Disclosing the Problem of Empire in Du Bois’s International Thought

Abstract

Abstract Du Bois’s understanding of the modern world order as founded on the linked phenomena of racial hierarchy, imperial domination, and capitalist exploitation constituted a radical challenge to the dominant conception of an international community of free and equal sovereign nations. He maintained that the rise of democracy in Europe and America had been parasitic on imperialism, with domestic structures, and politics, inextricable from their global context. Anticipating later theories of neocolonialism, he argued that racialized, formerly colonized states were not independent sovereigns responsible for their own fates but instead were subjected to novel forms of quasi-imperial economic and political domination. And, while warily engaging with the League of Nations and the United Nations as vehicles of reform, he pursued alternative internationalisms that endowed nonstate actors with voice and representation. He sought, in short, to overturn the democratic despotism of the prevailing order, replacing it with a truly universal “world democracy.”