'Greater India' was a transimperial, Indocentric research paradigm that informed the colonial recovery of the ancient past in Central and Southeast Asia. Ancient India was postulated as the fount of an expansive classicism – an actor in world history on a par with ancient Greece and Rome. Under the Greater India movement, the scholarly quest for 'India in Asia' became tied to anti-colonial, pedagogical, nationalist and Asianist agendas. Yet although it provided a potent anti-colonial imaginary, the movement also bolstered visions of Indian exceptionalism and energized Hindu nationalist ideas of India as a civilizing, colonizing power. Speaking directly to debates that define and divide India today, this is essential reading for those interested in the legacies of Orientalist scholarship and interwar visions of Indian internationalism. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

‘This is a landmark study of an influential vision of history that continues to shape debates to this day. It is also a fascinating tale of intellectual collusions across Eurasia as a whole.’

Nile Green - author of How Asia Found Herself: A Story of Intercultural Understanding

‘Weaving in the history of ideas with that of an elite transnational network of Dutch, French, and Indian intellectuals, all invested in India’s past for diverse reasons, Spoelder unpacks an imaginary - Greater India - that, in restoring India to the centre of world history, often sought to justify Indian power and leadership in the present. A superb book that turns the idea of India inside out, and rethinks our understanding of Indian exceptionalism.’

Bérénice Guyot-Réchard - Associate Professor, King’s College London