Author: Vijay Prashad
Publisher: LeftWord
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 382
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788187496670
Description
The Third World was not a place, argues Vijay Prashad. It was a project.
This book is a paradigm-shifting history of both a utopian concept and global movement—the idea of the Third World. The Darker Nations traces the intellectual origins and the political history of the attempt to knit together the world’s impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influence in the decades following World War II, as nation after nation across Asia, Africa and South America gained political independence from colonial rule.
Traversing continents, Vijay Prashad’s fascinating narrative takes us from the birth of postcolonial nations after World War II to the downfall and corruption of nationalist regimes. A breakthrough book of cutting-edge scholarship, it includes vivid portraits of Third World giants like Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt’s Nasser, and Indonesia’s Sukarno—as well as scores of extraordinary but now-forgotten intellectuals, artists, and freedom fighters.
The Darker Nations restores to memory the vibrant though flawed idea of the Third World, whose demise, Prashad ultimately argues, has produced a much impoverished international political arena.
COMMENTS
"At a time when the politicians and ideologues of the Washington Consensus appeal to former colonies to free themselves from history, Vijay Prashad stubbornly carries on, recalling a past without which it is impossible to understand the present."
- TARIQ ALI
“The book alerts us to the intimate details of both the aspirations that set the Third World idea going and the cupidities that brought it to ground.
- FRONTLINE
"A comprehensive, informative and rewarding book to read.”
- ECONOMIC & POLITICALWEEKLY
“The book invites comparison to Edward Said’s Orientalism. Vijay Prashad’s passionate commitment, his intellectual brio, his literary style, is all immensely impressive.”
- TEHELKA
“Based on prodigious research, this ambitious and wide-ranging book presents a fascinating account of the Third World, its rise and fall. Prashad’s study represents issue-based international history at its best.”
- THE HINDU
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I QUEST
PARIS
A concept conjured
BRUSSELS
The 1927 League against Imperialism
BANDUNG
The 1955 Afro-Asian Conference
CAIRO
The 1961 Afro-Asian Women’s Conference
BUENOS AIRES
Imagining an economy
TEHRAN
Cultivating an imagination
BELGRADE
The 1961 Non-Aligned Movement Conference
HAVANA
The 1966 Tricontinental Conference
PART II PITFALLS
ALGIERS
The perils of an authoritarian state
LA PAZ
Released from the barracks
BALI
Death of the communists
TAWANG
War most foul
CARACAS
Oil, the devil’s excrement
ARUSHA
Socialism in a hurry
PART III ASSASSINATIONS
NEW DELHI
The obituary of the Third World
KINGSTON
IMF-led globalization
SINGAPORE
The lure of the Asian road
MECCA
When culture can be cruel
Conclusion
Notes
Index