Imaginary Futures and Colonial Internationalisms

Manu Goswami is an Associate Professor of History at New York University. She is the author of Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (University of Chicago Press, 2004). During 2010–2011, she was a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Internationalism is commonly heralded as a central political force of the twentieth century. Yet its status as an analytical and historical category is profoundly ambiguous. While its valence stems from Karl Marx's institution of the First International in 1864, the year the term entered the Oxford English Dictionary, its subsequent career has largely derived as a “back construction,” through reference to its semantic other, namely, nationalism.1The Communist Manifesto, a founding text of political modernism, helped instill the idea that anti-systemic politics required conjuring an alternate world order. The temporal referent of radical politics was the future. The specific content of the manifesto's imagined future, and of later liberal internationalisms associated with John Hobson and Woodrow Wilson, lost effective purchase during the cataclysmic decades of the interwar era. In Europe and North America, internationalism devolved into a residual category, an object, by turns, of moralizing judgment and regressive nostalgia.2 This conceptual framing—figuring internationalism as the failed negation of nationalism and in normative rather than analytical terms—refracts a specific regional history. Yet it also defines studies of anti-imperial internationalisms that acquired an unprecedented global prominence during the 1920s and 1930s. In fact, interwar internationalism in colonial worlds encompassed a range of projects that were explicitly anti-imperial yet neither reducible nor opposed to nationalism. Elaborated by dispersed groups, without a determinate place in a given geopolitical order, colonial internationalism improvised a distinct future-oriented politics. Anti-imperial internationalists amplified political modernism into a global formation, sounding the fusion of radical politics and futurity beyond an initial European sphere. Yet they have largely been eclipsed, within and beyond the field of South Asian history, by the preponderant focus on the presumptively primary narrative of nationalism.3 From this perspective, all anti-imperial struggles were a staging ground for the modular developmental endpoint of a sovereign nation-state rather than an open-ended constellation of contending political futures. By the mid- and late twentieth century, the dismemberment of European and Japanese empires ushered in a United Nations with four times the national membership of the interwar League of Nations. The triumph of the nation-state as the normative unit of the interstate system has been taken as methodologically conclusive, entrenching the sense that internationalism was either a minor key of anti-colonialism or a “futile holding operation” against the inevitable consolidation of the nation form.4 This historicist conflation of a contingent outcome as a methodological premise obscures the fact that the course of interwar struggles was neither knowable in advance nor determined in some “last instance” by the nation form.5 The flattening of anti-imperial politics to nationalism and the depiction of decolonization as a linear transition from empire to nation has acquired the fixity of common sense. It orients political and intellectual histories of colonial societies and underwrites postcolonial theories forged in an intimate, if melancholic, relation to anticolonial nationalism. As a consequence, we know very little about a political imaginary that galvanized collective identification and an intensity of lived attachment on a scale comparable only to nationalism. And we know even less about its concrete workings in colonial worlds, where competing conceptions of a non-imperial future animated a heady mix of utopian aspiration and pragmatic reckoning, collective action and conceptual improvisation. For while the scholarship on nationalism, and its imagined pasts, is vast, that on internationalism, and the imaginary futures it elaborated, is sparse. It is partly because internationalism represents a future-oriented schema that it has occasioned scant historiographical treatment. While the discipline of history is about more than just the past, insofar as it is principally concerned with the relations between past and present, it embraces the future only tangentially. Precisely because the future is the realm of what the interwar German philosopher Ernst Bloch called the “not-yet” of what has not been experienced, it cannot be grasped as an independent temporal dimension apart from a given historical present.6 Historical studies, as Reinhart Koselleck argues, encompass past futures as an object of analysis and the phenomenological realm of present futures as an element of their own horizon of expectation. Yet historians have tended to cleave to what Koselleck calls the “space of experience,” the lived memory of past events and movements, rather than their animating “horizon of The of in conceptions of the It the valence of the future in as internationalism and even not temporal as the of of collective As a lived and a colonial internationalism was less in a common or collective than in a between and non-imperial this was neither by a of nor within as Colonial internationalisms the of imaginary of the geopolitical collective on futures. internationalism a concrete into the of historical futures from a and Colonial internationalisms as a specific temporal forged within a and of the global of political were neither a historical nor an category the interwar and of political modernism in they a future-oriented of politics that what was in an The of the interwar a of politics as the and of the present as an unprecedented were a element of interwar political during and its the valence of was also geopolitical From the of anti-imperial and the interwar a not just within of an geopolitical order. was less with an of than with an sense of open-ended colonial and apart was not just the that the present a transition to a world order. It was the this temporal was to the historicist of nationalism and a interwar This was not the temporal modernism referent is the of associated with the of and in interwar Europe and North were not by an of temporal of with the and in with the by a concrete historical and geopolitical of a and in the of a future. projects as the central of politics. By as a of rather than an normative or they liberal and the of nationalism. The on a with that as the intellectual for of and the of collective Colonial internationalists to worlds and In they the that was an and a politics. This valence animated about the of and and the of and an and geopolitical was the in interwar colonial into the aspiration a non-imperial future that through interwar colonial to as a political yet an of its common a of commonly associated with postcolonial From the of histories of this was for its about the of in an In a at this collective as a of in politics and in This to what called a conceptual of with a of the political that anti-imperial were the and of the future in the forged in the of the of the the of nationalism, schema was of a of radical By the mid- and late nationalism a of by in and and a of and of dispersed political of internationalism to a of the First as an historical a non-imperial future. The political and that the the of to the by the National at the of the and its of or within a the purchase of liberal nationalism for radical while political and was a of and and and internationalism was a global during an political between and that to New York and in and and regional in political political and at in the late were by the and the philosopher John as a of the intellectual of the was an and an of the between internationalism and as a lived This was in a of that by and and Karl Marx's and in and in and It also the of as and the with on theories and as and It is to of a career in late colonial that more what in a of anti-imperial calls internationalism of the from in was of at and on political and the United by in the that the of is of in to has been the of Yet it is to its during the 1920s and 1930s. by the to as more than to a historical in colonial The of in its its were an on the historical category of the a of and nationalism, and an that was the central of political and struggles This was in a of at the National in in as The Science of History and the of they to advance a to temporal in the and of events and This intellectual the philosopher a the of a in of as or less to the in the of a of for to an and of the of the German historical for as a an and derived from European history that societies only as either or of or the of the As a consequence, European of for as on the that the and of the of While the of a from about its The central was to a between of and and of The of history was in the specific sense of of and its and is the of a of historical namely, its to of collective to conceptions of the This was to a and of an It was that in explicitly From the on concrete of the present as a This imaginary of politics and in the in the the in the of the of the of in and the in that the of the of an non-imperial future that was at present and yet to to the present in a that the of in history, that rather than The of this were and The term was a a of and it was in and in subsequent as or of to the of political and relations on a scale at a specific historical to conceptions of world history, it a for histories as and as The term the of as and as by the and in the of the of an nation and a from the to the of as the of an that an nation as the of its own as the and element of its own is a of the of the of that the of of and and of a historical system of the of the was little ground for the of through The of was to the interstate of and political into a of and The of the German and the of were the of struggles by a geopolitical to and of and on a world scale of It also a from the what to the of historical From this the of in a given present was as a political as an analytical It required the of societies that with reference to of the political and of of the and and forged by within an interstate This the of a range of radical and from and The of to by founding member of the and a political at a to in and a later and the United In from the of lost to in the of nationalism in of the of political by the for an of theories of nationalism, the from the it by the of and on the other, from the or into it by political and The nation was a contingent geopolitical formation, and as its was is not the concrete of a or or or or of the or of a It is the and of political by and The of is a sovereign in a and a even for its focus on European The Social of was an for and an of a was to of in geopolitical It and to the between of the as in and the of historical The of that nation the the German of and This schema the or as or as and to the concrete in was a an of rather than an for independent even of for the was as the for the of Europe as a And it was from this that of of a and of as was in not only a a geopolitical The fact that political in the of the First for it to that the to the in the of and geopolitical the horizon of the of was not a category to an of the of geopolitical and the it a and of political The of this of historical on the and of action in the of and and the of The political modernism of this in the that and of the not and the of relations be and by collective and action the of against theories that the and political or to the of the The advance or to the of The only of the historical from to is the or of a with a of on the of the of the by the of the of the in the of its of to a This only a more referent a with a of dispersed and and and the political by the interwar era. By the that the present was a to to the with the of a in in The of to the of this It was at a of a against of and a of an The to the of this as against in politics and against in The by the was political and It to the between and and to the political of anti-imperial for as political The as a at in was a year later in the International of It the mix of and political that the a was a the of the the of the of and the of The idea of this was to the and of the between the of the and the of the was it to a of as and as the of it is to the intellectual the and Japanese of the twentieth it be called the of was more than in the that been a of the and of their of and this that has been to and by was more than to an of through a of from the of the through the of in a range of that the in that the between and was in from to and that the only of was The was to a of within the that that of political and conceptual the of this was more to a text of not an a geopolitical category with a specific temporal and This schema of the not the of the of the with the of the while they the of the and the of the not the of to the of the as to of the and for have to be or in of by or by or on the of the studies in be in the in the as were in for they to the of the with the of the The historical present was of and the have been the of the world all through the As a consequence, the of was into a more than between societies on a developmental The of this schema the historical of into a this of temporal as the for a The of the of the of colonial and of the in by the of as of that were the of or in the and While the of and not be the helped for their and to the of even the historical of the of with the of As a methodological was less a conceptual than a on a future It was a political of that a of While the of and was as as to and the a the by as it to is with the of and the is to it be only with the of and And this of as it is an element in the of During an world in an of nationalism, the of of of the in against of that is a of modernism It is only is than the and it is For was of and not European within an European of nationalism only into the political that to be and and to in the of imaginary or the of this is we the in in the the of the where the this the of a of that was rather than utopian internationalism to the of namely, an between a and a to this of was the of all political and as in political from worlds, as In the late the the force of of it within a utopian that from John its of for its of the of about the in against of politics. to the as a a that in the political of the world and the of to the of the course of European empires from the of have not or European nor have they its in and of the of the colonial In a that have been by that of the is that the in the of or in the the history as to its course with a common The an that anti-imperial distinct or by of their temporal of a By from colonial internationalists as and the of historical from a to a geopolitical by not just as political as the of in and and political the of the of the to more they the of From a global perspective, the future with anti-imperial struggles that to on a the of The of of own the of between and status that of the the League of a of of the of the and the of The radical in the European been in the of its in and This for it was within of this or of that from the and by Europe and of the in Europe nor of the in the its in This even the only sovereign in the geopolitical of a This with Japanese from its more in by and the later with and during by the European or a independent of was the not only of of the of This required in where the was in as by of and that in field of The and for was of Asian has to be a sovereign with a of and John that of at cannot the colonial of a of was to in the this the fact that a been more than in its The of been at and empire in and and in were for the idea that were and for than that the very of with a that the in and the the of America, through the and The in as a referent for anti-imperial It an with for societies and The of the of the as the of into the of futures a to for the futures of colonial and societies as rather than as rather than By by the and of Asian and the a between the and the were that in to a by the and the system by Europe and the United were in the the in and futures for colonial and The on the between to a of events as a temporal In an to and the as of the were or of the in for not only its to of and the of also that the for be as in the of The of with of in and in This of subsequent in of the in as of the in or For in the twentieth was not the of the or in and through they were it is for a to be in the of a For this we have to for the of is to in a with its of the of as distinct from the of and of The that the of political modernism was to an in is little for the in of and they the with on the between political and as of a future. This at University. It a between that from the past in the of a collective and the aspiration to a sovereign future in anti-imperial The of was against not only the of also a aspiration to the The of the against the status of on a that the past not the realm of the present future. of this futurity was of that the European and all the not and be the of the This future-oriented was in that the and the the and the from the and from the of the from and to the of the and anti-imperial politics to a future to to to and to as an independent unit in the of This an of and politics as in The of modernism in the of to as argues, the of or more And it was this that in of by the as the of modernism in colonial it the of the late It also an and The were by an of the of and the a of history at during the the of in the the between the of the and that of The of an imagined with a was to an that of a in between the and to this common about devolved into an of the between an national and an of and as by a and that this a against a or own to within rather than the of the The ground of was it required to or the of of and to as of and was their in and of all This was more than in the of from a on the and of a of and a of The of advance in was neither nor to or It was the of and The against a not the of and as that the of an the of that this of be as to an This was an as an and to that the only in the was a that and were of national been by while that of on of as of an that of nationalism in in by the of as a only where they they were of a with as the of or the on and the of as this was as as be The in the of know to be by the is not a to the in and to about its to be is to This In the of the of was in by at the of the by and It was in by an of at the German National in the for the and the the between German and nationalism. The by the for the from to this its purchase for German were to than the the as colonial In a more German of the in and by the to be of the of the German Yet within the of a only were of national they a conceptual for a In a that is a that of In by and all for their and the of and a collective and The of modernism, a in in New York during and the of this if of this in a by the encompassed a the the the and this as their object, in of and In or is as a in of a of and apart from the and and and and in or The of the of and to at the of an with the other, more in the The between and the to an even Yet the of beyond the also at a of that is and The fact that depiction in the has is not only to the of of was in at the of in New York by and also to a in in the And it with a of colonial was also the only in a intellectual collective in the the and on for the in the late the and the radical of the of to in even as its of a that and Japanese as of or on of and University. into worlds was partly by the as a of the of the German historical a common to historical political in radical in New York was also in an with the for of a and decades the on and to as a the little that on on with and were were at the from of of as argues, of a in the that the of as a political This a conceptual a with the of the and the of the National for its and its of and In the late to that of to an of it to what called or the of history to This of of of the from to a common that or that have not in the to a Yet a to the that the of by political a for a theories or to a only their present the of political and they were the of present The to to the of and to the analytical and of historicist The of a future-oriented was against a of by history to a only the future of historical as a of the to a of the of without the of historical into a The future of in a on the colonial of as the term encompassed and or as as The of history as an open-ended by a was the ground for a politics and The of politics with a future-oriented temporal and of with a of the a It if in a to a And it within the temporal of a future or what in the 1920s more as a is a between interwar prominence and in the postcolonial to what a on as a regional This postcolonial some the and of political and in late colonial It and the of and in late colonial and postcolonial to in the late and the of the of the at the not to a or political It was forged in an the consolidation of as a discipline in colonial For the of the conflation of with was a of of during the on national and colonial the political a member of the German Communist and a key with in the League against and the in to the as a member of the Communist and a founding of the an for and in the principally intellectual and into the of intellectual history or political history. sense of and to the interwar of between empire and of a non-imperial future. political modernism was less a than an of that in the of a The they of of the of the of through the between a and an or of the in The and of political and intellectual to a of in an by of what in called the of a the to in to It was during the interwar that the category to a distinct scale of political and a object of of the of colonial internationalisms was their of this as at a for an future and a this to a specific regional the of the It also the this category was through with of expectation. This was in the of the of that a non-imperial world was a for an the and of the geopolitical theories of the or the Karl It was a of against the The of colonial internationalisms has of the global of political It has also it to the of interwar with subsequent of internationalism that have an of we know a more about the of colonial of the European internationalism in the and the of the during the of its between and The of histories of has to studies of movements, and as or in the as or have more than not been to history in the sense. all have been or to John John and for their as as in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the for at the of and at and University.