Parting Gifts of Empire - Palestine and India At the Dawn of Decolonization

Parting Gifts of Empire narrates an untold story of how Arabs and South Asians in the twentieth century sought to decolonize their minds. The histories of Palestine and India-both partitioned by the British Empire-were intimately linked. In the face of the same imperially created chasm, intellectuals in Africa and Asia reinvigorated centuries of shared histories to forge new horizons, new solidarities, new institutions, and new fields of knowledge. Esmat Elhalaby traces the forgotten lives of scholars like Wadi' al-Bustani, revisits Arab and Indian feminist meetings, highlights gatherings such as Delhi's 1947 Asian Relations Conference, and argues for the centrality of Palestine to the rise of Third Worldism. This book breaks new ground to unfold a global intellectual history of anticolonialism, Asian unity, pan-Islamism, and nonalignment in the making of what became known as the Global South.

About the author

Esmat Elhalaby is Assistant Professor of Transnational History at the University of Toronto.

Product details

• Authors: Esmat Elhalaby
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 30.09.2025
• EAN: 9780520389274
• ISBN: 978-0-520-38927-4
• No. of pages: 264
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; HISTORY / Middle East / General, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, HISTORY / World, India, General & world history, Colonialism & imperialism, Middle Eastern history, Colonialism and imperialism, Palestine, Asian History, General and world history, National liberation & independence, post-colonialism, Decolonisation and postcolonial studies, HISTORY / Asia / South / India