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.

Introduction: The Internationalism of the Moment: South Asia and the Contours of the Interwar World Benjamin Zachariah Internationalisms in the Interwar Years: The Travelling of Ideas Michele L Louro India and the League Against Imperialism: A Special ‘Blend’ of Nationalism and Internationalism Carolien Stolte Uniting the Oppressed Peoples of the East: Revolutionary Internationalism in an Asian Inflection Ali Raza Straddling the International and the Regional: The Punjabi Left in the Interwar Period Maia Ramnath Meeting the Rebel Girl: Anticolonial Solidarity and Interracial Romance Franziska Roy International Utopia and National Discipline: Youth and Volunteer Movements in Interwar South Asia Ana Jelnikar Srecko Kosovel and Rabindranath Tagore: Universalist Hopes from the Margins of Europe Robert S Anderson Meghnad Saha’s Two International Faces: Politics in Science and Science in Politics between the Wars