LENT Term (2)
HY113 From Empire to Independence: The Extra-European
World in the 20th Century
WEEK 1 The Third World and the Non-Aligned Movement in Global Politics
Why and with what consequences did leaders from Africa and Asia meet in Bandung in 1955?
‘Internal rivalries meant that the non-aligned movement failed to achieve its aims.’ Discuss.
‘There was not one Third World project but many competing ideas about what one should entail and each one
undermined the other.’ Discuss.
Essential Reading:
Why and with what consequences did leaders from Africa and Asia meet in Bandung in
1955?
Why – a precursor (as many states were still unsure of their regional alliances and how non-
alignment would manifest as domestic or regional policy) to the non-alignment movement but was a
conference with the intention recentralise global debate around the challenges facing the
development of the Third World, a contrast to the polarising narrative of bipolar Cold War politics.
Who- key organisers include Nehru, Sukarno, and Nkrumah
- The first Bandung conference geographically stressed an Afro-Asian alliance.
Excluded states – Taiwan, South and North Korea (deemed too controversial), South Africa (due to
Apartheid), Israel (seen as an extension of the Western hegemony and the US bloc alongside being a
potential colonial power)
What – fixing of commodity prices to counteract western dominance of global economy
(counteracting globalisation), Forming opposition to nuclear weaponry and support of non-
proliferation.
= 5 Principles of co-existence
mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty,
mutual non-aggression,
mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs,
equality and co-operation for mutual benefit
tolerance
Consequences
1961, First Non-alignment conference in Belgrade. The Summit had a more specific agenda than
Bandung and crucially excluded any superpowers. The conference spotlighted methods to condemn
and isolate the Apartheid state of South Africa and to further the economic stability of the Third
World.
1964, Second Non-Alignment summit in Cairo.
- Extended membership to South American states and more African nations
- Emphasised internal rivalries between members seeking to pursue interventionist missions
in other states to combat neo-colonialism and those such as India and Nasser seeking to
balance between the US and USSR superpower conflict to maximise economic gains and
developmental aid. Nkrumah in Ghana and Sukarno were arguably the key actors who
endorsed the more ‘radical’ aspect of non-alignment as seen in
Legacy:
‘Internal rivalries meant that the non-aligned movement failed to achieve its aims.’
Discuss.
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‘There was not one Third World project but many competing ideas about what one should
entail and each one undermined the other.’ Discuss.
To say that any leader of the Third world was under the illusion that a singular project could
be manifested would be to undermine the intellect and pragmatism of revolutionary leaders
like Nasser, Sukarno, Nkrumah or Nehru. The Bandung conference was representative of the
shared desire of post-colonial states to tailor the political agenda to the economic, political,
and historic challenges they faced and to avoid being defined by the Cold War’s bipolar
nature. This shared desire to platform third-world-centric issues, however, was not
conditional on a predetermined policy direction. A key precondition of the summit, as
proved by the Five principles of co-existence it espoused, was that each nation present had a
right to territorial integrity and sovereignty. As a result, intervention or homogenous policy
was not to be expected, ideas were supposed to be shared and adopted at the prerogative
of individual states. This was evident in the fact that the non-alignment conferences
championed the creation of smaller regional blocs to support regional identities such as the
1964 Arab league Summit and the inclusion of revolutionary political groups who, from a
structural standpoint, undermined the international legal sovereignty of the founding
member states.
The phrasing of competing ideas implies that difference in policy aims lead to frictional
relationships, limiting the tangible outcomes of the non-alignment movement and by 1965 it
could be said that a unified Afro-Asian forum for diplomacy had all but withered away. While
leaders likely did not expect to have on Third world project, the emphasis on non-alignment
could be said to have diverged between economic non-alignment and political non-
alignment with the geopolitical circumstances of key states dominating who splintered into
which side. Nkrumah, Tito and Sukarno were informed by experiences of armed struggles
against colonial powers alongside socialist sympathies to pursue political non-alignment
while Nasser and Nehru seemed inclined to play both US and USSR governments to establish
economic non-alignment and stability.
- 1965 – Second Indo-Pakistani war could symbolise a turning point in the decline of non-
alignment as the largest non-aligned power violates non-proliferation and forms arms
alliances to wage regional warfare. Frome here on, we see a reversion of third world states
prioritising regional power balancing and domestic policy over the more idealistic and
grandiose aims of forming a parallel supranational structure to those of the US or Russia.
- Furthermore, the deaths and ousting of the key leaders by the late 1960s further
undermined the perceived viability of non-alignment to third world states.
1) A Best, J. Hanhimaki, J. Maiolo & K. Schulze, An International History of the Twentieth
Century (2015)
Chapter 13
ABSTRACT: The practical significance of neutrality, neutralism, non-alignment and development as
forces in international politics in the Cold War period and after is not easy to measure. In Europe
'neutrality' remained the privilege of a few small Western-oriented countries that played only a
minimal role in the diplomatic, military, economic and political evolution of the Cold War. While
neutrality is often associated in the post-1945 period with the Third World, it is important to realize
that the roots of the concept lay in Europe and the European states system. Indeed, one of the most
overlooked issues in studies of the Cold War in Europe is the role of the neutral countries. Relations
between the United States and India worsened as the Cold War in Asia heightened. United Nations
(UN) an international organization established after the Second World War to replace the League of
Nations. Congo Crisis the civil war that took place in the Congo from 1960 to 1963.
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Hanhimaki addresses the polarising nature of the Cold War during the post-war decades of the
1900s and writes that the conflict leads historians to assume that neutrality was not a viable position
for states at the time. However, by addressing the existence of Switzerland, Sweden and attempts to
create non-alignment blocks in Asia and Africa, he proves that neutrality was pursued by certain
states who sought to centre themselves around their own agendas and circumvent being drawn into
the US- Soviet power struggle.
- Reflecting their own experiences, their priorities were expediting Western decolonization
and tackling the causes of economic underdevelopment.
- The desire to further their own agenda meant that the activist states in Asia and Africa, such
as India, Egypt, and Algeria, did not pursue neutrality in isolation, but attempted to form
groupings, such as the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 (G-77), that would allow
them to speak with a stronger collective voice. This goal of forming a collective
counterweight to Western ‘global priorities’ manifested, from 1950s onwards, numerous
conferences and summits addressing the challenges and priorities of the ‘Third World’.
- In one sense, this strategy worked, for the developed world was forced to recognize that
the price of not addressing the Third World’s poverty might be future international
instability, and thus development became a major issue in global affairs. P334
However, the fact that superpower attention was directed towards the Third World meant that
inevitably the latter became a major battleground in the Cold War and there was little the Non-
Aligned Movement could do to prevent this.
2) Mark Atwood Lawrence, “The Rise and Fall of Non-Alignment” in Robert J. MacMahon (ed.),
The Cold War in the Third World (2013) Read
3) Ann Garland Mahler, “The Global South in the Belly of the Beast: Viewing African American Civil
Rights through a Tricontinental Lens” Latin American Research Review 50:1 (2015) Read
4) V. Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (2007)
Chapter 1 Read
5) Svetozar Rajak, “No Bargaining Chips, No Spheres of Interest: The Yugoslav Origins of Cold War
Non-Alignment” Journal of Cold War Studies (2014)
6) Robert Vitalis, “The Midnight Ride of Kwame Nkrumah and other Fables of Bandung (Ban-
Doong),” Humanity 4:2 Read
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WEEK 2 Development and Modernization Theory: Latin America and Vietnam
Essential Reading: 5x
Where did the ideas about development in the 1950s and 1960s come from?
What were the driving goals behind modernization theory? Were these goals achieved?
To what extent did the application of modernization theory in Latin America and Vietnam
differ?
1) Best, A., Hanhimaki, J., Maiolo, J.A., & Schulze, K.E. 2014. International History of the Twentieth
Century and Beyond (3rd ed.). Routledge. Available at:
https://doiorg.gate3.library.lse.ac.uk/10.4324/9781315739717 Accessed: 22/1/23
Chapter 13 - Neutralism, development and the rise of the Third World, 1945–2014
Let us look at neutrality and non-alignment from a slightly different angle than Week1. Hanhimaki
already writes that non-alignment was used by formerly colonised states to emphasise that the
political priorities of the third world were distinct and of equal importance to those of the first
world.
He mentions that throughout the 1950s, third world leadership formed inter-continental channels of
communication (particularly between Africa and Asia) with the intention of creating a powerful
political lobby in the Southern hemisphere. This lobby, through political consensus, pooling of
resources and economic growth through integration, would then hope to act as a counterweight to
dominance of the US and USSR over global initiatives and policy.
Ultimately, Hanhimaki concludes that the third world were able to bring international attention and
recognition to the dependence of the world order on the resources, labour and strategic geographic
value of the third world. This success, could be attributed to the fact that key leaders of neutrality/
non-alignment represented economically dominant states in the third world, each had cultivated a
cult of personality based on revolutionary heroism and the methodology used legitimised their
concerns by mirroring the formal and bureaucratic preferred by the West.
With recognition, however, came intrusive interest from the very Cold War powerhouses that the
non-alignment nations wished to not become split between. In successfully, proving that the global
economy would destabilise without the concerns of the third world being addressed over the long
term, the Cold War powers pivoted to engage with this prediction and aimed to gain dominance
over the resources, labour and strategic geographic value of the third world. From a lens of post-
colonial analysis, one could look at the Cold War as a timeframe wherein two superpowers were
trying to split the world into two colonial dominions. In this analogy, both the USA and the USSR the
saw the rest of the world as their respective back gardens, regions that needed their influence and
policies to become successful members of the Soviet or American world order.
Therefore, when the third world claimed that only their development would lead to global economic
prosperity, both camps characterised the third world as the missing piece in their puzzle of
colonialism and not as a third autonomous actor. This analysis arguably helps to explain why
Hanhimaki notes that non-alignment experienced only temporary victory in the 1950s. Non-aligned
states were able to bring attention to their political agenda but due to this they were also unable to
realise said agenda due to the competing attention from the US and USSR dividing non-aligned
members with promises of monetary reward in return for ideological allyship.
European neutrality – before and during the Cold War
Before- Swiss and Swedish neutrality predated the Cold War and emerged in response to the effects
of the Napoleonic wars on their states.
After – meanwhile Finnish, Yugoslav and Austrian neutrality was a product of the Cold War that
Hanhimaki describes as heavily overlooked by historians when assessing the contributions of
European states to the conflict.
