When Annie Besant said, "world-problems", she meant problems that you find practically in all civilized Nations, all Nations that have reached a certain level of thought, emotion and conduct. In every one of these there are certain questions which are occupying the minds of the thoughtful, of the philosophical, of the religious, and they are practically the same in all the Nations. They do not deal with details, but with principles. They are founded on certain general ideas of the relationship between man and man, not for the moment between Nation and Nation. In addition to these great problems of Internationalism, in which every Nation has an interest - its relation to other Nations; and there you have a subject of great complexity, but one which has its ideal to study and to understand.
Theosophy and World-Problems was originally published in 1922.