Based on a broad archival record, this book is the fruit of long-term engagement. It is far-reaching and contributes to multiple research fields, and, not the least, makes a case for the methodological approach of global microhistory. The YMCA’s associational activities in late colonial India – and almost a decade after independence – becomes the point of departure for understanding global civil society’s role in modernization processes and the formation of modernity.1 While the book offers interventions into specific fields of early twentieth-century history globally and in South Asia specifically, the analytical focus is on YMCA’s North American form of ‘soft power’ in relation to modernity.

For those familiar with Harald Fischer-Tiné’s scholarship on colonialism in South Asia the book in many ways comes across as an expansion of the author’s oeuvre in terms of centering civil society and knowledge production.2 Lately, a series of publications have focused on North America and the YMCA in relation to South Asia.3 A recurrent feature of the scholarship, and likewise an integrated part of this book, is the impetus to shift perspectives on colonialism by challenging preconceived frameworks and historiographical traditions. A common thread throughout the chapters, stated by the author and implicit by means of the intricate range of primary sources used, is the methodological approach to draw upon a global set of archives to understand regional formations, local movements, and cultural specificities of modernity in South Asia.

The introduction provides a brief discussion on forms of ‘modernization’ and ‘modernity’ (p. 5), followed by five chapters which carefully contextualize the YMCA in India during mainly the late colonial period and into the first decade after independence. The main argument makes a case for both methodological reflections and helps to fill a gap in the understanding of modernity and modernization processes during primarily the three decades between 1905 and 1935. Methodologically, it serves to question the long-standing and persistent historiographical tradition of writing the arrival of modernity as the outcome of competing agendas of the colonial state and nationalists by adding a third space and set of actors, that of an international – and not seldom North American – civil society. The YMCA is one brick in a network of many global civil society associations which connected people as modes and speeds of communication picked up in the first half of the twentieth century across the world. Historiographically, it is an important contribution for understanding how circulation of ideas need not always function at the level of empire, or be driven by political agendas related to specific geopolitics. Yet the then ‘new’ form of American imperialism and the dwindling of ‘old’ colonial powers make up the context for the analysis of North American ‘soft power’s’ impact in South Asia.

The first chapter provides the foundation for understanding the YMCA’s global movement and its institutionalization in South Asia. Simultaneously, it charts a brief history of modernization discourses in British India, which serves as a point of entry for reading the subsequent four chapters. The chapters address the YMCA’s work in various spheres of society: welfare work for railwaymen and soldiers (chapter 2), sport and physical education (chapter 3), adolescent work (chapter 4), and rural development (chapter 5). While the variation in source material becomes evident in each chapter, the historiographical contextualization – straddling both South Asian modern history and the global history of civil society movements – the rich empirical material receive an equally thorough analysis. The variation of sources drawn upon comes into full display by making a case for grounding arguments and theoretical discussions in concrete material examples. Chapter three, for instance, contains a fascinating discussion on physical ideals and racialized colonial discourses, which shows the recurrent discrepancy between visions of emancipation and racism in practice.

The shift in narrative focus and use of source materials between the chapters help to reveal layers of information. The biographical approach in chapter 5 charts Duane Spencer Hatch’s transnational career and the making of developmentalist knowledge production. The discussion on ‘low modernism’ in the late colonial period in education and rural development is particularly engaging (p. 149). It is one example where global archival sources bring out regional history’s transnational impact through a discussion on the complex entanglements of ideas and practices. The final chapter is chronologically also the chapter ending closest in time (1955) to the present and fittingly addresses the legacy of the YMCA’s rural development schemes in later developmental discourse and programmes.

Fischer-Tiné emphasizes the limitations of both the archival material available and the limited perspectives of the sources drawn upon, i.e., documents produced mainly by North American, European, and South Asian members of the YMCA, often from elite backgrounds or leadership positions (pp. 8-9, 169). In addition, being conversant in several South Asian languages where the YMCA worked, would – as pointed out by the author – have further helped to access sources with local and regional as well as potentially nuanced perspectives on particularly the reception of YMCA and the ideas and visions put into practice (p. 170). In addition to carefully acknowledging these limitations in representation of perspectives, the silence and absence of sources are accounted for and questioned. One area which is studied less extensively due to the paucity of sources, yet intriguing since it is associated with the YMCA elsewhere, is sex and sexual relations (pp. 8-9). While the discussion on gendered aspects of the movement and masculinity is well-integrated, as for instance in the section on the ‘the boy problem’ in the United States and India (p. 110), a broader contextualization of gender norms in relation to citizenship and nationalism could help to emphasize its significance. Similarly, bringing in perspectives on ageing and examples from historical disability studies may bring out the implications of YMCA’s work with youth and physical fitness in relation to modernity.4

These are however minor concerns considering the broad scope and meticulous research the book offers, which indeed opens and invites for more innovative methodological approaches. “The YMCA in late colonial India” provides a solid and conceptually important demonstration of how shifting analytical frames by thinking through alternative scales, concepts and actors bring together global historical perspectives and at the same time carefully crafts a regional historical context.

Notes:
1 The abbreviation YMCA is more widely known than the full name ‘Young Men’s Christian Association’ or the shorter form ‘Y’.
2 Cf. the monographs by Harald Fischer-Tiné, Shyamji Krishnavarma. Sanskrit, Sociology and Anti_Imperialism, New Delhi 2014; Pidgin-Knowledge. Wissen und Kolonialismus, Zürich 2013; ‘Low and Licentious Europeans’. Race, Class and White Subalternity in Colonial India, New Delhi 2009; Harald Fischer-Tiné / Michael Mann (eds), Colonialism as Civilizing Mission. Cultural Ideology in British India, London 2004.
3 Edited works on the topic: Harald Fischer-Tiné / Nico Slate (eds.), The United States and South Asia from the Age of Empire to Decolonization. A History of Entanglements, Leiden 2022; Harald Fischer-Tiné / Stefan Huebner / Ian R. Tyrrell (eds.), Spreading Protestant Modernity. Global Perspectives on the Social Work of the YMCA and YWCA, 1889–1970, Honolulu, Hawaii 2020.
4 Aparna Nair, ‘These Curly-Bearded, Olive-Skinned Warriors’: Medicine, Prosthetics, Rehabilitation and the Disabled Sepoy in the First World War, 1914–1920, in: Social History of Medicine 33/3 (2020), pp. 798–818.