This article argues for a transregional historical approach to explain the career of political secularism, i.e. the ideas and practices that inform the modern state’s relationship to and administration of religion, in the 20th century. More specifically, it asks in how far we can understand secularism in South and Southeast Asia between the end of the First World War and decolonisation after 1945 as a result of transregional patterns that evolved within and beyond these regions. The argument is based on three brief case studies on Atatürk’s Turkey as a contested source of inspiration for state secularity and religious reform, regional women’s networks to foster secularism and social change in the 1930s, and secularism as a strategy of postcolonial state-building and territorial integration. Conceptually, the article suggests to use global intellectual history as a means to combine research on connectivity with historical comparison.

本文主张采用跨区域的历史方法来解释政治世俗主义的事业，即，在 20 世纪，现代国家与宗教的关系和管理的思想和实践。更具体地说，它询问在第一次世界大战结束和 1945 年之后由于这些地区内外演变的跨地区模式导致的非殖民化之间，我们能在多大程度上理解南亚和东南亚的世俗主义。该论点基于三个简短的案例研究，将阿塔图尔克的土耳其作为国家世俗性和宗教改革的有争议的灵感来源、区域妇女网络在 1930 年代促进世俗主义和社会变革，以及世俗主义作为后殖民国家建设和领土的战略一体化。从概念上讲，