India’s Yankee Friends: Americans Who Supported Greater Political Freedom for India, 1919–20

Millions of Indians near the end of World War I thought that Woodrow Wilson’s words and messages offered opportunities for a safer world in which India could actively participate and prosper. However, as they would come to realize in 1919, Wilson never followed through on his alleged idea for national self-determination for the people of India or the remainder of the colonial world. India still had her fervid American supporters. The Indian nationalist movement in the United States came under intense criticism and scrutiny during the early years of the Great War when dozens of Indians were arrested and tried for planning to foment a rebellion in India against British rule. With a sophisticated spy and propaganda network and complicit American counterparts, British officials effectively pressured the Americans to crack down on Indian nationalists on American soil for planning destruction against the British empire. American politicians, progressives, and radicals, including Senators Robert LaFollette, George Norris, Joseph France, Medill McCormick, as well as activists Agnes Smedley, Frank Walsh, and Gilbert Roe staunchly stood by their progressive internationalist views and spoke out against British imperialism while also calling for Indian self-determination in the tumultuous aftermath of World War I. Using sources from American, British, and Indian archives, I bring scholarly attention to the Americans who favored national self-determination for India just after World War I while also shining light on an American anti-imperialist movement that continued well into the twentieth century. I argue that these Americans desired to see the postwar United States become a more inclusive and tolerant place by casting their reformist domestic views about racial equality and improved democracy onto the discursive canvas of the potential new world order about which Wilson often spoke.