global studies paper

Anti-colonial (Inter)Nationalism Bandung, Berlin, and Beyond

GLOBAL 120, OCTOBER 24, 2019

PROFESSOR KAI M. THALER

SECTION LEADERS NATHANIEL BUROLA, T INA GUIRGUIS , EUGENE RIORDAN

Global anti-colonialism • Anti-colonial movements at different times in different regions

• Global connections

• Shared commitment to independence, but cross-cultural solidarity

• Various political ideologies

The Colonial System • Anti-colonialism: Resistance to rule of one country over a colonized nation

• Nation: an imagined cultural-political community seeking self-government & control over ‘homeland’

• Colonizing: invading territory of another nation and ruling in own interests

• Modern colonialism starting in 1492

• European battle for the Americas

• Adam Smith’s liberal capitalism and colonialism

‘Scramble for Africa’ & Berlin Conference • European powers seeking to control African territory and markets

• Worries in 1880s about big German push into Africa

• Berlin conference 1884-1885 partitioning continent

José Martí & American Decolonization •Americas generally decolonized earlier, but Spain kept Cuba & PR

• José Martí

• Advocate for Cuban independence

• Traveled and forged connections in exile

• Egalitarian, though still sought to impose national culture

• Imagined solidarity with An Nam (Vietnam)

Hồ Chí Minh’s Long Fight • Educated in Vietnam, then traveling

• Nationalist activism in Paris & Communist awakening

• Resisting French, Japanese, and US colonialism and imperialism

• Solidarity with other colonized people

• “Beyond a focus on his own homeland in Indochina, Hồ kept readers abreast of the oppression in other French colonies in Africa as well as the British control in China, India, and Sudan, the Belgian genocide in Congo, the German extermination of the Herero and Nama peoples, the lynchings of African Americans, and the concentration of Native Americans into reservations in the United States.” - Pham and Méndez

• Limited peasant empowerment

League Against Imperialism • Meeting in Brussels in 1927

• Funding from Comintern, possibly Kuomintang and Mexico

• Pro-independence, anti-League of Nations

• Problems with follow-up

WWII & Berlin’s Anti-colonial Authoritarians • Germany attracting right-leaning anti-colonial activists

• Mix of opportunism and ideological attraction

• Subhas Chandra Bose

Bandung • Cold War and ‘Third World’ consciousness

• Led by Sukarno

• 29 diverse countries united against colonialism and imperialism

•Against economic dependency and underdevelopment • Colonialism has “its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellectual control...It does not give

up its loot easily” - Sukarno

•Cultural cooperation and anti-racism • Against “racialism as a means of cultural suppression”

•Against militarism and nuclear weapons

The UN as a Platform •Anti-colonial leaders seeing UN as forum for their interests

• “It could be argued that one of the reasons for the success of the United Nations in its first three decades, unlike that of the League of Nations, is that the states of the Third World saw it as their platform.” – Prashad

• Human rights institutions

• UNESCO

• International Atomic Energy Agency

• UN Conference on Trade and Development

Cairo Afro-Asian Women’s Conference • Women active in anti-colonial movements, but marginalized from leadership

•Aisha Abdul-Rahman’s 1957 speech

• “The success of these revolutions depends on the liberation of the enslaved half, on rescuing women from paralysis, unemployment and inaction and eliminating the differences between the two halves of the nation-its men and women.”

• 1961 conference in Cairo centering women

From Anti-colonialism to Governing • How did anti-colonial activists fall short of their principles once in power?

• Failures of disarmament

• Reliance on domestic elites for governing coalitions

• Corruption and desire to stay in power

Violent or nonviolent anti-colonialism? • India and Ghana as leading nonviolent examples

•Attempting to reject brutality of colonizers

• Vietnam, Algeria and Cuba as counterexamples

• Gandhi vs. Fanon

Anti-colonialism up to Today • Late colonialism

• Timor Leste and West Papua

• Western Sahara

• “Neocolonialism”

• US colonialism today?

Anti-colonialism up to Today • Late colonialism

• Timor Leste and West Papua

• Western Sahara

• “Neocolonialism”

• US colonialism today?

Next Class: Noviolent Gandhism & Critics • Gandhi’s nonviolent struggle in South Africa and India

• What are the principles of nonviolence?

• What is ‘civil resistance’?

• Is nonviolence more effective than violence?

• When might violence be justified?

• Check revised syllabus for updated readings and guest lectures