Imagining Woodrow Wilson in Asia: Dreams of east-west harmony and the revolt against Empire in 1919

American Historical Review

Volumn 111, Issue 5, 2006, Pages 1327-1351

  Manela, Erez ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846504037     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/ahr.111.5.1327     Document Type: Review

References (181)

1. Woodrow Wilson's Message for Eastern Nations, Selected by Himself from His Public Addresses, Foreword by the Rt. Hon. V. S. Srinivasa Sastri (Calcutta, 1925), iv-v.
2. Sastri (1860-1946) was a leading liberal intellectual and politician in pre-independence India. See Ray T. Smith, "V. S. Srinivasa Sastri and the Moderate Style in Indian Politics," South Asiav 2 (1972): 81-100.
3. "Two Million Cheer Wilson," New York Times, December 15, 1918, 1;
4. Charles T. Thompson, The Peace Conference Day by Day: A Presidential Pilgrimage Leading to the Discovery of Europe (New York, 1920), 6, 55-56, 67-68.
5. Also Arthur Walworth, Woodrow Wilson, 3rd ed. (New York, 1978), 2: 221-234.
6. H. G. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come (New York, 1933), 82.
7. Wilson himself seems to have foreseen this, telling his adviser George Creel that the expectations of the United States were so unrealistic that they would inevitably lead to a "tragedy of disappointment.' Creel, The War, the World and Wilson (New York, 1920), 161-162.
8. Another instance showing Wilson to be "very nervous" that the inflated expectation would lead to "revulsion" when people discovered that he could not do all they had hoped is recorded in the Diary of Edith Benham, February 2, 1919. in Woodrow Wilson, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson [hereafter PWW], ed. Arthur S. Link et al., 69 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1966-1994). 54: 432-433.
9. John Milton Cooper, Jr., Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (Cambridge, 2001); Lloyd E. Ambrosius.
10. Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective (Cambridge. 1987).
11. Leading works include Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York, 2002);
12. Manfred F. Boemeke et al., eds., The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years (Cambridge, 1998);
13. Erik Goldstein, Winning the Peace: British Diplomatic Strategy, Peace Planning, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1916-1920 (New York, 1991);
14. Arthur Walworth, Wilson and His Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (New York, 1986);
15. Marc Trachtenberg, "Versailles after Sixty Years," Journal of Contemporary History 17 (1982): 487-506;
16. Arno J. Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918-1919 (New York, 1967);
17. Seth P. Tillman, Anglo-American Relations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Princeton, N.J., 1961).
18. Geoffrey Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History (New York. 1964), 151-155;
19. Henri Grimal, Decolonization: The British, French, Dutch and Belgian Empires, 1919-1963 (Boulder, Colo., 1978), 17-18.
20. Macmillan, Paris 1919, devotes more attention than previous accounts to some of the demands for self-determination ignored by the conference, but even so, the topic takes up no more than a few pages in the book (see 322-325, 339-341, 402-403). Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York, 2007, forthcoming), aims to begin closing this historiographical gap.
21. E.g., on China see Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)
22. and Andrew J. Nathan, Peking Politics, 1918-1923 (Berkeley, Calif., 1976).
23. On India, see Judith M. Brown, Gandhi's Rise to Power: Indian Politics, 1915-1922 (Cambridge, 1972)
24. and DeWitt C. Ellinwood and S. D. Pradhan, eds., India and World War 1 (New Delhi, 1978).
25. On Indochina, see Hue-Tarn Ho Tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1992).
26. On Korea, see Michael Edson Robinson, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920-1925 (Seattle, Wash., 1988).
27. Prasenjit Duara, "Transnationalism and the Challenge of National Histories," in Thomas Bender, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley, Calif., 2002), 25.
28. A number of leading international historians have written on the importance of eschewing what Akira Iriye has called a "uninational" approach to international history. See, e.g., Iriye, "Internationalizing International History," in Bender, Rethinking American History, 47-62;
29. Michael H. Hunt, "Internationalizing U.S. Diplomatic History: A Practical Agenda," Diplomatic History 15, no. 1 (1991): 1-11.
30. Madeleine Chi, "China and Unequal Treaties at the Paris Conference of 1919," Asian Profile 1, no. 1 (1973): 49-61.
31. For China's place in the prewar international system and its impact on intellectual developments there, see Zhang Yongjin, China in the International System, 1918-1920: The Middle Kingdom at the Periphery (Oxford, 1991), 15-38.
32. Michael Adas, "Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology," Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (2004): 31-63. Such critiques of Western modernity were, of course, also common in the West itself in the postwar period.
33. The American pursuit of a revised Wilsonian program in the wake of World War 11 was much more circumspect, and could not replicate the sense of possibility of 1918-1919. See Elizabeth Borgwardt, A New Deal for the World: America's Vision for Human Rights (Cambridge, Mass., 2005).
34. Arno Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin: Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-1918 (New York. 1967).
35. Ibid., 245-266.
36. V. I. Lenin, "Theses on the Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination," in Lenin, Collected Works, 45 vols. (Moscow, 1960-1970), 22: 143-156.
37. This essay, completed in March 1916 and first published in October 1916, expressed ideas that Lenin formed in 1915-1916, in the course of writing his treatise Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
38. For a detailed analysis of the early socialist and Bolshevik debates on the national question, see Jeremy Smith, The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917-1923 (London, 1999), 3-22.
39. V. I. Lenin, "Fourth Letter from Afar," March 25, 1917, in Lenin, Collected Works, 23: 338; "Statement by the Provisional Government regarding the War," April 9, 1917
40. in C. K. Gumming and Walter W. Pettit, eds., Russian-American Relations, March 1917-March 1920 (New York, 1920), 9-10.
41. Address from the Bolsheviks "To Peoples and Governments of Allied Countries," December 31, 1917, PWW, 45: 412-413.
42. See also John M. Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism, and the Versailles Peace (Princeton, N.J., 1966), chap. 1.
43. Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin, 385-387;
44. Tillman, Anglo-American Relations, 26;
45. George W. Egerton, Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations: Strateay, Politics and International Organization, 1914-1919 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1978), 57-59.
46. David Lloyd George. British War Aims: Statement by the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable David Lloyd George, on January 5, 1918 (London, 1918).
47. See also Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York, 1992), 143.
48. Address to a Joint Session of Congress, January 8, 1918, PWW, 45: 534-539.
49. Address to Congress. February 11, 1918, PWW, 46: 321.
50. For more extended discussion of Wilson's usage of "self- determination," see Michla Pomerance, "The United States and Self-Determination: Perspectives on the Wilsonian Conception," American Journal of International Law 70 (1976): 1-27;
51. Betty Miller Unterberger, "The United States and National Self-Determination: A Wilsonian Perspective," Presidential Studies Quarterly 26 (1996): 926-941;
52. Lloyd E. Ambrosius, "Dilemmas of National Self-Determination: Woodrow Wilson's Legacy," in Ambrosius, Wilsonianism: Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy in American Foreign Relations (New York, 2002), 125-143;
53. William R. Keylor, "Versailles and International Diplomacy," in Boemeke et al., The Treaty of Versailles, 475 and n. 12.
54. N. Gordon Levin, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution (New York, 1968), 247-251. The literature on Wilson's policy in the Philippines is surprisingly sparse, but see William Christopher Hamel, "Race and Responsible Government: Woodrow Wilson and the Philippines" (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 2002), esp. chap. 6.
55. Address at Mount Vernon, July 4, 1918, PWW, 48: 515-516.
56. On the expansion of telegraphy into Asia, see Daniel R. Headrick, The Invisible Weapon: Tele communications and International Politics, 1851-1945 (New York, 1991). esp. chap. 4.
57. On the rise of the popular press in India, see S. Natarajan, A History of the Press in India (Bombay, 1962), 147-225;
58. Nadig Krishna Murthy, Indian Journalism: Origin, Growth and Development of Indian Journalism, from Asoka to Nehru (Mysore. 1966).
59. chap. 8: Judith M. Brown, Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy, 2nd ed. (Oxford. 1994), 139.
60. Leo Lee and Andrew J. Nathan, "The Beginnings of Mass Culture," in David Johnson et al., eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, Calif., 1985), 368-378;
61. Stephen R. MacKinnon, "Toward a History of the Chinese Press in the Republican Period," Modern China 23, no. 1 (1997): 3-32. Benedict Anderson famously identified mass print media as agents of national identity construction, delineating the boundaries of the nation while at the same time locating it within the context of a wider world of structurally equivalent and morally equal national entities.
62. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London, 1991), esp. chaps. 2-3. For a development of these ideas in the specific context of the rise of nationalism and of global historical consciousness in early-twentieth-century China
63. see Rebecca E. Karl, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Durham, N.C., 2002);
64. and Karl, "Creating Asia: China in the World in the Beginning of the Twentieth Century," AHR 103, no. 4 (October 1998): 1096-1118.
65. George Creel, Complete Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information (Washington, D.C., 1920), 1-2. For accounts of the CPI and its activities during the war, see Gregg Wolper, "The Origins of Public Diplomacy: Woodrow Wilson, George Creel, and the Committee on Public Information" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1991);
66. James R. Mock and Cedric Larson, Words That Won the War: The Story of the Committee on Public Information, 1917-1919 (Princeton, N.J., 1939);
67. and Creel's own celebratory account, How We Advertised America: The First Telling of the Amazing Story of the Committee on Public Information That Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner of the Globe (New York, 1920).
68. Carl Crow, "The Great War on the China Front," unpublished typescript, Carl Crow Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Columbia. Also Hans Schmidt, "Democracy for China: American Propaganda and the May Fourth Movement," Diplomatic History 22, no. 1 (1998): 1-28;
69. Kazuyuki Matsuo, "American Propaganda in China: The U.S. Committee on Public Information, 1918-1919," Journal of American and Canadian Studies 14 (1996): 19-42.
70. On the role of Reuters as the main supplier of international news across the British Empire and East Asia during this period, see Donald Read, The Power of News: The History of Reuters, 2nd ed. (New York, 1999), chaps. 3-6.
71. See, e.g., "America Asks for War," Amrita Bazar Patrika [hereafter ABP], April 5, 1917;
72. "President Wilson's Speech and Needed Change in British Policy," Mahratta, October 6, 1918, 473-474.
73. The Amrita Bazar Patrika was a major nationalist daily, published in Calcutta but read widely across India. See Murthy, Indian Journalism, 81. Mahratta was a weekly magazine published in Pune by the scholar, journalist, and nationalist leader B. G. Tilak. The New York Times boasted at the time: "Extracts from President Wilson's speeches are being quoted by villagers in the remotest part of India," and his words "have gripped their hearts as nothing else has done since the war began." See "Wilson's Words in India," New York Times, October 5, 1918, 12.
74. Wilson's speech, made on February 11. was reported with extensive excepts by Reuters and carried in "President Wilson, Address to Congress, Situation Reviewed," ABP, February 14, 1918;
75. the paper's editorial analysis appeared two days later. "Dr. Wilson's Peace Pronouncement," ABP, February 16, 1918. See also Natarajan, Press in India, 183.
76. "Mei zongtong zhi yihe tiaojian," Shibau, January 11, 1918, 2.
77. Also see "Mei zongtong yanshuo heping tiaojian," Dagongbao, January 11, 1918, 3.
78. Shibao was a major Shanghai daily; on its emergence and impact, see Joan Judge, Print and Politics: "Shibao" and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing China (Stanford, Calif., 1996). Dagongbao was a major daily published in Tianjin.
79. The advertisement appeared numerous times in January and February 1919, e.g., in New India, January 6 and 11, 1919; ABP, February 18, 1919. Other books advertised in the same list, below the Wilson collection, included volumes by such luminaries of the national movement as C. R. Das and Sarojini Naidu and a biography of Mahatma Gandhi. New India was published daily in Madras and associated with Annie Besant's India Home Rule League.
80. "Reviews and Notices," Mahratta, February 2, 1919, 59.
81. "Meiguo zongtong Wei-er-xun canzhan yanshuo chuban," Shibao, November 16, 1918, 1; the advertisement appeared several more times in this newspaper over the next weeks.
82. Also in Shenbao, November 21, 1918, 1.
83. Shenbao was a major daily published in Shanghai but read across China. On its reach into the countryside during this period
84. see Henrietta Harrison, "Newspapers and Nationalism in Rural China 1890-1929," Past & Present 166 (2000): 181-204.
85. See Shibao, December 24, 1918, 1, on the degree from the Sorbonne;
86. Shibao, December 29, 1918, 1
87. on the welcome in London. Also "Yingwang yu Mei zongtong zhi yanshuo," Shenbao, December 30, 1918. In India, "President Wilson Visits His Mother's Birthplace," ABP, January 3, 1919;
88. "Wilson's Address to Italian Parliament," ABP, January 7, 1919.
89. "President Wilson's Speech," Mahratta, October 6, 1918, 473-474.
90. For the impact of the war on the Indian nationalist movement, see Ellinwood and Pradhan, India and World War 1, esp. the essays by Brown, Barrier, Bose, and Wolpert.
91. "The Lesson of the War," Tribune (Lahore), December 20, 1918, L/R/5/201, 3;
92. "India after the War," Kesari (Pune), n.d., L/R/5/200, 596. India Office Records, British Library, London.
93. "India and the Peace Conference," Mahratta, December 1, 1918, 559.
94. "Cejin yongjiu hepinghui xuanyan shu," Shibao, December 16, 1918;
95. Hollington K. Tong, "What Can President Wilson Do for China?" Millard's Review, November 16, 1918, 431-434.
96. This article was reprinted in Chinese translation as "Zhongguo yu heping huiyi," Shibao, December 18, 1918.
97. Editorial in Meizhou pinglun, December 22, 1918
98. in Chen Duxiu, Duxiu wencun (Hefei, 1987), 388.
99. On Chen, see Lee Feigon, Chen Duxiu, Founder of the Chinese Communist Party (Princeton, N.J., 1983).
100. "Jielu Wei-er-xun 'xunci,'" in Hu Shi, Hu Shi liuxue riji (Changsha, 2000), 334.
101. On Hu Shi and his role in the May Fourth movement, see Jerome B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese. Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917-37 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).
102. Stephen N. Hay, Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan. China, and India (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 126-143.
103. Hu, "Wei-er-xun," July 12, 1914, and Hu Shi liuxue riji, 208.
104. Tagore to Wilson, May 9, 1918, and Tagore interview with Gertrude Stevenson, Boston Journal, December 2, 1916
105. cited in Stephen N. Hay, "Rabindranath Tagore in America," American Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1962): 449, 451. Tagore's publisher, Macmillan, wrote the president requesting his permission for the dedication, but Wilson's adviser, Colonel Edward M. House, counseled against it because his British contacts had warned him that Tagore was involved with Indian revolutionaries living in the United States. When news of this reached Tagore, he wrote Wilson a long, outraged letter of protest against such "lying calumny." The letter was shuffled around at the Department of State;
106. Wilson probably never saw it. Woodrow Wilson to Macmillan and Company, April 9, 1917, PWW, 42: 21;
107. Rabindranath Tagore, The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, ed. Sisir Kumar Das, 3 vols. (New Delhi, 1994-1996), 2: 770-771;
108. Hay, "Tagore in America," 451-452.
109. The phrase "League of Nations" was commonly rendered into Chinese at the time using the term datong, e.g., as "wanguo datong meng" or "guoji datong meng." Like other terms in Confucian philosophy, datong has no single accepted translation into English. Laurence G. Thomson, who translated Kang's book, rendered it as "One World," but noted more than a dozen other possibilities.
110. Jonathan D. Spence translated it as "Great Community," and Kang Youwei himself rendered the term into English literally as "Great Concord." See Kang Youwei, Ta T'ung Shu: The One-World Philosophy of K'ang Yu-wei, trans.
111. Laurence G. Thompson (London, 1958), esp. 29-30; Jonathan D. Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution (New York, 1981), 64-73;
112. Chow, The May Fourth Movement, 97-98 and note n there.
113. For more on Kang and his ideas, see Prasenjit Duara, " Transnationalism and the Predicament of Sovereignty: China, 1900-1945," AHR 102, no. 4 (October 1997): 1034-1035;
114. Kung-chuan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World: Kang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858-1927 (Seattle, Wash., 1975), esp. pt. 4;
115. Jung-pang Lo, ed., K'ang Yu-wei: A Biography and a Symposium (Tucson, Ariz., 1967), esp. 341-354.
116. "Cu Nan Bei su yihe yi ying Ouzhou heju dian," Shibao, December 30, 1918
117. reprinted in Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei zhenglun ji, ed. Yang Zhijun, 2 vols. (Beijing, 1981), 2: 1061-1063;
118. Hollington Tong, "Kang Yu-wei as Chinese Advocate of League of Nations," Millard's Review, February 8, 1919, 342-345.
119. In 1919, Kang noted that when he had written his book on datong in the 1880s, he had hoped that its principles would be realized "in the century to come," and was surprised to see them realized so soon. Lo, K'ang Yu-wei, 238.
120. Tagore to Rothenstein, April 1(?), 1913, in Mary M. Lago, ed., Imperfect Encounter: Letters of William Rothenstein and Rabindranath Tagore, 1911-1941 (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 106-107.
121. Portland Telegram, September 26, 1916, cited in Hay, "Tagore in America," 447.
122. E.g., "Mei zhi duli jinian," Shenbao, July 4, 1918, 11, which emphasized the United States' "democratic spirit" and its commitment to "uphold justice and humanity in the world."
123. Luo Jialun, "Jinri shijie zhi xinchao," Xinchao 1, no. 1 (January 1, 1919): 19-23.
124. Woodrow Wilson, "Democracy and Efficiency," Atlantic Monthly 87 (March 1901): 289-299.
125. Address to a Joint Session of Congress, January 8, 1918, PWW, 45: 537.
126. The Wilson administration's policies on race and their broader context are explored in Michael Dennis, "Looking Backward: Woodrow Wilson, the New South, and the Question of Race," American Nineteenth Century History 3, no. 1 (2002): 77-104;
127. Nicholas Patler, Jim Crow and the Wilson Administration: Protesting Federal Segregation in the Early Twentieth Century (Boulder, Colo., 2004).
128. For the encounters with Wilson of two prominent African American leaders at the time, see Christine A. Lunardini, "Standing Firm: William Monroe Trotter's Meetings with Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1914," Journal of Negro History 64, no. 3 (1979): 244-264;
129. Kenneth M. Glazier, "W. E. B. Du Bois' Impressions of Woodrow Wilson," Journal of Negro History 58, no. 4 (1973): 452-459.
130. Lala Lajpat Rai, The United States of America: A Hindu's Impressions and a Study (Calcutta, 1916), 77-172;
131. Tagore quoted in "Rabindranath Tagore in America," Modern Review 21, no. 6 (1917): 663.
132. On the boycott, see Guanhua Wang, In Search of Justice: The 1905-1906 Chinese Anti-American Boycott (Cambridge, Mass., 2001). On Chinese views on U.S. conquest and rule in the Philippines
133. see also Karl, Staging the World, chap. 4;
134. Michael H. Hunt, The Genesis of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy (New York, 1996), 90.
135. Kang Youwei, "Jiu wang lun," in Kang, Kang Youwei zhenglun ji, 2: 653.
136. "Greatest Living Poet of Hindustan Arrives," Los Angeles Times, September 19, 1916, 11. Tagore laid out his opposition to nationalism in the book Nationalism (New York, 1917), which he unsuccessfully attempted to dedicate to Wilson (see n. 47 above). Since Wilson understood his advocacy of "self-determination" as a step toward international cooperation rather than as a call to ethnic exclusivism, Tagore's wish was perhaps not as ironic as it might initially appear.
137. See, e.g., "Educational Policy in the Philippines," Mahratta, June 11, 1916, 281; "
138. America's Work in the Philippines," pts. 1 and 2, Modern Review 21, no. 3 (March 1917): 328-336, and no. 4 (April 1917): 455-460;
139. "Parallel between India and the Philippines," ABP, February 22, 1919;
140. Lajpat Rai, The United States, 296-325.
141. In its favorable review of the latter book, the Mahratta (December 17, 1916) noted that the chapter that dealt with U.S. rule in the Philippines should be studied by every Indian, and especially by "our rulers," but that the topic was so well-known to readers that it need not be elaborated.
142. Zhi Fei, "Zhimin de wenti," Guomingongbao, December 6, 1918, 5. Guomingongbao was a major Beijing daily and considered a venue for "liberal opinion";
143. see Hu Shi, "Intellectual China in 1919," The Chinese Social and Political Science Review 4, no. 4 (December 1919): 345-355.
144. Open letter to Wilson, written in late 1917, in M. N. Roy, Selected Works of M. N. Roy, ed. Sibnarayan Ray, 4 vols, (Delhi, 1987), 1: 67-83.
145. Li Dazhao, "Bolshevism de shengli," Xin qingnian 5, no, 5 (November 1918): 442-448.
146. The word "Bolshevism" appeared in English in the title of the piece. Li nevertheless noted elsewhere Wilson's "deep love of world peace," praised the United States as the leading example of a successful federal system, and described the League of Nations as leading toward the ideal of world federation, Li Dazhao, "Wei-er-xun yu pinghe," February 11, 1917, in Li Dazhao, Li Dazhao wenji, S vols. (Beijing, 1999), 1: 271;
147. Dazhao, "Lianzhizhuyi yu shijie zuzhi," Xinchao 1, no. 2 (February 1, 1919): 151-156.
148. On Li's role as a pioneering Chinese Marxist, see Maurice Meisner, Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism (Cambridge, Mass., 1967);
149. Danyang, "Makesi xueshuo yanjiuhui yu Zhongguo gongchanzhuyi zuzhi de qiyuan," Shixue yuekan 6 (2004): 51-59.
150. "Pining for the Perfect Day," Mahratta, April 22, 1917.
151. For India, see, e.g., ABP, July 6, 1918, 3, where a laudatory report of Wilson's July Fourth address sat next to headlines announcing "Further Bolshevik Submission to Germany" and reporting on the march of White forces on Moscow. ABP, January 16, 1919, "Reuters Telegrams" section, reported on "Bolshevik Destruction" in Poland and losses in Estonia; a separate item associates the spread of Bolshevism in Germany with riots and criminality. New India, January 15, 1919
152. also reported on the "Bolshevist Peril" in numerous items on p. 9. In China, see similar themes in "Eguo geming xiaoxi," Shibao, January 8, 1918, 2, and January 15, 1918, 2;
153. and items on the Russian Bolsheviks in Shibao, December 17, 1918, 1;
154. December 30, 1918, 1; and January 7, 1919, 2. Shenbao, January 13, 1919, 6, reported on the "miserable conditions" of Chinese laborers In Russia who were being conscripted into the Red Army, See also "Full Story of How China Is Menaced by the Bolsheviki;
155. Horrors in Russian Turkistan," Peking Leader, July 12, 1918, 3.
156. On Lenin as a "mysterious" figure, see Sudhindra Bose, "The Russian Situation," Modern Review 25 (1919): 131;
157. "Lenin," Mahratta, February 3, 1918, 60.
158. Michael Weiner, "Comintern in East Asia, 1919-39," in Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, eds., The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin (London, 1996), 158-163.
159. Weiner notes that at the First Comintern Congress in March 1919, "very little time or discussion was devoted to the 'colonial' question," and that Asian representation there was insignificant. By the Second Comintern Congress in the summer of 1920, however, the failure of the European revolutions, on the one hand, and the eruption of mass anticolonial protests in Asia, on the other, gave Asian communists a more substantial role, which was reflected in M. N. Roy's forceful contestation of Lenin's views on the colonial question. On the Roy-Lenin debate, see John P. Haithcox, "The Roy-Lenin Debate on Colonial Policy: A New Interpretation," Journal of Asian Studies 23, no. 1 (1963): 93-101.
160. Although many Indian and Chinese intellectuals had some general familiarity with socialist ideas before the war, specific interest in Marxist-Leninist doctrine and its potential relevance for India and China began to develop only in late 1919, after expectations for the peace conference collapsed and the Bolsheviks began to consolidate their regime. See Arif Dirlik, The Origins of Chinese Communism (Oxford, 1989), 23-25;
161. Sankar Ghose, Socialism and Communism in India (Bombay, 1971), 8-16.
162. Thirty-third Indian National Congress Session, Delhi, December 1918, All-India Congress Committee Papers [hereafter AICC], File 1, pt. 2, p. 347, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi [hereafter NMML].
163. Memorandum, dated London, December 11, 1918, enclosed in Tilak to Khaparde, December 18, 1918, G. S. Khaparde Papers, File 1, pp. 1-2, National Archives of India, New Delhi [hereafter NAI]; Tilak to D. W. Gokhale, dated London, January 23, 1919, Khaparde Papers, File 1, pp. 4-7, NAI.
164. Burma Provincial Congress Committee [hereafter PCC] to secretary of AICC, January 15, 1919, AICC Papers, File 7, pp. 3-5; secretary of Bihar & Orissa PCC to secretary of AICC, February 1, 1919, AICC Papers, File 6, p. 171; secretary of Bengal PCC to secretary of AICC, February 7, 1919, AICC Papers, File 6, p. 183; secretary of Madras PCC to AICC, February 13, 1919, AICC Papers, File 6, p. 193, all in NMML.
165. Tilak to Wilson, January 2, 1919, Series 5F, Reel 446, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Wilson's personal secretary acknowledged receipt of this missive and implied that the president had seen it, but upon receiving word of the exchange, an official at the British Foreign Office commented: "not much attention need be paid to Pres. Wilson's acknowledgement." Still, in the Indian press, Wilson's terse acknowledgment was a topic of much hopeful discussion and speculation, Close to Tilak, January 14, 1919, cited in Foreign Office memo, February 12, 1919, FO 608/211, fol. 124-125, UK National Archives, Kew; "India before the U.S.A. Senate," Mahratta, October 19, 1919, 499; "International Forum," Mahratta, November 9, 1919, 518.
166. See, e.g., Wilson to Tumulty, June 27, 1919, PWW, 61: 291. Other claims for self-determination that Wilson and the peace conference ignored include those of Koreans and Egyptians, but also of Irish and Catalan nationalists, The story is recounted in detail In Manela, The Wilsonian Moment.
167. "Ouzhan hehui yu woguo guanxi," Shenbao, November 22, 1918, 6;
168. Wunsz King, China at the Peace Conference in 1919 (Jamaica, N.Y., 1961), 3.
169. V. K. Wellington Koo and Cheng-ting T. Wang, China and the League of Nations (London, 1919), 2.
170. For the Supreme Council discussions on Shandong, see Paul Mantoux, The Deliberations of the Council of Four (March 24-June 28, 1919): Notes of the Official Interpreter, trans. and ed. Arthur S. Link. 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1992), 1: 399-408, 425-427.
171. From an interview with a student at Beijing University, quoted in Tsi C. Wang, The Youth Movement in China (New York, 1928), 161-162.
172. On the central role of the May Fourth movement in the history of modern China, see Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World (New York, 2004).
173. On the impact of the events of the spring of 1919 on the course of the nationalist movement in India, see R. Kumar, ed., Essays on Gandhian Politics: The Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919 (Oxford, 1971), esp. 1-16.
174. See, e.g., Shibao, April 23-26 and 29, 1919, for numerous reports of "riots" and "chaos" in India, as well as in Egypt and Korea. In India, see, e.g., Mahratta, October 19, 1919, which reports on "President Wilson's Betrayals" of numerous nations, including Korea, Ireland, and Egypt.
175. Mao Zedong, "Afghanistan Picks Up the Sword" and "So Much for National Self-Determination!," Xiangjiang pinglun, July 14, 1919, reprinted in Stuart R. Schram, ed., Mao's Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings, 1912-1949, 7 vols. (Armonk, N.Y., 1992-), 1: 335, 337.
176. Mao added with characteristic sarcasm that he "felt sorry" for "poor Wilson," who was in Paris "like an ant on a hot skillet," and "could not speak his mind." Mao Zedong, "Poor Wilson," Xiangjiang pinglun, July 14, 1919, reprinted in Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 1: 338.
177. Incomplete and unpublished review of Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism (London, 1918), undated but written sometime in the summer of 1919. Jawaharlal Nehru Papers, Writings and Speeches, serial no. 21, NMML.
178. Ibid.; Mao Zedong, "Study of the Extremist Party," Xiangjiang pinglun, July 14, 1919, reprinted in Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 1: 332 and n. 1.
179. The full intellectual genealogy of Wilson's thinking on self-determination ideas is traced in Pomerance, "The United States and Self-Determination," But compare Knock. To End All Wars, esp. chaps. 2-4.
180. On the evolution of international society toward the inclusion of non-Western nations, see Medley Bull, "The Emergence of Universal Society" and "The Revolt against the West," both in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, eds., The Expansion of International Society (New York, 1984), 117-126, 217-228;
181. Gerrit W. Gong, The Standard of "Civilization" in International Society (Oxford, 1984). esp. chaps. 2-4.