Abstract

Unlike their Western counterparts, the roles and history of non-Western think tanks have been little studied. The first Indian think tank, the Indian Institute of International Affairs (IIIA), has been mostly considered peripheral to the history of International Relations and the end of the British Empire. Yet, this organisation was neither just an addition to Dominion institutes studying international affairs, nor simply a colonial institution against which the nationalist Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) emerged. Moulded in the image of the metropole think tank, Chatham House, and its sister organisations, the IIIA was set up with the same objective of strengthening the empire through new institutional bonds and a common global outlook. Instead, it contributed to disrupting the imperial logic underlying this project through India’s internationalisation and the diverging worldview it publicised within the Commonwealth. The ICWA can be understood within this trajectory of emancipation from the global project of Empire, and within a larger struggle to define the world order. Revisiting early Indian think tanks helps us better understand the relation between IR, political power, and decolonisation, and retrieve a non-Western international engagement, one parallel but distinct from the well-known anticolonial internationalism of the interwar years.

摘要

与西方同行不同，非西方智库的作用和历史很少被研究。第一个印度智库印度国际事务研究所（IIIA）一直被认为是国际关系史和大英帝国终结的边缘。然而，这个组织不仅是对研究国际事务的自治领机构的补充，也不仅仅是一个殖民机构，民族主义的印度世界事务委员会 (ICWA) 反对它出现。以大都会智库查塔姆研究所及其姊妹组织的形象塑造，IIIA 的成立具有相同的目标，即通过新的机构纽带和共同的全球视野来加强帝国。反而，它通过印度的国际化和它在英联邦内宣传的不同世界观，破坏了这个项目背后的帝国逻辑。ICWA 可以理解为从帝国的全球计划中解放出来的这一轨迹，以及定义世界秩序的更大斗争。重新审视早期的印度智库有助于我们更好地理解国际关系、政治权力和非殖民化之间的关系，并恢复非西方的国际参与，与两次世界大战期间众所周知的反殖民国际主义平行但又不同。