The contributions assembled in this volume present cutting-edge research that examines the network of Indo-American interconnections over a wider time frame. The case studies stretch into the American republic’s early decades, hinting at a longer history of mutual influence and exchange, beyond the registers of the American century’ of globalization. By bringing together academics working across disciplines ranging from history to cultural and literary studies, comparative religion, political science and sociology, this volume thus foregrounds and historicizes the complex, multi-sited, polyvalent nature of the Indo-US encounter. At the same time, the book explores the possibilities of methodologically engaging with established categories—such as the nation, the imperial and Empire—and test alternative typologies to understand this encounter better. Taken together, our authors reconstruct the myriad ways in which Americans and Indians have engaged with each other through trade, diplomacy, intellectual comradeship, missionary evangelism and revolutionary fervor.

Harald Fischer-Tiné is Professor of Modern Global History at ETH-Zürich. Alongside many other publications, he is the author of The YMCA in Late Colonial India: Modernization, Philanthropy and American Soft Power in South Asia (London, 2022). He is currently working on issues related to culture and consumption during India’s ‘Jazz Age’.

Nico Slate is Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. His most recent publication is Lord Cornwallis Is Dead: The Struggle for Democracy in the United States and India (Harvard University Press, 2019). He is currently writing a history of the American civil rights movement focusing on the Highlander Folk School.

Mark Reeves, Samford University
The United States and South Asia from the Age of Empire to Decolonization provides an innovative and intriguing set of essays on the continuities and shifts in Indo-U.S. relationships from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. […] the volume represents a welcome step forward for the project of New International History integrating state- and non-state perspectives along with anti/colonial approaches, as well as advancing the field of Indo-U.S. history.

HARALD FISCHER-TINÉ, SUJEET GEORGE, and NICO SLATE, Introduction: Religion, Politics, and Development ― Mapping the Sites and Domains of Indo-American Exchange, c. 1850-1970

Part. I: Religion and Culture
1. BRADLEY SHOPE, A Gold rush, Steamships, and Blackface: The New York Serenaders in San Francisco and India, early-1850s
2. SUSAN M. RYAN, The Sepoy Rebellion and American Global Ambition

3. PHILIP DESLIPPE, Fakir: How a Word from India Moved Through American Popular Culture for Nearly a Century

Part. II: Missionaries and Political Activists
4. JOANNA SIMONOW, American Humanitarianism in Colonial South Asia: The Famine Relief of the American Marathi Mission in Bombay, 1896–1900

5. HARALD FISCHER-TINÉ, ‘One fifth of the world’s boyhood’: American ‘Boyology’ and the YMCA’s work with early adolescents in India (c. 1900-1950)

6. NEILESH BOSE, Taraknath Das: Race and Citizenship between India and the U.S.A.

7. NICO SLATE, Socialism, Nonviolence, and Civil Rights: The American Journeys of Rammanohar Lohia

Part III: Social Sciences, Development Initiatives & Technocracy

8. SUJEET GEORGE, Constructing an Indian Sociology: ‘Karimpur’, U.S: Area Studies and Cold War Social Science

9. PRAKASH KUMAR, The Development of Uttar Pradesh Agricultural University

10. NICOLE SACKLEY, The Bankura Horse as Development Object: Women’s Work, Indo-American Exchanges, and the Global Handicraft Trade

MARK REEVES, Afterword
Bibliography
About the Authors
Index