Comparative Regionalism: A Field Whose Time Has Come? 1

In 1948, one of the first books on regionalism in English language to be published in the non-Western world appeared under the editorship of K.M. Panikkar, an Indian scholar–diplomat who was once India’s ambassador to China. ³ In the volume, which bore the title Regionalism and World Security, ⁴ Panikkar traced the origins of the idea of regional organization (which he equated with the term regionalism) to the Armed Neutrality of Northern Powers in the Napoleonic War, the US Monroe Doctrine, the concept of Mettleeuropa advocated by Frederich Neuman for the Danubian regions, and the exclusive economic and political blocs developed by Nazi Germany in Europe and Imperial Japan in East Asia. What is interesting about this genealogy is that all these, with the exception of the Japanese Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, were Western and all, with the exception of the first one (Armed Neutrality of Northern Powers), assumed the “establishment of the paramountcy of a Great Power in a defined geographical region.” Hence, “so far, regional organization has meant nothing more than a polite phraseology for lebensraum.” ⁵