A Biography Between Spaces: M.N. Roy, from Indian nationalism to Mexican communism

This paper traces the global travels of Indian revolutionary Manabendra Nath Roy (1884-1954), with special attention to the tension between nationalism and communism in his transnational political writings and networks. In particular, the article examines Roy's sojourn in revolutionary Mexico between 1917 and 1920, time during which he approached Marxism and signed as one of the founders of the Mexican Communist Party. The paper is therefore based on Roy's own writings, as well as on German and British diplomatic documents. The example of Roy's trajectory is used here to advance a number of more general arguments of theoretical nature regarding the advantages and problems of a transnational historiography and its relation to biography as a historiographical genre