Whose international matters, and why? How are geographic regions constructed? What are the channels of engagement between a place, its people, its institutions, and the world? How do we understand the non-West’s influence in contemporary global interactions? From humanitarianism and activism to diplomacy and institutional networks, South Asia has been a crucial place for the elaboration of international politics, even before the twentieth century. South Asia Unbound gathers an interdisciplinary group of scholars from across the world to investigate South Asian global engagement at the local, regional, national, and supra-national levels, spanning the time before and after independence. Only by understanding its past entanglements with the world can we understand South Asia’s increasing global importance today.

Bérénice Guyot-Réchard is an associate professor of international history at King’s College London and the founder of NIHSA, the New International Histories of South Asia network.

Elisabeth Leake is an associate professor of history and the Lee E. Dirks Chair in Diplomatic History at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. She is a co-organizer of the NIHSA network.

Elisabeth Leake and Bérénice Guyot-Réchard, Introduction. Part 1 (Inter)national Orders and State Futures, 1. Tanja Bührer, A Thwarted “Westphalian Moment” in South Asia? The Triple Alliance against Tipu Sultan, 2.Swati Chawla, “Nothing in Common with ‘Indian’ India:” Bhutan and the Cabinet Mission Plan, 3.Lydia Walker, Extra-territorial Self-determination: East African Decolonization and the Indian Annexation of Goa. Part 2 From the Transimperial to the International: Lived Uncertainties, 1. Jayita Sarkar, Battlefields to Borderlands: Rohingyas between Global War and Decolonization, 2. Kalyani Ramnath, Other Partitions: Migrant Geographies and Disconnected Histories between India and Malaya, 1945-1965, 3. Ria Kapoor, Re-Uniting Split Families: The 1972 Ugandan Asian Refugees and the Internationalization of an Imperial Diaspora. Part 3 South Asian Roots of the International, 1. Yorim Spoelder, An “Indian Hermes” between Paris and the Pacific: Kalidas Nag, Greater India, and the Quest for a Global Humanism, 2. Carolien Stolte, Fellow Travelers: Global Decolonization and Gandhian Peace Work, 3. Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, The Islamist International in Lahore: The Jamaat-i Islami, the Middle East, and the Quest for an Islamic State. Part 3 Ambivalences and Sensibilities of Internationalism, 1. Stephen Legg, Hindu Nationalism in the International: B.S. Moonje’s Travel Writing at the Round Table Conference, 2. Ali Raza, Culture and Progressivism in Pakistan, ca. 1950s-1970s, 3. Mejgan Massoumi, Radio’s Internationalism: A View from Modern Afghanistan, 4. Annie Devenish, South Asian Diasporic Connections and Afro-Asian Solidarities in the Life of Phyllis Naidoo, Srinath Raghavan, Afterword