SIGNATURE WORK
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2022

This thesis examines nineteenth century American abolitionist writings on India. My primary sources include abolitionist newspapers, primarily focusing on William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper the Liberator, but also incorporating other abolitionist newspapers, such as the Friend of Man, the Principia, and the National Era and publications of individual abolitionists, like Lydia Maria Child’s The History of the Condition of Women, in Various Ages and Nations. By looking at their writings on Indian women, Christian missionary activities in India, and British rule in India, I argue that although many abolitionists inevitably Orientalized India, they at the same time found the parallel of India in the US, which blurred the boundaries between the self and the Other. Although they did not develop a full criticism towards colonialism in the antebellum period, their criticism towards Empire matured by the early twentieth century. My scholarly intervention centers on acknowledging the role of abolitionists’ writings on India in the intellectual history of American abolitionism and the US-India transnational history that few scholarships have covered. By not engaging India, the scholarships miss a critical perspective to examine how abolitionism intertwined with its related causes of feminism, anti-clericalism, and anti-imperialism. More importantly, abolitionists exceeded Orientalism as the only frame of understanding India in the nineteenth century US-India transnational history.