The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World - Hardcover

Prashad, Vijay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565847857 ISBN 13: 9781565847859

Publisher: New Press, 2007

Synopsis

A landmark study that offers an alternative history of the Cold War from the point of view of the world's poor.

'"Europe" is morally, spiritually indefensible. And today the indictment is brought against it...by tens and tens of thousands of millions of men who, from the depths of slavery, set themselves up as judges.'—Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

Here, from a brilliant young writer, 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 twentieth century 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.

Spanning every continent of the global South, 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 India's 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. 12 b/w photographs.

About this title

About the Author:

Vijay Prashad's previous books include The Karma of Brown Folk and Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting. He is on the board of the Center for Third World Organizing and a co-founder of the Forum of Indian Leftists. He teaches at Trinity College, Connecticut, and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

From Publishers Weekly:

Scholarly but accessible, this history of Third World intellectual thought and politics captures the shared ideals, institutions and strategies that have united the Latin American countries and the new Asian and African states that have stood outside U.S. and Soviet spheres of influence since WWII. This Third World project did more than steer a neutral course between the nuclear-armed contenders of the Cold War era, claims Prashad (The Karma of Brown Folk). Anticolonial nationalism was also the basis for an alternative world order premised on peace, autonomy and cooperation. But Third World unity was also fragile. The optimism of newly independent nation-states that shaped the United Nations into their principal global platform gave way after the 1960s to frustration, conflict, compromised sovereignty and diminishing expectations. Prashad reveals the close interrelations among such obstacles as the persistence of old social hierarchies, the mobilization of religious views and reinvented tribalism, and punishing debt burdens designed to maintain Western hegemony over a "developing" world. Indeed, he argues, "cultural nationalism" easily becomes "the Trojan-horse of IMF-driven globalization." While the subtitle is misleading—Prashad necessarily concentrates on towering figures like India's Nehru, Indonesia's Sukarno and Egypt's Nasser—the book offers a vital assertion of an alternative future, grounded in an anti-imperial vision. (Feb.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: New Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1565847857
• ISBN 13: 9781565847859
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384