Why do countries go to war over disputed lands? Why do they fight even when the territories in question are economically and strategically worthless? Drawing on critical approaches to international relations, political geography, international law, and social history, and based on a close examination of the Indian experience during the twentieth century, Itty Abraham addresses these important questions and offers a new conceptualization of foreign policy as a state territorializing practice. Identifying the contested process of decolonization as the root of contemporary Asian inter-state territorial conflicts, he explores the political implications of establishing a fixed territorial homeland as a necessary starting point for both international recognition and national identity—concluding that disputed lands are important because of their intimate identification with the legitimacy of the postcolonial nation-state, rather than because of their potential for economic gains or their place in historic grievances. By treating Indian diaspora policy and geopolitical practice as exemplars of foreign policy behavior, Abraham demonstrates how their intersection offers an entirely new way of understanding India's vexed relations with Pakistan and China. This approach offers a new and productive way of thinking about foreign policy and inter-state conflicts over territory in Asia—one that is non-U.S. and non-European focused—that has a number of implications for regional security and for foreign policy practices in the contemporary postcolonial world.

India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, left behind a legacy of both great achievements and surprising defeats. Most notably, he failed to resolve the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan and the territorial conflict with China. In the fifty years since Nehru's death, much ink has been spilled trying to understand the decisions behind these puzzling foreign policy missteps. Mahesh Shankar cuts through the surrounding debates about nationalism, idealism, power, and security with a compelling and novel answer: reputation. India's investment in its international image powerfully shaped the state's negotiation and bargaining tactics during this period. The Reputational Imperative proves that reputation is not only a significant driver in these conflicts but also that it's about more than simply looking good on the global stage. Considerations such as India's relative position of strength or weakness and the value of demonstrating resolve or generosity also influenced strategy and foreign policy. Shankar answers longstanding questions about Nehru's territorial negotiations while also providing a deeper understanding of how a state's global image works. The Reputational Imperative highlights the pivotal—yet often overlooked—role reputation can play in a broad global security context.

“Statemaking and Territory in South Asia: Lessons from the Anglo–Gorkha War (1814–1816)” seeks to understand how European colonization transformed the organization of territory in South Asia through an examination of the territorial disputes that underlay the Anglo–Gorkha War of 1814–1816 and subsequent efforts of the colonial state to reorder its territories. The volume argues that these disputes arose out of older tribute, taxation and property relationships that left their territories perpetually intermixed and with ill-defined boundaries. It also seeks to describe the long-drawn-out process of territorial reordering undertaken by the British in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that set the stage for the creation of a clearly defined geographical template for the modern state in South Asia.

"This book makes a case for the unprecedented violence in India's immediate postcolonization and argues that it played a crucial role in institutional and constitutional development during this six-year span"--

India is becoming an increasingly visible, powerful and influential state within the global system. As this rise to prominence continues, better appreciating the interests and principles that structure the international interactions of South Asia’s largest state has never been so important. Keen to embrace an expectant future as a great power, India’s transitional journey has been characterised by astounding diplomatic achievements and significant strategic failures. In this robust and comprehensive analysis, Chris Ogden introduces students to the key dimensions of Indian foreign policy from her emergence as a modern state in 1947 to the present day. Combining theoretical insight with numerous case studies and profiles, he examines the foreign policy making process, strategic thinking, the crucial search for economic growth, and India’s difficult regional position and troubled borders. Tracking the trajectory of one of the 21st century’s major Asian and global powers, later chapters focus on New Delhi’s multilateral interaction, great power dynamics, and expanding relations with the United States and the world. Critically assessing what kind of great power India can and wants to be, this wide-ranging introduction will be an invaluable text for students of South Asian politics, foreign policy, and international relations.

Throughout history, human societies have been organized preeminently as territories—politically bounded regions whose borders define the jurisdiction of laws and the movement of peoples. At a time when the technologies of globalization are eroding barriers to communication, transportation, and trade, Once Within Borders explores the fitful evolution of territorial organization as a worldwide practice of human societies. Master historian Charles S. Maier tracks the epochal changes that have defined territories over five centuries and draws attention to ideas and technologies that contribute to territoriality’s remarkable resilience. Territorial boundaries transform geography into history by providing a framework for organizing political and economic life. But properties of territory—their meanings and applications—have changed considerably across space and time. In the West, modern territoriality developed in tandem with ideas of sovereignty in the seventeenth century. Sovereign rulers took steps to fortify their borders, map and privatize the land, and centralize their sway over the populations and resources within their domain. The arrival of railroads and the telegraph enabled territorial expansion at home and abroad as well as the extension of control over large spaces. By the late nineteenth century, the extent of a nation’s territory had become an index of its power, with overseas colonial possessions augmenting prestige and wealth and redefining territoriality. Turning to the geopolitical crises of the twentieth century, Maier pays close attention to our present moment, asking in what ways modern nations and economies still live within borders and to what degree our societies have moved toward a post-territiorial world.

Territorial disputes are one of the main sources of tension in Northeast Asia. Escalation in such conflicts often stems from a widely shared public perception that the territory in question is of the utmost importance to the nation. While that's frequently not true in economic, military, or political terms, citizens' groups and other domestic actors throughout the region have mounted sustained campaigns to protect or recover disputed islands. Quite often, these campaigns have wide-ranging domestic and international consequences. Why and how do territorial disputes that at one point mattered little, become salient? Focusing on non-state actors rather than political elites, Alexander Bukh explains how and why apparently inconsequential territories become central to national discourse in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. These Islands Are Ours challenges the conventional wisdom that disputes-related campaigns originate in the desire to protect national territory and traces their roots to times of crisis in the respective societies. This book gives us a new way to understand the nature of territorial disputes and how they inform national identities by exploring the processes of their social construction, and amplification.

Uncovers the greatest experiment in democratic history: the creation of the electoral roll and universal adult franchise in India.

Throughout the 20th century, electricity was considered to be the primary vehicle of modernity, as well as its quintessential symbol. In India, electrification was central to how early nationalists and planners conceptualized Indian development, and huge sums were spent on the project from then until now. Yet despite all this, sixty-five years after independence nearly 400 million Indians have no access to electricity. Electrifying India explores the political and historical puzzle of uneven development in India's vital electricity sector. In some states, nearly all citizens have access to electricity, while in others fewer than half of households have reliable electricity. To help explain this variation, this book offers both a regional and a historical perspective on the politics of electrification of India as it unfolded in New Delhi and three Indian states: Maharashtra, Odisha, and Andhra Pradesh. In those parts of the countryside that were successfully electrified in the decades after independence, the gains were due to neither nationalist idealism nor merely technocratic plans, but rather to the rising political influence and pressure of rural constituencies. In looking at variation in how public utilities expanded over a long period of time, this book argues that the earlier period of an advancing state apparatus from the 1950s to the 1980s conditioned in important ways the manner of the state's retreat during market reforms from the 1990s onward.