealth; and a piece on the importance of protecting Indian interests in neighboring countries. Above all, Nehru stressed the need to maintain secular values, and the urgency of restructuring the economy to meet the demands of free India.
This is the first analysis of India-U.S. foreign policy during the formative period of their relations to be able to use the Nehru Papers, the seminal source for understanding the worldview of India's first Prime Minister and Minister of External Affairs, 1947-1964. Nehru established the twin pillars of Non-Alignment and Asianism as the foundation of India's foreign policy. Read alongside declassified U.S. documents and available declassified Chinese documents, they provide the foundational understanding of U.S.-India suspicion and India-China rivalry.
v. 13. covers April 1949 to August 1951 -- v. 14 covers September 1951 to March 1953 -- v. 15. covers April 1953 to December 1954. -- v. 16. covers Janurary 1955 to August 1956. -- v. 18. covers January 1959 - 7 March 1961.
Focusing on the two tumultuous decades framed by Indian independence in 1947 and the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965, The Cold War on the Periphery explores the evolution of American policy toward the subcontinent. McMahon analyzes the motivations behind America's pursuit of Pakistan and India as strategic Cold War prizes. He also examines the profound consequences—for U.S. regional and global foreign policy and for South Asian stability—of America's complex political, military, and economic commitments on the subcontinent. McMahon argues that the Pakistani-American alliance, consummated in 1954, was a monumental strategic blunder. Secured primarily to bolster the defense perimeter in the Middle East, the alliance increased Indo-Pakistani hostility, undermined regional stability, and led India to seek closer ties with the Soviet Union. Through his examination of the volatile region across four presidencies, McMahon reveals the American strategic vision to have been "surprinsgly ill defined, inconsistent, and even contradictory" because of its exaggerated anxiety about the Soviet threat and America's failure to incorporate the interests and concerns of developing nations into foreign policy. The Cold War on the Periphery addresses fundamental questions about the global reach of postwar American foreign policy. Why, McMahon asks, did areas possessing few of the essential prerequisites of economic-military power become objects of intense concern for the United States? How did the national security interests of the United States become so expansive that they extended far beyond the industrial core nations of Western Europe and East Asia to embrace nations on the Third World periphery? And what combination of economic, political, and ideological variables best explain the motives that led the United States to seek friends and allies in virtually every corner of the planet? McMahon's lucid analysis of Indo-Pakistani-Americna relations powerfully reveals how U.S. policy was driven, as he puts it, "by a series of amorphous—and largely illusory—military, strategic, and psychological fears" about American vulnerability that not only wasted American resources but also plunged South Asia into the vortex of the Cold War.
Values in Foreign Policy: Investigating Ideals and Interests covers all aspects of the tension between values and national priorities, with specific reference to the leading countries of today. The volume explores the effect of the enlightenment, colonialism, modernity and post-modernity in determining contemporary value systems which are often uncomfortable in their interface with each other. This book, written in accessible, non-technical language, will be of interest and benefit to policy-makers and practitioners of foreign policy, as well as the academic community. It will be equally valuable to anyone interested in international relations. Written by specialists in the field of foreign relations, this is the closest examination ever made of the impulses which drive the foreign policies of the world’s most important countries, touching on the legacies of religion, civilization, culture and history. Companion website: http://www.foreignpolicy.org.in/home/
This volume covers nearly eleven weeks, from October 6, 1948, when Nehru left India for London to attend the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, to December 19, when the annual session of the Indian National Congress at Jaipur concluded. It collects Nehru's addresses and articles related to this stressful time in world history. Among his articles are support for the causes of Indonesia and the Africans in their battles against alien rulers; arguments for the continued membership of India in the Commonwealth; and a piece on the importance of protecting Indian interests in neighboring countries. Above all, Nehru stressed the need to maintain secular values, and the urgency of restructuring the economy to meet the demands of free India.
This study of US and Soviet aid efforts in India during the Cold War “makes a major contribution towards a necessary discussion of the politics of aid” (Times Higher Education). Debates over foreign aid are often strangely ahistorical. Economists argue about how to make aid work while critics bemoan money wasted on corruption, ignoring the fundamentally political character of aid. The Price of Aid turns the standard debate on its head. By exposing the geopolitical calculus underpinning development assistance, it also exposes its costs. India stood at the center of American and Soviet aid competition throughout the Cold War, as both superpowers saw developmental aid as a way of pursuing their geopolitical goals by economic means. Drawing on recently declassified files from seven countries, David Engerman shows how Indian leaders used Cold War competition to win battles at home, eroding the Indian state in the process. As China spends freely in Africa, the political stakes of foreign aid are rising once again. “A superb, field-changing book . . . A true classic.” —Sunil Amrith
Queen Victoria, who also bore the title of Empress of India, had a real and abiding interest in the British Empire, but other European monarchs also ruled over possessions 'beyond the seas'. This collection of original essays explores the connections between monarchy and colonialism, from the old regime empires down to the Commonwealth of today. With case studies drawn from Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, the chapters analyse constitutional questions about the role of the crown in overseas empires, the pomp and pageantry of the monarchy as it transferred to the colonies, and the fate of indigenous sovereigns under European colonial control. The volume, with chapters on North America, Asia, Africa and Australasia, provides new perspectives on colonial history, the governance of empire, and the transnational history of monarchies in modern Europe.
When Margaret Sanger returned to Europe in 1920, World War I had altered the social landscape as dramatically as it had the map of Europe. Population concerns, sexuality, venereal disease, and contraceptive use had entered public discussion, and Sanger's birth control message found receptive audiences around the world. This volume focuses on Sanger from her groundbreaking overseas advocacy during the interwar years through her postwar role in creating the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The documents reconstruct Sanger's dramatic birth control advocacy tours through early 1920s Germany, Japan, and China in the midst of significant government and religious opposition to her ideas. They also trace her tireless efforts to build a global movement through international conferences and tours. Letters, journal entries, writings, and other records reveal Sanger's contentious dealings with other activists, her correspondence with the likes of Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Sanger's own dramatic evolution from gritty grassroots activist to postwar power broker and diplomat. A powerful documentary history of a transformative twentieth-century figure, The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 4 is a primer for the debates on individual choice, sex education, and planned parenthood that remain all-too-pertinent in our own time.
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (1903–1988) was a prominent socialist, anticolonial and antiracist activist, champion of women’s rights, and advocate for the arts and crafts. Defying the borders of gender, nation, and race, her efforts spanned social movements and played a leading role in the creation of modern India and the development of the Global South. In The Art of Freedom, Nico Slate showcases new archival materials to document Kamaladevi’s campaign to become the first woman elected to provincial office; her confrontation with Gandhi that helped open the salt protests of 1930 to women; her leadership of the All India Women’s Conference and the Congress Socialist Party; her pioneering work with refugees during the Partition of India in 1947; the major impact she had on the arts in postcolonial India; and her own career on the stage and screen. Slate also draws upon underexplored details from her personal life, providing new context for her experiences as a child widow, her remarriage to the mercurial actor/poet Harin Chattopadhyay, and her divorce (among the first civil divorces in modern India). Taken as a whole, Kamaladevi’s life offers a uniquely revealing vantage point on the making of modern India—a vantage point that centers the interconnections between struggles often seen as distinct, and that reminds us of the full promise of Indian democracy.