Sugata Bose, "Asia after Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century" (Harvard UP, 2024)

Feb 15, 2026

Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard, explores how Asians imagined solidarity and universalism through the long twentieth century. He discusses colorful cosmopolitanism tied to anti-colonial justice, elite and popular cross-border exchanges, the rise and fracture of Asian solidarities, and the cultural threads—especially art—that kept pan-Asian conversation alive.

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INSIGHT

Colorful Cosmopolitanism Reframes Universalism

Cosmopolitanism need not be 'colorless' or purely abstract; many Asian thinkers paired global solidarity with deep love of homeland.
Sugata Bose calls this 'colorful cosmopolitanism' to capture anti-colonial commitments entwined with universalism.

INSIGHT

Two Kinds Of Nationalism Matter

Differentiate old-style patriotism from modern, territorial nationalism that seeks centralized state power.
Some Asian nationalisms exceeded borders and pursued universalist solidarities rather than narrow state ambitions.

ANECDOTE

Tagore's Java Journey Embraced Local Authorship

Rabindranath Tagore traveled to Java and Southeast Asia in 1927 and embraced local versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata as authentically Southeast Asian.
He resisted Indian colonization of Southeast Asia and highlighted shared literary authorship across the region.

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The balance of global power changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century, above all with the economic and political rise of Asia. Asia after Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century (Harvard UP, 2024) is a bold new interpretation of the period, focusing on the conflicting and overlapping ways in which Asians have conceived their bonds and their roles in the world. Tracking the circulation of ideas and people across colonial and national borders, Sugata Bose explores developments in Asian thought, art, and politics that defied Euro-American models and defined Asianness as a locus of solidarity for all humanity.
Impressive in scale, yet driven by the stories of fascinating and influential individuals, Asia after Europe examines early intimations of Asian solidarity and universalism preceding Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905; the revolutionary collaborations of the First World War and its aftermath, when Asian universalism took shape alongside Wilsonian internationalism and Bolshevism; the impact of the Great Depression and Second World War on the idea of Asia; and the persistence of forms of Asian universalism in the postwar period, despite the consolidation of postcolonial nation-states on a European model.
Diverse Asian universalisms were forged and fractured through phases of poverty and prosperity, among elites and common people, throughout the span of the twentieth century. Noting the endurance of nationalist rivalries, often tied to religious exclusion and violence, Bose concludes with reflections on the continuing potential of political thought beyond European definitions of reason, nation, and identity.

Sugata Bose is Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University.

Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University.

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