Impressum Global Histories: A Student Journal. Volume 3, Issue 1 (2017) ISSN: 2366-780X Editors and Editorial Board Members Editor: Paul Sprute Alexandra Holmes Editorial Board: Brace Bargo Maurice Boer Violet Dove Ryan Glauser Björn Holm Philipp Kandler Arunima Kundu David Lang Alexandra Leonzini Marvin Martin Daria Tashkinova Sébastien Tremblay Publisher information Founded in 2015 by students of the MA program ‘Global History’ at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, the ‘Global Histories’ journal is a Berlin based bi-annual journal published in association with the Freie Universität Berlin. Freie Universität Berlin Global Histories: A Student Journal Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut Koserstr. 20 14195 Berlin Sponsors This journal project is realized with generous support from Freie Universität Ber- lin, specifically from the Center for Global History of the Friedrich-Meinecke- Institut, the OJS e-publishing project at CEDIS, and the ZEDAT hostmaster team. Scope and purpose In response to the increasing interest in the ‘global’ as a field of inquiry, a per- spective, and an approach, ‘Global Histories: A Student Journal’ aims to offer a platform for debate, discussion, and intellectual exchange for a new generation of scholars with diverse research interests. Global history can provide an opportu- nity to move beyond disciplinary boundaries and methodological centrisms, both in time and space. As students of global history at Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, our interest lies not in prescribing what global history is and what it is not, but to encourage collaboration, cooperation, and dis- course among students seeking to explore new intellectual frontiers. Publication frequency The journal is published twice yearly in spring and autumn. Please see the website for further details. Copyright and publication dates All material is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Interna- tional copyright license. The first issue was published in December 2015, the second in October 2016. Peer review status and ethics This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. All articles which appear in this issue, with the exception of edito- rial content, were subject to peer review. Contact information For librarians to submit information or questions about the bibliographic history and publication title, please contact the Editor at: [email protected]. For more information, please consult our website www.globalhistories.com or email [email protected]. Contents Impressum ii Editorial Note vi Acknowledgements ix Articles 1 Post-Imperial Agony or Pan-Continental Future? Classical Eurasianism as a Global Ideology in the Interwar Period Lilia Boliachevets 2 Interpreting the ‘Thaw’ from the ‘Third World’: The Guyanese Writer Jan Carew on Modernization and Trauma in the Early 1960s Soviet Union Hannes Schweikardt 19 Bharatbhoomi Punyabhoomi: In Search of a Global Theosophical India in Tarak- ishore Choudhury’s Writings Arkamitra Ghatak 39 Decolonization and the Question of Exclusion in Taiwanese Nationalism since 1945 Wolfgang Thiele 62 The ‘Bodyscape’: Performing Cultural Encounters in Costumes and Tattoos in Treaty Port Japan Hui Wang 85 Contending Sovereigns, Contentious Spaces: Illicit Migration and Urban Gover- nance in the Late Ottoman Empire Hatice Ayse Polat 108 Towards a Global Perspective on Contemporary History. A Critical Literature Review of Recent German Zeitgeschichte Dennis Kölling 127 Book Reviews 141 The Prospect of Global History Reviewed by Alexandra Leonzini 142 Fielding Transnationalism Reviewed by Björn Holm 145 The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace Reviewed by Sébastien Tremblay 150 Undoing Monogamy: The Politics of Science and Possibilities of Biology Reviewed by Arunima Kundu 153 Humanitarian Invasion: Global Development in Cold War Afghanistan Reviewed by Ryan Glauser 156 Editorial Note Dear Reader, Having examined the benefits of global history perspectives on migration in the last thematic edition of Global Histories, we return to the full diversity of the field in this issue. Researching questions across a wide spectrum of locations and lan- guages, the assembled studies are the product of thorough examinations of their sources, whether based on deep engagement with specific literary or theosophical key texts, photographs, or partisan political writing, as well as administrative and state records. The contributions debate a multitude of issues, ranging from the complex and sometimes contradictory expressions of trans-cultural encounters, over the global connections of political ideologies or the dynamics of transna- tional biopolitics, through to overarching questions of ‘modernization’ or racism. All six research papers that we have included in this edition pursue their ques- tions within contexts informed by imperial or (quasi-)colonial power relations. This circumstance reflects preferences within our field as much as it mirrors the global conditions of the second half of the 19th century and the longest part of the 20th century, the time frame of this edition´s studies. The final article of the edition expands the chronology by offering a discussion on how the presentist historio- graphical tradition of Zeitgeschichte might help to move global history perspec- tives even closer to our current moment. However, we equally welcome future contributions that expand the chronological span by discussing Global Histories of earlier time periods. In this centenary of the Russian revolution, we begin our current issue with Lilia Boliachevet´s investigation into Eurasianism. The article examines whether this conservative Russian ideology of the interwar period should be understood as a vision for a pan-continental future with the potential to unite the peoples of the former Russian empire, or instead as an expression of ‘post-imperial agony’ among intellectuals in exile to soothe the pain of having lost their homeland. Boliachvet´s work is based on extensive research in Russian and Czech archives and shifts the focus to ‘non-Russian’ Eurasianism as it was taken up and contested by representatives of the Kalmyk and Jewish exile community as well as Japanese Pan-Asianists. Hannes Schweikardt offers a second contribution on the global history of the Russian revolution. This study analyzes how the Guyanese writer Jan Carew explored the results of Soviet modernization and the trauma caused by Stalinist terror through the eyes of exchange students from the ‘Third World’ during the Soviet Union´s Thaw period in the early 1960s. The essay argues that Carew´s writings were profoundly inspired by the style of Soviet literature at the time, and therefore reflect successful Soviet cultural diplomacy despite Carew´s dismissal of the USSR´s development as a model for the ‘Third World’ and his denunciation of Soviet racism. Schweikardt thereby contributes to the study of the late Soviet Union´s global cultural influences. In the next piece, reflecting a global intellectual history perspective, Arkami- tra Ghatak has engaged with the key text Brahmavadi Rsi o Brahmanvidya pub- lished in 1911 by Tarakishore Choudhury, a High Court lawyer in Calcutta who would later become a famous Vaishnava saint. Ghatak´s essay highlights various nuances and contradictions of power within the intellectual universe of the colo- nized Bengali intelligentsia which was shaped by the dual forces of the British Empire´s transnational information economy as well as indigenous traditions of knowledge production. Ghatak points to the ambivalences as well as appropria- tions that Choudhury´s strive to reconstruct an ‘Indic’ identity involved in this context. Wolfgang Thiele´s contribution is concerned with the development of Taiwan- ese nationalism after the end of the country´s colonization by Japan in 1945 and the establishment of the Chinese-nationalist KMT regime in 1947. Using primary sources published by Taiwanese nationalists in exile, most notably the newspaper Taiwan Chinglian, Thiele argues that their nationalist doctrine continued to iden- tify domestic power relationships in Taiwan with the fates of colonized countries worldwide. The author also demonstrates how discursive nationalism was used to symbolically exclude mainland Chinese from the Taiwanese nation and he in- troduces the term ad hoc colonial nationalism to distinguish the independence movements of the ‘Japanese’ from the ‘Chinese era’. Hui Wang´s essay on the dynamics of the bodyscape in Japanese treaty ports shows how complex, multi-faceted, and contradictory the relations between Eu- ropeans, Americans and Japanese inhabitants could play out in the context of the Meiji restoration. Exploring the ‘cultural performativity’ of costuming and tattoo- ing, this study shows how these expressions of cultural encounters stimulated cul- tural flows in multiple directions and reflected expectations of finding authentic- ity as well as reaching modernity through the bodyscape. The author concretizes these wider cultural patterns by focusing on the tourism sector of Yokohama and tracing the story of the port´s legendary tattooist Hori Chiyo. Hatice Ayse Polat follows the spatial turn to the late Ottoman Empire through an examination of illicit migration and urban governance in fin-de-siècle Constanti- nople. Based on extensive archival research, the author traces