India and Asia in Merze Tate’s Travels and Thought

This paper explores the Eastward turn in Merze Tate’s international thought. A Fulbright scholar in India in 1950-51, she lectured on geopolitics, international relations, and race relations in the United States while traveling throughout India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Japan. Her largest body of work focused on imperialism in the Pacific, beginning with US annexation of Hawaii, and this year of travel and teaching was crucial to her conceptualization of that work.