Anti-colonial Movements Research Articles

The Disappearance of Self-Determination from the League of Nations Covenant, January–February 1919

Abstract After Woodrow Wilson’s speech to Congress in February 1918, ‘self-determination’ was expected to be a guiding concept for a post-imperial order once the Great War had ended. Yet when the Covenant of the League of Nations was negotiated at the Paris Peace Conference, the phrase was removed. Why and by whom? The existing literature offers little answer. This article argues that Wilson fought for inclusion of both the phrase ‘self-determination’ and the substance of it but was convinced to remove both by his own advisers and members of the British delegation. These men had an agenda at variance with Wilson’s, one focused on solidifying wartime transatlantic co-operation into a post-war governance model that would strengthen the British imperial position and bring the US into support of it. That agenda could not accommodate Wilsonian self-determination. Its resulting disappearance effectively reversed the post-imperial sense of wartime statements on self-determination made by Wilson and David Lloyd George. Anti-colonial movements, as the Paris negotiators knew, had taken inspiration from those promises. Their hopes for an organized dismantling of the imperial order were disappointed. Only after four decades of political violence would the pre-war order be replaced by one that better resembled Wilson’s abandoned vision.

Gavin Maxwell in Morocco and Algeria with Margaret Pope and Ahmed Alaoui: public relations networks, anti-imperialism, and travel writing in the era of decolonisation

ABSTRACT This article asks how Gavin Maxwell, famed Scottish nature-writer and otter-keeper, author of Ring of Bright Water, emerged from a background of European colonialist adventure-writing to become a clandestine agent for the FLN Algerian independence movement in 1961, and then, in The Rocks Remain (1963) and Lords of the Atlas (1966), to advance a positive portrait of the newly independent Moroccan monarchy and, in the latter work, a condemnation of French colonialism. Using published writings and unpublished archival documents, this article examines Maxwell’s career as a travel writer in Iraq, Morocco, and Algeria, in the context of recent historiography on the global public relations networking of Moroccan and Algerian anticolonial movements. Through his relationships with British journalist-activist Margaret Pope and the Moroccan monarchy’s press services head and Minister of Information and Tourism, Ahmed Alaoui, Maxwell became, if only briefly and partially, a part of North African anti-imperialist outreach networks developed to cultivate global public opinion. In Maxwell’s case, his recruitment as a literary supporter was more of a success for the Moroccan monarchy than for the Algerian FLN.

Revolutionaries, coercive institutions and the crisis of collaboration in interwar India

Earlier generations of historians interpreted revolutionary politics of the interwar period within a paradigm of failure, on the basis that it did not bring about an immediate shift in the colonial dominance in South Asia. Following the ‘revolutionary turn’ in South Asian history, scholars have suggested that revolutionary politics needs to be read for the ways in which it shifted mainstream nationalist strategies and influenced other outcomes, both intended and unintended. This article deepens this analysis, by considering an unexplored outcome of the revolutionary politics of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA): its impact on Indians employed in British institutions, especially coercive institutions such as the police and prisons. These employees may not have resigned from their posts, and ultimately these coercive institutions remained coercive and violent at a macro level. However, based on the evidence presented here, it is clear there was a faintly discernible but important micropolitics emerging from within these institutions, which indicates that some exhibited admiration and sympathy for revolutionary prisoners, quietly and surreptitiously working to ameliorate systems of coercion and punishment, in the process undermining coercive institutions from within. Such a reading prompts a rethinking of paradigms of collaborators as colonial enablers, allowing us to see the withdrawal of cooperation with the colonial regime as a process, which becomes perceptible in the context of anticolonial movements in the late interwar period.

Cabral and Revolution in Portuguese-Speaking Africa

In Amilcar Cabral: The Life of a Reluctant Nationalist, a translation and revision of his earlier Portuguese edition, Antonio Tomas addresses what he sees as a gap between the reality of the armed struggle in Guinea and the ways in which it has been discussed by all previous writers on the subject. He claims to base his critique on newly released archival information and recent publications on Cabral, Portuguese colonialism, and its anti-colonial movements in Africa.

Revolutions: an introduction to the #AoIR2023 special issue

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the ‘Revolutions’ themed special issue which includes research presented at the 24th annual Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference (2023). The conference theme centered on revolutions, highlighting the connections between digital transformations and social movements across time and space. Focusing on the affordances of digital technologies for mobilization, resistance and achieving social justice, but also their limitations in enabling lasting social change, the conference theme asked participants to reflect on the tradeoffs between empowerment and subordination, and the relationship of digital ‘revolutions’ to racial justice, anticolonial movements, and the rising tide of white supremacist and fascist mobilization. This special issue includes six papers that offer new angles on critically assessing the groundbreaking early ideas underpinning online networked spaces and questioning the revolutionary potential of the internet today. The range of papers includes contexts related to platform power and user agency, online political subcultures and memeification, the balance between visibility and power for content creators revolutionizing live streaming and influencer cultural industries, and perceptions of AI’s revolutionary impact on romantic relationships. The studies in this issue also offer a global view, with geographies stretching from the MENA region and China to subcultures and marginalized groups in Western contexts such as the US and Canada.

African Socialism and Secular State Formation

Abstract In order to trace pathways of secularisation and secularity in Africa this paper highlights a particular movement that carried great ideological weight at the time of most countries’ independence in the 1950s and 60s, namely African socialism. The development toward state secularism was structurally very similar throughout the continent independently of whether political leaders opted for the ‘West’ or the ‘East’ in the cold war. However, in opposition to Soviet ideology, African Socialism was famously antiatheist. With the wish to fend off Marxist atheism as a supposedly necessary aspect of socialism, ideologues in African socialism were among the few politicians in Africa even to address the place of religion in a secular state at all. The roots of African socialism can be traced to US-American Pan-Africanism as well as the interconnected colonial opposition movement grounded in Marxist anti-imperialism. Another argument focusses on the education of some prominent state leaders, such as Nyerere, Nkrumah, Touré and Senghor, to explain the importance of Christian mission schools and Islamic madrasahs as points of access to social, intellectual, and institutional participation in global anti-colonial movements. In the framework of one-party politics, state leaders called on (Pan-)African traditions, but ‘de-mystified’ them (Touré) in order to enhance African Socialism ‘as belief’ (Nyerere). In conclusion it is argued that state secularism in Africa at the time of independence, as demonstrated most visibly in African Socialism, is more about suppressing and/or balancing the traditional powers of religious leaders than about a fundamental critique of a religious way of life. In turn, the implicit association of socialism and Marxism with atheism needs further scrutiny in a global perspective.

Cold War Liberation: The Soviet Union and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, 1961-7

This absorbing account of relations between the Soviet Union and the leaders of anticolonial movements fighting to liberate Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau from Portuguese rule in the 1960s and 1970s is in part the fruit of Natalia Telepneva's doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Odd Arne Westad,1 whose own work looms large in the historiography of the Cold War. The book opens like a spy thriller with a Soviet military plane landing in Luanda on the day Agostinho Neto, leader of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), is set to be inaugurated as the first president of independent Angola. On board the An-12 is an intelligence officer by the name of Boris Putilin, 'whose job had been to coordinate arms transfers from the Soviet Union'2 to the MPLA. Putilin is almost shot at by an Angolan solider but is rescued in time to attend the inauguration by the chief of airport security.

Reading W. B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney in a Postcolonial Context: Exploring Landscape and Identity

This article critically examines Ireland's postcolonial position, with a specific focus on the poetic works of influential Irish writers William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney. The exploration begins by delving into Ireland's historical and cultural context as a colonized nation, shedding light on the profound impact of English domination and the complexities of Irish history. Furthermore, the article draws parallels between the Irish experience and anticolonial movements in Third World countries, emphasising on the similar struggles in resisting colonization. The central argument posits that, having endured colonialism, both Yeats and Heaney actively contribute to the postcolonial discourse by employing themes of landscape and identity as distinct forms of resistance. Yeats, driven by a personal interest in mythology, mythologizes resistance against the colonizer through the revival of heroic deeds in his poetry. Conversely, Heaney engages in a subversion of the “us vs them” dichotomy, responding to the Empire through his works. The imagery of earth, depicted in his poetry, symbolises the connection between physical landscape to Irish identity. By situating Yeats’ and Heaney’s poetry within a postcolonial framework, this article seeks to acknowledge their collective contribution as a form of "writing back to the Empire," thereby enriching the discourse surrounding Irish postcolonialism.

Thinking against empire: anticolonial thought as social theory

Sociology was born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a project in, of, and for empire. This essay excavates a tradition of social thought that grew alongside metropolitan sociology but has been marginalized by it: anticolonial thought. Emerging from anticolonial movements, writers and thinkers, anticolonial thought in 19th and 20th centuries emerged from a variety of thinkers (from indigenous activists in the Americas to educated elites in the American, Francophone and British colonies). I argue that this body of thought offers distinct visions of society, social relations, and social structure, along with generative analytic approaches to the social self, social solidarity and global relations – among other themes. Anticolonial thought offers the basis for an alternative canon and corpus of sociological thinking to which we might turn as we seek to revitalize and decolonize sociology.

“Decolonization” As a Metaphor, Not a Movement, in Communication Studies: A Critical Thematic Meta-Analysis of the Discipline

ABSTRACT In this essay, we theorize how terms like “decolonization” and “decoloniality” have entered into the vernacular of the discipline of Communication Studies and remained largely as metaphors. We connect to a conversation among scholars in Indigenous Studies, Cultural Studies, and others who have turned attention to “decolonial” critiques in academic environments, and how they remain detached from their activist origins. We begin with a discussion of metaphor and the cultural and political implications for adopting and misattributing a term like decolonization. Moreover, this study develops a critical method to make sense of the rapid and vast uptake of the term decolonization as a harmful metaphor in the discipline’s most widely read journals. Our critical thematic meta-analysis is driven by a quantifying tool – we turn our research lens to the body of literature written by the collective of scholars in the discipline who refer to or rely on decolonization in their research to reveal the way in which the term is connoted over the last decade. Our analysis reveals “decolonization” is often used as a liberal abstract concept divorced from material contexts. We critique this reductionism, noting how decolonization becomes a buzzword for institutional change without genuine engagement with anti-colonial movements. We end by inviting scholars to reconsider the study of colonization and those materially resisting it with new energies and orientations.

What happened to neocolonialism? The rise and fall of a critical concept

ABSTRACT This article is a history of the idea of neocolonialism from its first use in the 1960s to its more recent deployments in the 2010s. During the decolonization period, the concept of neocolonialism was a powerful ideological and analytical tool in the service of the global anti-colonial movement to denounce the persistence of subordinate relations between the former colonizers and the newly independent countries. The article argues that the decline of the concept was the result of the crisis of the postcolonial state in the 1980s and the parallel rise of the theory and ideology of globalization which was based on opposite theoretical premises. The crisis of the popularity of globalization in the 2010s has made room for a return of critical concepts in the analysis of international politics and, among them, neocolonialism. This new wave of literature on neocolonialism remains fragmented, undertheorized, and, unlike its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, disconnected from social and political movements. Moreover, Western-based sources have recently started using the concept to describe China’s activities in the Global South in a problematic way that seems to attribute solely to Beijing the very neocolonial practices that Western powers are normally denounced for.

Nationalist Discourse in the Colonial World: The Indian Uprising of 1857 Vis-à-Vis the Ambivalent Middle-Class Intelligentsia of Bengal

The paper addresses and contributes to one of the core debates concerning the usage of terminologies such as ‘loyalists’ and ‘rebels’, often ascribed to actors involved in the anti-colonial movements across the world. By taking the case of the Indian rebellion of 1857, the paper argues that moments such as this, more often than not, have subtle and nuanced reflections, and the trajectories of responses transcend simplistic categorisations. In the mid-nineteenth century colonial Bengal ‘loyalism’ of the middle-class intelligentsia towards the foreign rule contained internal contradictions, which was far more nuanced than has been portrayed in the last one and half centuries. Based on the contemporary reports, memoirs, and writings, the paper argues that while the nature of opposition and resistance were reflected in a rhetoric that was different, they emanated from similar sets of discontents, and would play a pivotal role in shaping the later-day discourse of nationalism in South Asia.

Sites of the past: The historical film and Bollywood’s encounter with Europe

The genres of historical films have gained ascendance in the Bollywood industry in recent years. I examine four Bollywood films that narrativize biographies of unusual figures located in Europe in the past. Gold and Sardar Udham stage Europe of the 1930s and the 1940s, a period marked by the Second World War and anti-colonial movements. The flow of production practices reveals the layers of ‘artifice’ involved in producing locations during the inter-war years. The narratives of Bell Bottom and 83, on the other hand are located in Britain of the 1980s. Here, strategies like play with colour tones, differential use of focus, and accented use of old cars, infrastructures, costumes and props help in creating a stylized retro look. I will argue that the material and the immaterial get intertwined with each other through the mobilization of archival photographs, infrastructure, radio broadcasts, newsreel footage and sound media.

Late-Liberalism and Righteousness: Affective Reflexes and Experiments in Retraining

Elizabeth Povinelli describes late liberalism as the ‘governance of social difference in the wake of the anticolonial movements and the emergence of new social movements’. Taking museums and the impact of the turn towards participatory practice as a focus, I draw on both Povinelli’s ‘cunning of recognition’ and Brian Massumi’s diagnosing of Abraham Lincoln’s phrase ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ to understand late liberalism as a loop or circuit where impossible to realise ideals, and ‘part-concept’ tensions create ongoing problematics which require daily negotiation in ways that draw political energy centripetally towards reform. Righteousness is proposed as an affective reflex ‐ a kind of starter fuel ‐ that works to kick into life the late liberal loop of museum constitution. Reflex ‐ holding the sense of an in-the-moment reaction ‐ is approached through activating two trajectories within theorisations of affect. The first trajectory is that of the relationship between affect, intuition and attachment as developed by Lauren Berlant. The second trajectory explores affect and intensities as taken up in different ways through Lawrence Grossberg and Brian Massumi’s engagements with Deleuze and Guattari. Methodologically, the article proceeds through specifying a contribution that experimental academic writing might make to conjunctural analysis ‐ working with Patricia Clough’s suggestion that experimental writing offers ‘methods … for cutting out an apparatus of knowing and observation from a single plane … with the aim of eliciting exposure or escaping it, intensifying engagement or lessening it’. In particular it is suggested that experimental writing might offer methods not only for generating political analysis, but also for retraining reflexes to enable political interventions. In the case of the righteous reflex of late liberalism it is suggested that retraining might be supported by turning the types of analytical attention offered by attachment and intensities into political techniques of detachment (following Berlant) and modulation (following Massumi). If the changing nature of museum workers’ reflexes can be amplified and then cultivated to suspend the righteous reflex, then different kinds of practice (not defined by inclusion and representation) might be given new space to emerge.

The Naga Raj of Haipou Jadonang in North East India

The Naga Raj or popularly known as the Zeliangrong movement was a remarkable event in the political history of North East India during the colonial rule. The Naga Raj was an anti-colonial movement. However, there were also socio-religious factors responsible for the outbreak of the movement. The article delves into the nature of the movement, and also attempts to understand the socio-political nature of Manipur society during the colonial rule.

Historicising the colonial past of India and Hindi cinema

ABSTRACT The idea of India as a nation has its seeds rooted in the political leadership for the struggle of independence in the colonial history. The pathway of such struggles stemmed from the social-cultural sphere of the society that imagined India free from the shackles of debt and slavery from the colonial British. Visual imagination and representation of political struggles that made, unmade, and remade the notion of India have been documented in the Hindi Cinema. However, analysing Hindi cinema from perspective of imagination of a nation has received less attention and needs a serious critical engagement. This article investigates Lagaan (2001), a Hindi film, based on anti-colonial struggle to understand how the nation is imagined in the cinematic text. It explores the peasants' role in the struggle and the relationship of the peasants with the nation, in a larger debate on colonialism and anti-colonial movements by using dialectics as a method.

AN INTRODUCTION TO ANTI-COLONIALISM IN BRITISH AND KAZAKH LITERATURE

This research examines anti-colonialism in literature, exploring its significance and representation in diverse contexts. Employing a qualitative approach, the study conducts an extensive literature review, encompassing academic literature, books, and critical essays. Thematic analysis identifies key motifs of anti-colonial resistance in literary works from various traditions. Anti-colonialism emerges as a powerful phenomenon in literature, reflecting the collective opposition of peoples against colonial oppression. Literature serves as a medium to express the experiences of colonized peoples, challenging dominant colonial narratives, and fostering discussions on historical injustices and human rights in postcolonial societies. The article recognizes anti-colonialism as a complex historical process shaped by unique regional experiences and colonial legacies. Literary works offer valuable insights into diverse perspectives and experiences during the colonial era, portraying multifaceted views of colonial attitudes and responses. The impact of anti-colonial literature has been profound, inspiring struggles for independence and self-determination. Analyzing anti-colonial themes provides valuable insights into power dynamics, resistance, and the enduring consequences of colonialism in contemporary societies. The study emphasizes the relevance of anti-colonial and postcolonial studies, shedding light on critical issues and enhancing our understanding of societal attitudes and historical processes. The research contributes to a nuanced understanding of the complexities of anti-colonial movements in literature and their enduring impact on societies worldwide.

Rightful Recognition of Kurdistan as a Colony and De-colonizing Knowledge Production

In recent years the field of Kurdish Studies has witnessed several workshops and panels on the theme of “decolonizing,” influenced by such conversations in Postcolonial, Black and Indigenous Studies. Interestingly, many of these attempts in academic venues have not engaged with the question of ongoing colonial status of Kurdistan and how this status impacts knowledge production. This paper aims to propose a clear definition of a relationship of coloniality with a focus on colonial violence in the region of Bakur and explain why such terminology is necessary, intellectually and politically. As it explains the limits of the terminology used in academic knowledge production about state violence and Kurdish resistance, it also discusses contemporary alternatives to these dominant academic frameworks. It is argued that a rightful decolonization of knowledge about Kurdistan and freedom movements in the region can take place when we simultaneously recognize ongoing colonization, and acknowledge that it is ultimately the organized anti-colonial movements, which can determine definitions of self-determination, as well as the political means to gain and sustain it.

Unexplained Revolutions: The Origins and Ends of Latin American Catholic Upheaval

John T. McGreevy's chronicle of modern Roman Catholic history is a vivid and sometimes jarring reminder of the historical depth of contemporary divisions within the Church, especially as these enter the public sphere. Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis elucidates the church's ambivalent response to the challenge of modernity over the long nineteenth and twentieth centuries, specifically the rise of democratic nation states, anti-colonialist movements from the global south, the struggles of poor and working people for liberation, and feminist and human rights movements. The spread of totalitarianism and the supposed triumph of capitalism represented a different set of challenges for the church in this period.

Mozambique’s Neglected Nationalists in Exile: Retracing Coremo’s Relations with the Congolese Government and the FNLA

Even though the Mozambique Revolutionary Committee (Coremo) was Mozambique’s second largest liberation movement, historians have neglected its role in the struggle for Mozambican independence. This neglect has resulted in an imbalanced understanding of how Mozambicans fought to overthrow Portuguese colonial rule throughout the second half of the 20th century, including how Mozambican liberation movements navigated the precarious exile environment. By retracing and examining Coremo’s relations with Joseph Mobutu’s Congolese government and the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), this article adds to the growing literature on competing anti-colonial movements during Mozambique’s liberation struggle. Coremo’s relationship with these two actors is intertwined with and was founded on the earlier relations that Paulo Gumane’s reconstituted National Democratic Union of Mozambique (Udenamo) had established with the FNLA and Cyrille Adoula’s Congolese government. Reconstructing the story of this relationship deepens our understanding of the different transnational and transregional strategies that smaller liberation movements like Coremo employed in exile. The story of Coremo’s relations with Kinshasa and the FNLA highlights the importance of and difficulties in establishing support structures in the context of competitive liberation politics. The history of these long-standing relations also adds to our understanding of the formation and development of working relationships between lusophone African liberation movements, which have traditionally focused on the Conference of Nationalist Organisations of the Portuguese Colonies, and brings to our attention the role of alternative African support hubs in southern Africa’s liberation struggle.