Geographies of Anticolonialism

Dr Andrew Davies is a Geographer and Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Liverpool, UK. His work focuses on past and present anticolonialism, from the Indian independence movement to the politics of Tibetan support organizations. He has helped communities across the UK understand the contested and problematic legacies of colonialism in the current day. He is co-editor of 10 Years on the Parish: The Autobiography and Letters of George Garrett.

‘Theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich, Geographies of Anticolonialism takes a spatial approach to the study of anticolonialism. Through an exploration of a cluster of little-known but fascinating figures situated in the French South Indian enclave of Pondicherry – poet Subramania Bharati, nationalist mobilizer V.O. Chidambaram Pillai, international anarchist M.P.T. Acharya and spiritual nationalist Aurobindo Ghosh – Andrew Davies makes a major contribution to the study of Indian freedom struggle as well as to global anticolonial thought.’  A.R. Venkatachalapathy, Professor of History, Madras Institute of Development Studies, India‘In this wide-ranging, engagingly written and provocative historical geography of anticolonialism, Davies threads together analyses of sea networks, land hubs, politico-spiritual utopias and anarchist internationalism, which return to but are not confined within South India. Anticolonialism here broadens the scope of the de-colonial and adds ideological and material politics to the postcolonial, brilliantly contesting the territorial and epistemological boundaries of colonial geography.’Stephen Legg, Professor of Geography, University of Nottingham, UK‘Geographies of Anticolonialism delves into a radical culture situated within and through the South Indian coastal city of Pondicherry. The stories and individual biographies (the book is centred around a ‘gang’ of four key anticolonial figures) that emerge are absorbing in themselves, from the alternative shipping routes of the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company (SSNCo) to the radical publishing networks associated with the writings of Subramania Bharati, and speak to much wider debates around resistance and spatial politics.’Paul Griffin, Northumbria University (Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography)

• Series Editor’s Preface viAcknowledgements viiAuthor’s Note ix1 Post? Anti? De? Why Anticolonialism Still Matters 12 Theorising Anticolonial Space 193 South India and Anticolonialism: The Minor Politics of Anticolonialism in a Historiographical ‘Backwater’ 404 Appropriating Modernity and Development to Contest Colonialism: The Swadeshi Movement in South India and the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company 685 Spacing and Placing Anticolonialism: Pondicherry as a Hub of Radical Nationalist Anticolonial Thought 906 Envisioning a Spiritual and Cosmopolitan Decolonial Future? Sri Aurobindo’s ‘Non-political’ Anticolonialism 1157 The ‘International’ and Anarchist Life of M.P.T. Acharya 1378 Conclusion: The Necessity of a Geographical Anticolonial Thought, or Why Anticolonialism Still Matters 161Bibliography 166Index 169