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This article discusses the politics of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)–a contemporary social movement operating across a number of Arab and western countries. Unlike analysis on the Arab Uprisings which focused on the national dimension of youth activism, we explore how the PYM politics fosters and upholds an explicitly transnational anti-colonial and intersectional solidarity framework, which foregrounds a radical critique of conventional notions of self-determination based on state-framed human rights discourses and international law paradigms. The struggle becomes instead framed as an issue of justice, freedom and liberation from interlocking forms and hierarchies of oppression.

This article offers a new interpretation of Kant's cosmopolitanism and his anti-colonialism inToward Perpetual Peace. Kant's changing position has been the subject of extensive debates that have, however, not recognized the central place of colonialism in the political, economic, and military debates in Europe in Kant's writings. Based on historical evidence not previously considered alongsidePerpetual Peace, I suggest that Kant's leading concern at the time of writing is the negative effect of European expansionism and intra-European rivalry over colonial possessions on the possibility of peace in Europe. Because of the lack of affinity between colonial conflict and his philosophy of history, Kant must adjust his concept of antagonism to distinguish between war between particular dyads, in particular spaces, and with particular non-state actors. I examine the implications of this argument for Kant's system of Right and conclude that his anti-colonialism co-exists with hierarchical views of race.

During the Cold War, Prague was home to several international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) uniting member organizations of different fields (students, journalists, trade unions, communist parties, churches and others). This article aims at a reinterpretation of their history through the lens of decolonization, presenting the NGOs not only as soldiers in the Cold War but also as 'hubs of anti-colonialism'. It shows the role of the 'Third World' delegates in the NGOs and their positioning toward Czechoslovak state socialism. It explores the mechanisms of knowledge production and transfers through media and training programmes.

The debate which arose between the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) in early September 2005, concerning the history of Malaysia's independence movement, necessitates a re-appraisal of the organizations and personalities involved. This article re-assesses the period and actors involved in bringing to fruition Malaysian independence. By utilizing mainly authoritative secondary sources, the reconstructed history belies the argument of the ruling elites that they inherit the mantle of `real independence fighters' from their political ancestors. Although the sources are readily available in Malaysian libraries, the truth contained in them has eluded the general public. Thus, to lay people, political history in Malaysia has been what ruling politicians tell them and what they find in school textbooks that, in any case, have been approved by the powers that be. This article reveals that pre-independence Malaysian history is replete with contradictions and paradoxes which may transform perceptions of who were and were not independence heroes.

This paper examines the implications of Indian nationalism during the inter-war period for both Japanese rule in Korea and the anti-colonial struggle against it. It discusses how two Bengalis, famous for their Anglophobia—the poet Rabindranath Tagore and the revolutionary Rash Behari Bose—saw Japanese colonialism in Korea and how their contrasting views differentially influenced thoughts about colonialism in the Japanese empire, among both Japanese and Koreans. The paper shows how the views and influence of these two Indians can usefully be examined in terms of what Ann Laura Stoler has called the "politics of comparison."

AbstractTwo young men met on a quay at the port in Conakry, Guinea in 1946. One, waiting dockside, was Mamadou Madeira Keita, a low-level civil servant and archivist. Years later, when he was a political prisoner in the Malian Sahara, some would argue that he was "the first francophone African ethnographer." The other, descending the gangplank, was the Frenchman Keita had come to meet. Georges Balandier was unknown then, but would soon become a leading figure in the fields of sociology and anthropology. The encounter between Keita and Balandier was foundational for both men. Conakry incubated a canonical intervention—Balandier's 1951 article "La Situation Coloniale"—that some attribute an ancestral role in a particular francophone tradition of postcolonial thought. Conakry, and Guinea at large, was also the crucible in which a powerful anti-colonial politics were forged by Madeira Keita and his allies. In this particular corner of West Africa, anti-colonial politics and an emergent, politically engaged social science conditioned each other, like the two strands of a double helix, each a necessary yet ultimately contingent element of the other's structure. Though these links did not last long, they had important effects. This article, by emphasizing the contingencies of the two men's intertwined biographies, seeks to carry out Balandier's dictate to emphasize the "concrete" nature of this particular situation in order to understand how and why anti-colonial politics and an innovative sociology converged and ultimately diverged.

This article discusses the politics of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) – a contemporary social movement operating across a number of Arab and western countries. Unlike analysis on the Arab Uprisings which focused on the national dimension of youth activism, we explore how the PYM politics fosters and upholds an explicitly transnational anti-colonial and intersectional solidarity framework, which foregrounds a radical critique of conventional notions of self-determination based on state-framed human rights discourses and international law paradigms. The struggle becomes instead framed as an issue of justice, freedom and liberation from interlocking forms and hierarchies of oppression. KEYWORDS: Palestine, transnational social movements, intersectionality, human rights, anti-colonialism

A major ally of the Marxist-inspired liberation movements, which fought against Portuguese colonialism in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and Mozambique, the Soviet Union provided them with not only military, but also civil aid in the form of scholarships. This paper focuses on the training of students from Portuguese Africa in the USSR. While it provides data and analyzes the importance and the complexities of educational assistance in the context of anti-colonial revolutions, it also sheds light on the tensions and serious conflicts that cast a shadow over the relationships between students and leaders. Students who created opposition groups and were accused of plotting against the leaders, criticizing the USSR, or trying to postpone their return to the motherland were repatriated and punished. Others managed to migrate and pursued their opposition from the West. Confronted with these phenomena, the party leaders grew disillusioned and reduced the number of students studying in the Soviet Union.

AbstractColonialisms of the nineteenth century resulted in lasting encounters between the East and West. Indian spiritual and religious renaissance, along with social reform movements during this period (inspired by Bhakti or personal devotion to God and self-realization in Vedanta teachings), attracted several western seekers and thinkers to India. Among them was Mirra Alfassa (February 21, 1878–November 17, 1973), a French woman, who was attracted to Eastern philosophy. She joined the revolutionary turned spiritual master, Sri Aurobindo, at Pondicherry, a French enclave, and continued to live in post-independent India for 26 years after 1947. In this paper, we trace Mirra Alfassa's journey from a spiritual seeker to being anointed as "the Mother", the head of the Aurobindo Ashram. We explore how her pursuit of internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and universal values aligned her with the cultural, religious, and spiritual dimensions of India's nationalist movement and postcolonial nation-building. We hope to contribute to the wider discussions about women in international thought and how such international collaborations (as in the case of Mirra Alfassa) worked to achieve the nationalist goals for political, social, and cultural revival both during and after the independence movement in India.

International audience ; This paper addresses the work of early critics of colonialism and Eurocentrism within Italian geography in the Age of Empire. At that time, a minority but rather influent group of Italian scholars, influenced by the international debates promoted by the anarchist geographers Reclus, Kropotkin and Mečnikov, fumed publicly at Italy's colonial ambitions in Africa. Their positions assumed, at least in the case of Arcangelo Ghisleri, the character of a radical critique of both political and cultural European hegemony. These approaches were linked to a similar critique of 'internal colonialism', both Austrian in the Italian-speaking regions of Trento and Trieste, and Piedmontese in Southern Italy. Based on primary sources, and drawing on the international literature on imperial geography and colonial and postcolonial sciences, this paper conjures up the Italian example to discuss how some European geographers of the Age of Empire were also early critics of racism, colonialism and chauvinism, and how these historical experiences can serve current debates on critical, radical and anarchist geographies.