| Tracing a history of Indian political activism and repression, this dissertation examines the broad, heterogeneous, and innovative anticolonial struggle organized by Indian students, migrant workers, and intellectuals in the agricultural fields of California, the lumber mills of the Pacific Northwest, and cities across North America during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Attuned to the international dimensions of racial subjugation, thousands of Indian migrants saw their struggles against racial discrimination, economic exploitation, and political repression within the United States and Canada as part of a broader global struggle against colonial subjugation. Their attacks on imperial rule came to be indistinguishable from radical critiques of the inherent limitations of American "democracy" and universality as sources of racial justice and political freedom. I argue that U.S., Canadian and British authorities translated the perceived threat of Indian radicalism into a racial difference that justified and reproduced antiradical and anti-Asian laws; demarcated and enforced racial, national, and imperial borders against "foreign" threats and influences; and consolidated white supremacy in the name of "national security."... |
