This book explores the Indian tradition of liberalism through a critical intellectual biography of Valangaiman Sankaranarayana Srinivasa Sastri (1869–1946). A notable politician, diplomat and educationist in colonial India, Sastri was a founding member of the National Liberal Federation and was one of the leading liberals — often dismissed as ‘a body of sycophants and self-seekers’ — of the post-1918 period of Indian pre-independence history. Through Sastri, the book shines a light on the contributions of liberals in Indian political history and challenges the convenient binaries in Indian historiography. Examining the role that liberals like Sastri played in bridging the gap between the officials and the nationalists, it traces the practice of liberal politics in the post-1918 period of Indian nationalist struggle and the broader contours of Indian liberalism. Accessible, comprehensive and scholarly, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Indian history, especially the nationalist movement, political thought, and South Asian studies.

This book explores the Indian tradition of liberalism through a critical intellectual biography of Valangaiman Sankaranarayana Srinivasa Sastri (1869–1946). A notable politician, diplomat and educationist in colonial India, Sastri was a founding member of the National Liberal Federation and was one of the leading liberals — often dismissed as ‘a body of sycophants and self-seekers’ — of the post-1918 period of Indian pre-independence history. Through Sastri, the book shines a light on the contributions of liberals in Indian political history and challenges the convenient binaries in Indian historiography. Examining the role that liberals like Sastri played in bridging the gap between the officials and the nationalists, it traces the practice of liberal politics in the post-1918 period of Indian nationalist struggle and the broader contours of Indian liberalism. Accessible, comprehensive and scholarly, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Indian history, especially the nationalist movement, political thought, and South Asian studies.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri was a celebrated Indian politician and diplomat in the early twentieth century. Despite being hailed as the ‘very voice of international conscience’, he is now a largely forgotten figure. This book rehabilitates Sastri and offers a diplomatic biography of his years as India’s roving ambassador in the 1920s. It examines his involvement in key conferences and agreements, as well as his achievements in advocating for racial equality and securing the rights of Indians both at home and abroad. It also illuminates the darker side of being a native diplomat, including the risk of legitimizing the colonial project and the contradictions of being treated as an equal on the world stage while lacking equality at home. In retrieving the legacy of Sastri, the book shows that liberal internationalism is not the preserve of western powers and actors – where it too often represents imperialism by other means – but a commitment to social progress fought at multiple sites and by many protagonists.

This book questions the accepted origins of the field of International Relations (IR). Commonly understood to have emerged from the horrors of WW1 with the goal of bringing about world peace, the authors argue that on the contrary, IR came from a somewhat less noble tradition - that of the Round Table. The Round Table were a network of imperialists emerging in the late 1800s across five key British imperial societies: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and India. Their aim was to improve imperial governance, placing the empire into a position to control world affairs. Although they ultimately failed to rearrange world order according to their vision, they did help to build what we now call the discipline of IR. The Round Table's 'scientific method' for the study of world affairs was rapidly subsumed into each geopolitical context. Through telling this story, the authors recover it, and interrogate its meanings for the discipline of IR today. They show the importance of the Global South to IR's foundations, and argue that IR scholarship in this period was intertwined with imperial racial thought in ways that it should not and cannot forget.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri was a celebrated Indian politician and diplomat in the early twentieth century. Despite being hailed as the 'very voice of international conscience', he is now a largely forgotten figure. This book rehabilitates Sastri and offers a diplomatic biography of his years as India's roving ambassador in the 1920s. It examines his involvement in key conferences and agreements, as well as his achievements in advocating for racial equality and securing the rights of Indians both at home and abroad. It also illuminates the darker side of being a native diplomat, including the risk of legitimizing the colonial project and the contradictions of being treated as an equal on the world stage while lacking equality at home. In retrieving the legacy of Sastri, the book shows that liberal internationalism is not the preserve of western powers and actors - where it too often represents imperialism by other means - but a commitment to social progress fought at multiple sites and by many protagonists.

This book offers readers an alternative history of the origins of the discipline of International Relations. Conventional, western histories of the discipline point to 1919 as the year of the 'birth of the discipline' with two seminal initiatives - setting up of the first Chair of IR at Aberystwyth and the founding of the Institute of International Relations on the side-lines of the Paris Peace Conference. From these events, International Relations is argued to have been established as a path to create peace in the post-War era and facilitated through a scientific study of international affairs. International Relations was therefore, both a field of study and knowledge production and a plan of action. This pathbreaking book challenges these claims by presenting an alternative narrative of International Relations. In this book, we make three interconnected arguments. First, we argue that the natal moment in the founding of IR is not World War I - as is generally believed - but the Second Anglo Boer War. Second, we argue that the ideas, methods and institutions that led to the making of IR were first thrashed out in South Africa - in Johannesburg, in fact. Finally, this South African genealogy of IR, we show in the book, allows us to properly investigate the emergence of academic IR at the interstices of race, Empire and science.

This book questions the accepted origins of the field of International Relations (IR). Commonly understood to have emerged from the horrors of WW1 with the goal of bringing about world peace, the authors argue that on the contrary, IR came from a somewhat less noble tradition - that of the Round Table. The Round Table were a network of imperialists emerging in the late 1800s across five key British imperial societies: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and India. Their aim was to improve imperial governance, placing the empire into a position to control world affairs. Although they ultimately failed to rearrange world order according to their vision, they did help to build what we now call the discipline of IR. The Round Table's 'scientific method' for the study of world affairs was rapidly subsumed into each geopolitical context. Through telling this story, the authors recover it, and interrogate its meanings for the discipline of IR today. They show the importance of the Global South to IR's foundations, and argue that IR scholarship in this period was intertwined with imperial racial thought in ways that it should not and cannot forget.

India and South Africa, two states that bookended the process of twentieth century decolonization, punched above their weight in global politics in their initial years of liberation. Postscripts on Independence analyses and compares the making of foreign policy ideas, identities, and institutions of postcolonial India and South Africa. It shows how both countries have responded to the contradictory demands of their freedom struggles against colonialism and pragmatic challenges of international politics. Vineet Thakur argues that the countries' geopolitical positioning in South Asia and southern Africa make them regional powers, with similar sets of problems and prospects, as both continue to grapple with the idea of maintaining regional and/or continental hegemony. By undertaking a comparative analysis, he explores a framework to understand the foreign policymaking fears, aspirations, and international behaviour of these two states.

This book offers readers an alternative history of the origins of the discipline of International Relations. Conventional, western histories of the discipline point to 1919 as the year of the 'birth of the discipline' with two seminal initiatives - setting up of the first Chair of IR at Aberystwyth and the founding of the Institute of International Relations on the side-lines of the Paris Peace Conference. From these events, International Relations is argued to have been established as a path to create peace in the post-War era and facilitated through a scientific study of international affairs. International Relations was therefore, both a field of study and knowledge production and a plan of action. This pathbreaking book challenges these claims by presenting an alternative narrative of International Relations. In this book, we make three interconnected arguments. First, we argue that the natal moment in the founding of IR is not World War I - as is generally believed - but the Second Anglo Boer War. Second, we argue that the ideas, methods and institutions that led to the making of IR were first thrashed out in South Africa - in Johannesburg, in fact. Finally, this South African genealogy of IR, we show in the book, allows us to properly investigate the emergence of academic IR at the interstices of race, Empire and science.