Global History from the Global South Lecture Content

Brandt Line

1980 dividing countries based on GDP per capita consistent with UN HDI report 2020 still used to split global north and global South

21 69

Oxfam 2026 global north has ___% of the world's population and ___% of the wealth

Non-Aligned movement 1950s

1955 Bandung conference solidarity between countries excluded from Cold War Afro-Asian solidarity Egypt and Yugoslavia are also there?! 1961 Yugoslavia conference; state-driven focus

Third World movement 1960s

coined by Alfred Sauvy 1952 - comparison to the third estate in the French Revolution Third World as a marker of radical anti-imperialism throughout 1960s - encouraging militant resistance to colonialism China as a point of reference: Sino-Soviet split, Maoism's focus on peasant insurgency idea of dependency: challenging role of Third World in producing goods for the global North

1966 Havana Tricontinental Conference

1965 Algiers conference cancelled when Ben Bella overthrown - Cuba volunteers instead with backing from China and USSR 500 delegates from 82 countries mostly African, Asian and Latin American - combination of government officials and underground revolutionary organisations meant armed struggle emphasised as the route to Third World liberation formation of Organisation of Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAL), HQ'd in Havana Guevara statement: stressing importance of armed struggle, supporting Vietnam and opposing American imperialism 60s-70s radical alternative to reformist political leadership of 50s emphasising shared history of Euro-American colonialism shift from class to race solidarity - black internationalism

CLR James

writing for Beacon group in Trinidad 1932 moving to Manchester to write for the guardian building Pan-Africanist solidarity in response to 1935-36 invasion of Ethiopia Black Jacobins 1934 play World Revolution 1937 Trotskyist history book 1939 critical of Marxists overlooking the role of race/class intersection at Fourth International

international African Friends of Ethiopia

formed 1935 London /Abyssinia CLR James, Amy Garvey and Chris Braithwaite 26 August 1935 rally in Trafalgar Square

African Service Bureau

formed 1937 London CLR James and George Padmore etc. lobbying in the interests of people oppressed in African colonies

Henry Sylvester Williams

Trinidadian lawyer in the USA, understanding racism on a global scale to form connections with activists like Booker T Washington and set up first Pan-African Conference in 1900 in London

W.E.B. DuBois

first African-American to be awarded a doctorate, attends Pan-African Conference and gives Address to Nation of the World

1900 Exhibition of American N in Paris

• colonial gaze; exhibitions displaying the technology of imperialist countries showcasing indigenous cultures as exotic and primitive

• exhibition intervention: Du Bois shows the social and economic history of racism in the US defeat of Italian colonialism in 1896 leading to fascist invasion in 1935

Harlem Renaissance

1920-1930s New York Alain Locke, The New [N] The New [N] Newspaper, Hubert Harrison Harlem final destination of the Great Migration cultural pride and fight for civil rights W.E.B. DuBois

Negritude

1935 L'Etudient Noir journal Aime Cesair, Leopold Senghor, etc. literary and art movement aimed at raising diaspora consciousness Martinique Nardal Sisters salon cross-pollinating with Harlem Renaissance

1917 Third International

obligation to support anti-colonial movements

'Back to Africa' movement

19th-20th century descendants of enslaved Africans moving back to Africa Marcus Garvey - racial separatism, one-state Africa, many settling in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Haiti

1941 Atlantic Charter

re-iterating 1918 statement by Woodrow Wilson on the right to self-determination; taken as a win by some anti-colonial activists 1943-45 Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia nationalist movements reference Atlantic Charter and make link between colonialism and fascism

Frantz Fanon

born Martinique 25, explores extraction of wealth through violence in his writings on colonialism from 50s-60s Tricontinental conference - uniting the global South? -> sharp dichotomies between global South and global North simplify idea of what extraction is doctor in Algeria in 53, resigns in 56 and joins National Liberation Front colonialism as a system which is cultural and psychological rather than purely economic; making people feel psychologically inferior -> violence is necessary to break the system -> Third World as a new beginning, where the revolution would take place; rejection of Europe as centre of change

Pan-African Festival 1969 Algiers

challenging and building on the model of revolution put forward by Marx and Engels:

• idea of Manchester as the city of the revolution; centring global North

• idea of teleogical revolution funded by Algerian government: key role in Organisation of African Unity presence of black panthers in Algeria after exile from USA authorities, taking inspiration from Algerian resistance PLO, Black Panthers, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba

Engels North Star 1848

welcoming Algerian defeat as progress because it will lead to communism in the long-run -> demonstrating how Marxists didn't always have anti-colonial interests in mind

1962 ANC visit to Morocco

in order to learn how to construct post-Apartheid South Africa; idea that North Africa was the most similar to South Africa and most successful example of colonial resistance

Souffles journal 1966-72

covering 1969 Pan-African conference idea that Moroccan civilisation should not try to replicate Egypt or Europe

Archie Shepp

1969 Pan-African conference performing radical free form jazz and trying to get away from the influence of European culture

Dakar World Arts Festival

1966: Leopold Senghor black identity based on rhythm, spontaneity and emotion; 1939 'Emotion is black, just as Reason is Hellenic' -> Algerian festival reacting to exclusion of Algeria and potential neo-colonialism of centring ties of French colonialism

Rai music

in 60s and 70s reacting to social disillusionment EG Cheikha Rimitti and Houari Manar of queer rai movement -> social conservatism, homosexuality outlawed in Algeria; culture as a means for resistance

National Liberation Front

participated in paramilitary anti-colonial uprising economic and cultural violence in Algeria during colonailism; attempts to divide Muslim and Amazigh populations -> growth of Algerian nationalism: National Liberation Front, attempts to recover a (maybe imagined) unified pre-colonial Algerian identity

1959 Guevara in Gaza

• placards with 'long live Nasser' and 'long live Castro'

• Che Guevara hanging out: just after Cuban Revolution, sent by Castro to carry out first Cuban revolutionary overseas mission

• visiting refugee camps, shocked by conditions and violence by Israeli army

• asking M. Abumidan(?) where the mobilisation training camps were -> Cuba's role in Third World movement urging people to take agency against imperialism with armed struggle -> historical moment of interconnectivity between Palestine and Cuba (etc.) through Tricontinentalism

Cuban Revolution 1956

-> high participation of women, students and Afro-Cubans in wider civil society campaign of disobedience and protest in urban centres -> Cuba becomes a hub of Third World revolution due to credibility in successfully overthrowing a dictatorship

Cuba 1961

embracing 'socialist path' and supporting Third World liberation struggles US economic embargo and attempts to overthrow Castro government (Bay of Pigs) Che Guevara 'guerrilla warfare' advising on how to overthrow dictatorships and imperialism - theory of 'foquismo'

Mehdi Ben Barka

Moroccan socialist anti-imperialist revolutionary in exile leading discussions for a new 'tricontinental' conference, originally planned for Geneva abducted in Paris in 1965 through French-Moroccan-Israeli collusion

third cinema

• Hacia un tercer cine ('toward a third cinema') published by Tricontinental Bulletin in 69 by Argentinian filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino: first cinema Hollywood commercial, second cinema European arthouse, third cinema for the purpose of Third World revolutionary action

• The Hour of the Furnaces 1968, Sambizanga from Angola by Sarah Maldoror, Sulafa Jadallah Palestinian film-maker

the tricontinental bulletin

• bringing together anticolonial struggles across the world

• graphic design creating new visual language for anti-imperialism: bright colours, traditional patterns, groups of people to represent collective struggle, imagery of guns

• Desi Garcia (?) - using African symbols and nature to represent genealogies of resistance

Tigray People's Liberation Front

• Marxist inspired group preaching gender reform and peasants rights

• by 1982 women up to 1/3 of armed group, also working as activists, spies, teachers, healthcare providers etc.

• victory over Derg in 1991 alongside Eritrean People's Liberation Front (which also recruited women fighters)

• no gender differentiation in TPLF (apart from time off for periods - optional) romantic relationships banned; attempt to create a genderless comrade

tegadelti

mythologised group identity of female combatents against the Derg in Ethiopia

disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration

• Ethiopia: official DDR training process involved 5 years involvement (to 1 year for the men) and had very long waiting list for women; most women choosing to demobilising themselves alcohol abuse, unemployment and low wage work for demobilised women in Addis Ababa

• DDR in Siera Leonne: women accused of deviant behaviour and excluded from female spaces for their involvement in the war -> DDR program run by UN but required that women give away weapons to register; women shared weapons between them or sold them to civilian men, excluding them

1973 chipko movement

protest against deforestation in the Himalayas starting in Uttarakhand in 1973 1974 Reni village protest - women leading but with economic and environmental goals in mind

Narmada Bachoa Andolan

Indian organisation founded 1989 'save the Narmada River Movement' led by Medha Patkar and co. Medha Patkar undergoing hunger strikes to force attention to the issue

Greenham Common 1981

British protest movement against the storage of American trident missiles at Greenham Common women's encampment over period of 30 years - different areas for different strands of feminism, including queer feminists

1970s Love Canal movement

1978 Lois Gibbs of Love Canal Homeowners Association in Niagara Falls raising consciousness of effects of hazardous waste disposal by Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corporation lower middle class women becoming environmental activists

1977 Greenbelt movement Kenya

led by Wangari Maathai and National Council of Women of Kenya framing women's activism as non-threatening environmental conservation tree planting programs to provide jobs and opportunities to Kenyan women

Chico Dam

the proposal to dam the Chico river would have passed through indigenous communities where they had buried ancestors indigenous women led grassroots opposition to the project, facing militarized police

Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1945

precedent of global responsibility to protect civilians use of rhetoric around development etc. to implement neo-colonial influence from global North by building hierarchal relations EG IMF impartiality neutrality independence -> system of reciprocity; implicit inequality

Ethiopia 1984

Derg regime scorched earth policy creating refugee crisis and crisis of living conditions, compounded by drought food aid diverted to militias to maintain revolution - civilians forced to flee Northern Ethiopia in search of food

Mohammed Amin and Michael Buerk 1984

report of 'biblical famine' with images of malnourished children; depicting problem as product of god and nature rather than product of politics and war -> construction of 'starving African child' image in Western Europe celebrity funding for humanitarian aid - Band Aid and Live Aid; rise in charity funding of humanitarian aid for famine relief in Ethiopia -> earmarking of funds for famine taking away from other causes; difference between development funding and emergency relief maintaining state of crisis

1987 Oxfam 'Images of Africa'

all Africans perceived within 'starving child' image flattening of political conditions that led to suffering, idea that just throwing money/food at the problem will solve it despite it being a deeper societal issue (Derg blocked access to aid, aid was co-opted by armed groups and used in forced resettlement efforts)

UN resolution 794 and UNITAF

US-led military option to secure aid 'by all necessary means' nicknamed 'shoot-to-feed'

Somalia Bloody Monday

killing of Somalian children (?) by US soldiers, leading to Somalian civilians shifting support away from Americans shift in rhetoric from 'restoring aid' to 'restoring order' - violence between US and Somalian troops, idea of US global state-building; idealised idea of suffering Somali child victims undermined by reality of hostility to US imperialism

MSF Somalia 1992

MSF mortality survey about Southern area hit by famine leading to claim of 1/2 million dead children (inaccurately extrapolated; MSF try to reel back use of stat but too late all over media) marketing of Somalian food aid as next frontier in confronting African suffering idea that problems can be solved by throwing money at them without addressing underlying issues like measles, medication shortages, building material shortages

Cuerpo-Territorio

'body territory' concept in Latin American ecofeminism linking the struggle of women, indigenous people and the environment