Imagining Woodrow Wilson in Asia: Dreams of East-West Harmony and the Revolts Against Empire in 1919

For a brief interval, Wilson stood alone for mankind. For a moment, there was an extraordinary and significant wave of response to him throughout the globe. No one remembers him that way today save ironically.

For too long, historiography on the League of Nations has focused squarely on Europe and ignored demands from nonEuropean powers for self-determination and rising anti-colonialism. Wilson and what he represented impacted anti-colonial Asian intellectuals. Responses to rhetoric and the construction of images allows one to better capture the broad scope of the "Wilsonian" moment.

World War I deprived colonial powers of their moral superiority. The disappointments from the West and the United States led to widespread disenchantment. Wilson loomed far larger in the imaginations of Asian intellectuals, both as an inspiration for expectations and rhetoric and as a putative source of practical support for self-determination. Wilson's war-time rhetoric was a blueprint for a more peaceful and inclusive international order, one in which Asian nations achieved greater measures of equality and sovereignty. The Bolsheviks also trumpeted an anti-colonial message.

Self-determination more than a phrase: it was an imperative principle of action from which statesmen ignored at their peril, conjuring an international order based around democratic forms of government that would serve as a check against radicalism. Wilson's adoption of a Bolshevik phrase rendered his pronouncements more radical, amplifying their impact. Nationalists recognized the utility of Wilson's rhetoric and a sense of unprecedented opportunity, punctuated with religious terminology, pervaded nationalist press in India and elsewhere. Wilson, with his unworldliness, could break free from these confines as the United States, with its anti-colonial origins, creed of liberty, and wealth represented the potential for something new in world history.

Wilson, of course, ignored pleas from the Indian National Congress for self-determination as he considered it neither possible nor desirable for the peace conference to become a referendum on imperialism. Chinese and Indians felt betrayed by the Great Power game occurring in India, which made Bolshevism more appealing. Expectations for a new and more inclusive world order provoked by Wilson's rhetoric went far beyond the president's intentions.