History Of Decolonization Research Articles

Comparative Strategy Analysis: Battle of Dien Bien Phu 1954 Vs General Attack 1 March 1949 Reflections on The History of Decolonization

The article explores the strategic comparison between the Dien Bien Phu Battle in Vietnam and the General Offensive of 1 March 1949 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, marking crucial points in the struggle against colonialism. It delves into the historical context, military strategies, and impacts of these battles, highlighting their significance in shaping history and decolonization. Both battles shared a striking strategic similarity: using surprise attacks to overcome stronger opponents. Despite occurring in different historical and geographical contexts, both battles showcased the effectiveness of tactical superiority in achieving significant victories and influencing broader political changes, even against seemingly unbeatable opponents. The analysis emphasizes the pivotal role of these battles in ending colonial dominance and accelerating the decolonization process in Vietnam and Indonesia.

Nabeul … Taroudant . El Jadida . . Tangier

Beckett’s knowledge of the history of imperialism has left abundant traces. Irish colonial history in particular provides a fertile ground for allusions and residual echoes in many of his texts, and this facet of his writing has received close attention. His alertness to the history of colonial conquest, exploitation and oppression is evident on the peripheries of his bilingual oeuvre too – notably, in his translations for Nancy Cunard’s Negro anthology and Octavio Paz’s Anthology of Mexican Poetry, and in minute alterations to some of his manuscripts revealing a careful reflection on the historical and political weight of words. Charting Beckett’s exposure and responses to the history of decolonization in its French and francophone contexts, however, has proved more challenging, owing to the difficulties posed by the work’s multiple cultural and linguistic positionalities, which are often treated as matters of secondary importance. This essay attempts to destabilize and expand the coordinates commonly used when thinking about Beckett as a postcolonial writer, by considering his relation to the postcolony through the prism of his long stays in the Maghreb between 1969 and the early 1980s. Retracing Beckett’s steps in Tunisia and Morocco, I delineate postcolonial and neocolonial imaginaries around Beckett’s creative process that are more challenging and uncomfortable than the evidence previously scrutinized elsewhere, and I pay particular attention to the awkward sense of colonial presence underlying marginal texts such as his Tangier mirlitonnades. The extended periods Beckett spent in Tangier proved immensely generative for him; here, I examine his relation to Tangier in light of the city’s colonial history as an International Zone and a much-fetishized haven for expatriate Anglo-American writers, offering a portrait of Beckett that conveys his simultaneous involvement and non-involvement with his surroundings.

Decolonization and the Third World

This essay asks why the Third World has become a symbol of poverty and failed infrastructure while the political imperative towards decolonization has gained popularity. By examining histories of decolonization in mid-twentieth century and the subsequent establishment of postcolonial nation-states that often ignored, suppressed, or actively participated in settler colonial occupations both globally and internally, I argue that there needs to be a widespread reckoning with what constitutes anti-colonial liberation.

ICJ Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago From Mauritius in 1965 (Chagos Advisory Opinion): A Critical Analysis

The Chagos AO is a milestone in the history of decolonization which certainly added some narratives to the jurisprudence of the right to selfdetermination, rules of identification of customary international law, and the practice of the ICJ in relation to its jurisdiction on an advisory opinion. Similarly, ICJ had missed dealing with the human rights of the inhabitants of Chagos Archipelago which was the subject matter of the opinion, whether the right to self-determination qualifies as peremptory norms or not, etc. This paper critically discusses the approach taken by the World Court in this case in five sections, e.g., the judicial propriety in the AO, the territorial aspect of the right to selfdetermination, the right to self-determination and customary international law, the right to self-determination and jus cogens, and human rights of the Chagossians. Dhaka University Law Journal, Vol. 33(1), 2023 P.95-110

독립의 기억과 기념의 장소: 말레이시아 메르데카 광장 (Merdeka Square)

This paper starts from the point that Merdeka Square in Malaysia, which has a history of decolonization, conveys the sentiment of ‘independence’ to the people, but does not show the same aspect as a general place of independence. In particular, breaking away from the current research perspectives such as the urban aesthetic perspective focusing on the city development for administrative practices or architectural improvement and the colonial-imperialistic political perspective, this study looks over the meaning of this place in the light of the current problems in addition to the framework of “independence.” Above all, it explores not only the memory of independence but also the direction of Malaysia’s modern society, which has a pluralistic culture and multiracial characteristics, from the perspective of a sense of ‘solidarity’ that accepts ‘difference’. As a result, this study finds out the importance of accommodating the controversial context of current social relations and power in a comprehensive understanding as a dynamic place embracing Malaysia’s complex historical characteristics of independence and social conflicts and divisions. In addition, it discovers that the future steps toward the harmony of Malaysian society are confirmed through this space with a peculiarity of an ‘open space’ and an aesthetic of juxtaposition to which Foucault’s concept of ‘heterotopia’ is applied.

Gandhi, Guattari and the Decolonization of the Anthropocene

This article examines the relevance of Guattari’s ecosophy and Gandhi’s ecophilosophy to provide an ontological response to environmental (in)justice in the Indian subcontinent in the context of Anthropogenic climate change. Considering what it signifies to live in the Anthropocene, it engages with the Guattarian idea of emancipation and the Gandhian concept of swaraj to understand the ethics of justice in the new climate regime. Through these intellectual encounters, this article develops an ontological framework for addressing the question of human agency in the Anthropocene considering the long history of decolonization in South Asia which was largely shaped by Gandhi’s idea of swaraj. To facilitate engagement across diverse philosophical cultures for the purpose of decolonizing the Anthropocene, this article seeks to understand possible points of alliance between Guattarian ecosophy and Gandhian ecophilosophy. This cross-cultural conversation becomes pertinent when neoliberal capitalism is radically transforming the lives and landscapes of the planet, reconfiguring the registers of what Guattari (2000) has called the three ecologies: namely those of the environment, social relations and human subjectivity. This cross-cultural confluence of philosophical ideas unveils how the ecologies of both humans and nonhumans are globally reconfigured according to the logic of neoliberal capitalism. Therefore, this article seeks to conjoin Guattarian ecosophy and Gandhian ecophilosophy to understand environmental (in)justice in the Indian subcontinent in the context of anthropogenic climate change. Reflecting on Gandhian ideas with the help of Guattarian ecosophy would help us understand the detrimental effects of the colonial Anthropocene. The condition of the Global South is still deeply colonial, which is marked by economic inequality and social injustice. Therefore, engaging with Gandhi and Guattari in the Anthropocene is a task of radical ecological imagination. This article elaborates on this project of radical ecological vision by drawing their philosophical contributions.

Black Science: Amílcar Cabral’s Agricultural Survey and the Seeds of African Decolonization

This essay studies the scientific practices of the African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral as Black Radical Tradition challenges to historical agency. His graphs on land use and soil erosion, produced for the Portuguese colonial administration of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, prophesied the independence of peoples otherwise put outside of history. Cabral’s graphs point to the underappreciated contribution of specific forms of knowledge to the history of decolonization and challenge the historian of science to write history of Black science. This is distinct from consoling narratives of Black people in science or traditional critical accounts of science and racism. Instead, fully engaging the Black Radical Tradition, the history of Black science foregrounds scientific practices that historically enacted Black agencies.

Archiving the Algerian Revolution in Zineb Sedira's Gardiennes d'images

Archiving the Algerian Revolution in Zineb Sedira's <i>Gardiennes d'images</i>

Impossible to Return: Abe Kōbō, Repatriation, and Postwar Japan

This essay examines Abe Kōbō's 1957 novel Kemono-tachi wa kokyō o mezasu (Beasts head for home), a relatively neglected work among Abe's oeuvre because of its atypically realistic plot and lucid style. In contrast to previous interpretations, which linked the novel to the author's own experiences of repatriation, this essay argues that Abe was writing against the putative genre of autobiographical repatriation narratives and that the novel invokes notions of the impossibility of "return" and the elusiveness of "home" (kokyō) to envision an alternative history of decolonization, one that challenges the temporal break between the wartime past and the postwar present.

Form and the Anticolonial Novel: William Gardner Smith's The Stone Face

Abstract The category of the postcolonial novel is familiar, but what makes a novel anticolonial? This article attempts to answer this question by reconstructing a genealogy of anticolonial fiction. I argue that these novels are preeminently the product of a social and intellectual class that inherits Franco Moretti's novel of bourgeois subject formation with all the attendant problems and opportunities of traditional bourgeois realism, while seeking to replace the privileged place of irony in those texts with a partisan spirit of conviction. One consequence of this is a deeper investment in allegory and metonym, pressed into the service of a totalizing metaphor for the wholesale corruption of a society that must be entirely dissolved. Drawing on the work of Anne-Lise François, the article suggests that, more specifically, the history of decolonization and the literature that it engenders repeatedly figure torture, and scenes of torture, as the “open secret” that reveals the peculiar nature of social relations under colonialism. Examining these scenes closely reveals a set of problems for literary form that are inherent to the anticolonial novel of the postwar years of decolonization, recurring problematics that nonetheless make the case for its existence as a distinct genre. No novel better emblematizes this genre than William Gardner Smith's The Stone Face (1963). Smith's novel is read as an attempt to narrativize the problem of intersectionality for a revolutionary internationalism and to push back against some critiques of the novel, such as Paul Gilroy's, that have questioned the limits of its conception of solidarity and the function of racial blackness in its politics. The novel exemplifies, the article argues, both the greatest qualities and the greatest limitations of the anticolonial novel as a genre and offers an unromantic and ultimately sobering account of the ethical and aesthetic costs of revolutionary conviction.

Philippine Independence in U.S. History

In 1946, the United States freed its largest colony, the Philippines. This article examines the decision-making behind that and argues that the road to freedom was not straight. The 1934 law scheduling independence was motivated mainly by protectionism, racism, and a sense that the Philippines was a military liability. Moreover, it contained many loopholes. Between its passage and the scheduled date for independence, Washington’s original reasons for freeing the Philippines had nearly all vanished, and high-ranking colonial officials sought to derail the independence process. Nevertheless, the Philippines was freed, because Washington regarded this act as central to its attempts to legitimize the postwar world order. Putting Philippine independence in the proper chronological context connects it to the history of decolonization and U.S. global hegemony.

Special issue introduction: Towards a global history of international organizations and decolonization

AbstractDecolonization and the expansion of international organizations in the twentieth century are crucial developments in modern global history, yet scholars have seldom closely studied their impact on one another. While decolonization is often presented as the ‘success story’ of international organizations, these bodies have also been condemned as instruments of neocolonialism. This introduction and special issue moves beyond this binary and investigates the multifaceted roles that international organizations have played in decolonizing countries and how the dissolution of European empires has in turn affected the development of international organizations. International organizations were neither straightforward tools of empire or neocolonialism, nor natural instruments for ‘Third World’ liberation. Rather, the contributions collected here underline a history of decolonization that defies any teleological framing and emphasizes diverse trajectories of global interaction facilitated through international organizations. The introduction offers an overview of recent literature on the topic and discusses promising avenues for further research.

Revolutionary Decolonization and the Formation of the Sacred: The Case of Egypt

Abstract Egypt’s successful struggle over ownership of the Suez Canal under President Gamal ʿAbd al-Nasser in 1956 is usually seen as pivotal in the history of decolonization. Scholars have written about how the Suez War brought many of the classical themes of decolonization into focus, such as sovereignty over natural resources, the hegemony of the new Cold War order, the rise of popular anti-colonial nationalism and the international politics of development. But what about freedom? Freedom is both a political and a theological concept. Scholars of decolonization have dealt with its political aspects, but they have yet to make sense of the theological, wherein the struggle for freedom results in the sacralization of the political sphere. Conceived as a deep study of freedom during decolonization, this article engages the field of political theology to examine how an organization of the politics of liberation that was founded on the imagination of the sacred became an article of faith that shaped everyday life for millions of people around the Arab world and the Global South.

Auto-activity: Decolonization and the Politics of Knowledge in Early Postwar Indonesia, ca.1920-1955

This article presents a history of decolonization and its politics of knowledge by examining rural reconstruction programs in the first decade of Indonesian independence. It traces the roots of Indonesia’s first two agricultural development schemes to late-colonial criticism of state policy. In these criticisms and schemes, “auto-activity” emerged as a key concept. This paper argues that in the writings of planners and politicians, “auto-activity” facilitated the process of decolonization in various ways. The notion of auto-activity affirmed Indonesian know-how over foreign technical assistance; those who developed it would overcome subjective legacies of colonial subjugation; it encouraged the institutionalization of a benevolent state that helped rural communities to help themselves, and would thus contribute to the materialization of a fair and just society. This article concludes that despite these practices of decolonization, programs of “auto-activity” also opened up possibilities to overrule farmers’s individual choices in new ways.

Decolonizing madness? Transcultural psychiatry, international order and birth of a ‘global psyche’ in the aftermath of the Second World War

AbstractThis article offers a transnational account of the historical origins and development of the concept of ‘global psyche’ and transcultural psychiatry. It argues that the concept of universal, global psyche emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War and during decolonization, when West European psychiatry strove to leave behind its colonial legacies and lay the foundation for a more inclusive conversation between Western and non-Western mental health communities. In the second half of the twentieth century, leading ‘psy’ professionals across the globe set about identifying and defining the universal psychological mechanisms supposedly shared among all cultures (and ‘civilizations’). The article explores this far-reaching psychiatric, social and cultural search for a new definition of ‘common humanity’, relating it to the social and political history of decolonization, and to the post-war reconstruction and search for stable peace. It provides a transnational account of a series of interlinked developments and trends around the world in order to arrive at a global history of the decolonization of mental health science.

Anatomy of Political Violence in South Africa

Recent political killings in the Kwazulu-Natal (KZN) province of South Africa have necessitated the interrogation of the root causes of political violence in the country. While, arguably, power struggles and patronage are at the centre of some of the killings, these together also point directly to the ever-growing violent political culture in the country and particularly in the governing ANC party politics. As a solution, this essay suggests it is central to look at the historical and pedagogical presuppositions on which the political violence and killings in the country hinge. Building on extant literature, the essay utilizes both Fanon’s On Violence and the concept of political socialization to first argue the political violence in KZN is not surgically disjointed from the history of volatile politics consequent on the history of decolonization in the country. Secondly, focusing on KZN, the essay interrogates the culture of violence among the people and the ANC party members in particular, and suggests these are avenues in which political violence may have been learnt. Finally, utilizing Lederach’s “structure” in the integrated model of peacebuilding, the essay presents some recommendations for addressing the problem.

Gazing, Settler Cinema, and the Algerian War: Slanted Kisses

This article analyses patterns of what I will call de-colonial gazing in Slanted Kisses (1962): a short film directed by two European settlers, in and around Algiers, during the Algerian War (1954–1962). As a means of departure, I identify two types of de-colonial gaze that I argue are crucial to the politics of Slanted Kisses: ‘the amorous gaze’ (linked to a desire to forget about conflict, and to retreat into Eurocentric solitude); and ‘the panoramic gaze’ (linked to a desire to control the colonial landscape, transforming it into a visual spectacle). In the third section of the article, I then examine the allegorical imaginary at play in Slanted Kisses – anchored in visual idioms of light and darkness – before concluding with some thoughts on how this allegory functions in relation to the history of decolonization in Algeria.

The concept of ‘Republic’ in Francophone African states: origin and impact

ABSTRACT Taking the opportunity of the 60th anniversary of independence of the former French colonial empire, this article addresses the issue of being ‘Republics' for the Francophone African states in sub-Saharan Africa. From the history of decolonisation and the milestones of the independence process in Francophone Africa, the article shows how that process was torpedoed by France, in order to guarantee a continuous presence in Africa and to preserve control over its former territories for its vested interests. Even after 60 years of independence, the decolonisation process appears to be unfinished. The article also emphasises that the current poor political system of governance in Francophone Africa lies in the concept of Republic and has a lot to do with history. Therefore, for the Francophone African states to assume mastery over their own destinies, they need to reconsider their historical legacy within the challenge of having their identity as ‘Republics’ as their sole reference.

América Latina en el Movimiento de Países No Alineados

El artículo estudia la participación de las naciones latinoamericanas en el Movimiento de Países No Alineados durante la Guerra Fría. Se pregunta por los motivos que llevaron a un número importante de países del continente a ingresar en el Movimiento, la mayoría de ellos entre 1973 y 1983. Mediante el análisis de fuentes primarias y secundarias se examinan siete casos: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Panamá y Perú. Se establece que, principalmente, las naciones latinoamericanas buscaron, a través de su participación en el Movimiento, incrementar su autonomía y profundizar o completar su soberanía. Por último, se plantea que el No Alineamiento en América Latina se relacionó más con la historia larga de la descolonización que con la coyuntural Guerra Fría.

A Questionnaire on Decolonization

The term decolonize has gained a new life in recent art activism, as a radical challenge to the Eurocentrism of museums (in light of Native, Indigenous, and other epistemological perspectives) as well as in the museum's structural relation to violence (either in its ties to oligarchic trustees or to corporations engaged in the business of war or environmental depredation). In calling forth the mid-twentieth-century period of decolonization as its historical point of reference, the word's emphatic return is rhetorically powerful, and it corresponds to a parallel interest among scholars in a plural field of postcolonial or global modernisms. The exhortation to decolonize, however, is not uncontroversial-some believe it still carries a Eurocentric bias. Indeed, it has been proposed that, for the West, de-imperialization is perhaps even more urgent than decolonization. What does the term decolonize mean to you in your work in activism, criticism, art, and/or scholarship? Why has it come to play such an urgent role in the neoliberal West? How can we link it historically with the political history of decolonization, and how does it work to translate postcolonial theory into a critique of the neocolonial contemporary art world? Respondents include Nana Adusei-Poku, Brook Andrew, Sampada Aranke, Ian Bethell-Bennett, Kader Attia, Andrea Carlson, Elise Y. Chagas, ISUMA, Iftikhar Dadi, Janet Dees, Nitasha Dhillon, Hannah Feldman, Josh T. Franco, David Garneau, Renee Green, Iman Issa, Arnold J. Kemp, Thomas Lax, Nancy Luxon, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Saloni Mathur, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Alan Michelson, Partha Mitter, Isabela Muci Barradas, Steven Nelson, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Alessandro Petti, Paulina Pineda, Christopher Pinney, Elizabeth Povinelli, Ryan Rice, Andrew Ross, Paul Chaat Smith, Nancy Spector, Francoise Verges, Rocio Zambrana, and Joseph R. Zordan.