Abstract
As rising powers, India and China are critical to regional and global stability in the twenty-first century. While most analyses of their behavior emphasize their material capabilities as an explanatory variable, this article takes into greater account the role of the past. This involves how they both operate under a “post-imperial ideology” (PII), an emphasis on colonial trauma and “victimhood,” exemplified in their still unresolved territorial dispute. Using new documents, this article shows how PII led to the breakdown of the negotiations between the two sides and war in 1962. PII not only suggests a new way to think about two important rising powers today, China and India, it also offers a new way to think about states in the international system.
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