Chris Saunders

Lena Dallywater

Helder Adegar Fonseca

It is now widely recognised that a Cold War perspective falls short in unfolding the complex geographies of connections and the multipolarity of actions and transactions that were shaped through the movement of individuals and ideas from Africa to the "East" and from the "East" to Africa in the decades in which African countries moved to independence. Adopting an interdisciplinary, transregional perspective, this volume casts new light on aspects of the role of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the decolonisation of Africa. Taking further themes explored in a collection of essays published by the editors in 2019, the twelve case studies by authors from South Africa, Czech Republic, Portugal, Russia, Hungary, Italy, Canada, Serbia, and Germany draw on new sources to explore the history of the ties that existed between African liberation movements and the socialist bloc, some of which continue to influence relationships today. Chapters contribute to three relevant main themes that resonate in a number of scholarly fields of inquiry, ranging from Global Studies, Transregional Studies, Cold War Studies, (Global) History to African Studies, Eastern European, Russian and Slavic Studies: Reconsiderations, Resources, and Reverberations. Drawing upon newly opened archives and combining transregional perspectives with sources in different languages, chapters explicitly point out the shortcomings of past research and debates in the respective field. They highlight new avenues which have been developing and which need to be further developed (Reconsiderations). Selected case studies address the resources of those being active and involved in decolonisation processes, be it in East, North, West and South. They reveal: Which resources (both material and intellectual) are the actors drawing upon? On the other hand: From which resources are individuals on one side or the other reciprocally or intermittently (intentionally) kept away? (Resources). Finally, the third theme puts an emphasis on the historicity of the processes depicted. Studies point to the gaps and dead ends of international support, the paths that peter out, but also to repercussions and reverberations up until today. (Reverberations) Taken these three themes together, the individual chapters contribute to the overall question of: Which general historical narratives about the second half of the 20th century are changing based on these new research findings?

New Perspectives on the Era of Decolonization, 1950s to 1990s

Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Africa

Felix Müller

Anaïs Angelo

Paulina Aroch-Fugellie

Lutz Diegner

Myra Ann Houser

Janine Kläge

Sara Marzagora

Arno Sonderegger

Ninja Steinbach-Hüther

Joanna Tegnerowicz

This book shows the many facets of African engagements with the world. It starts from the premise that current global asymmetries ascribing Africa to a marginalized position are the effects of colonial and imperial pasts still lingering on. The decolonization process of the post-war structure which privileges the West in both political and economic terms. While new dependencies emerged, several old bonds were maintained and continue to influence African affairs quite strikingly. It is appropriate, then, to call these continued unequal relations between Africa and the West frankly 'neo-colonial'. This designation applies all the more as the post-colonial states of Africa inherited a complex legacy of foreign rule – colonial frontiers, colonial languages, colonial infrastructure and authoritarian institutions, as well as the social intricacies and imbalances so characteristic of the 'colonial situation'. The contributions to this volume look at various aspects of these complex processes from intellectual history perspectives. The topics dealt with are manifold. Contributions deliberately attack key themes, ideas and discourses of an intellectual history of Africa ('state', 'modernity', 'development', 'dependency', 'art', etc.), and introduce important engaged public intellectuals from Africa and the African diaspora. What is Africa, and how is she related to the rest of the world? How can she overcome her internal problems and her external dependencies? – These are perennial questions critically tackled by Africans throughout the 20th century. Dealing with various cases looked at from a variety of perspectives, the contributions to this book offer original insights into the intellectual history of Africa.

Facets of an Intellectual History of Africa

African Thoughts on Colonial and Neo-Colonial Worlds

In the global context of the Cold War, the relationship between liberation movements and Eastern European states obviously changed and transformed. Similarly, forms of (material) aid and (ideological) encouragement underwent changes over time. The articles assembled in this volume argue that the traditional Cold War geography of bi-polar competition with the United States is not sufficient to fully grasp these transformations. The question of which side of the ideological divide was more successful (or lucky) in impacting actors and societies in the global south is still relevant, yet the Cold War perspective falls short in unfolding the complex geographies of connections and the multipolarity of actions and transactions that exists until today. Acknowledging the complexities of liberation movements in globalization processes, the papers thus argue that activities need to be understood in their local context, including personal agendas and internal conflicts, rather than relying primarily on the traditional frame of Cold War competition. They point to the agency of individual activists in both "Africa" and "Eastern Europe" and the lessons, practices and languages that were derived from their often contradictory encounters. In Southern African Liberation Movements, authors from South Africa, Portugal, Austria and Germany ask: What role did actors in both Southern Africa and Eastern Europe play? What can we learn by looking at biographies in a time of increasing racial and international conflict? And which "creative solutions" need to be found, to combine efforts of actors from various ideological camps? Building on archival sources from various regions in different languages, case studies presented in the edition try to encounter the lack of a coherent state of the art. They aim at combining the sometimes scarce sources with qualitative interviews to give answers to the many open questions regarding Southern African liberation movements and their connections to the "East".

Transnational Activism 1960–1990

Southern African Liberation Movements and the Global Cold War ‘East’

Lena Dallywater

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