The Practice of Theosophical Internationalism: A Global Intellectual History of the Theosophical Society

This article argues that global integration processes of the late nineteenth century had a profound impact on the Theosophical Society (TS), causing its intellectual underpinnings to be partly framed within the context of the emerging idea of internationalism. Glimpses of this can be seen in the peace projects developed in The Hague and Brussels in the second decade of the twentieth century. However, in the 1920s, the practice of theosophical internationalism truly emerged; theosophists started to correspond and work towards cooperation and affiliation with the League of Nations (LN). By the 1930s, theosophists were discussing ‘theosophical internationalism’, had meetings with officials from the LN, and used its publishing house as a ‘depositary’ for their literature. At the time of the United Nations (UN), theosophists were approaching international politics within this centralised institutional framework and even applied for official NGO status. From the perspective of global intellectual history, this article demonstrates how the earliest ideas of the TS were influenced by global integration processes, leading to engagement with international ideas and institutions, balancing secular and religious internationalisms.