The Darker Nations, page 39
6. I have used the papers of the League against Imperialism, available at the International Institute for Social History (IISG), Amsterdam. For background on Belgium’s political situation in the interwar years, see Els Witte, Jan Craeybeckx and Alain Meynen, Political History of Belgium (Brussels: Vrije Universiteit Brussel University Press, 2000), 130–33.
7. “Belgische Resolution, 1927,” no. 14, League against Imperialism Papers, IISG.
8. Several authors who mention the conference simply reduce it to a Communist “front organization,” without any sense of the value that it held for those who traveled to it from Africa, the Americas, and Asia. For a recent example, see Sean McMeekin, The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 194–95.
9. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “Backward Europe and Advanced Asia,” in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), 19:99–100.
10. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “The Foreign Policy of the Russian Revolution,” in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), 25:85–87.
11. John Riddell, ed., To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920. First Congress of the Peoples of the East (New York: Pathfinder, 1993).
12. The Stalinist purges killed many of those who had been in Baku and played central roles in the creation of left political parties in their homelands: Jalaluddin Korkmasov of Dagestan, Nariman Kerbalai Najaf-oglu Narimanov of Azerbaijan, Pilipe Makharadze of Georgia, Tashpolad Narbutabekov of Turkestan, and Dadash Buniatzadeh and Ahmed Sultanzadeh of Iran.
13. This logic followed from the “Fourteen Points” enunciated by President Wilson, who in January 1918, announced in his point no. 5, “A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.” From Wilson, it is not clear whose “government” is referred to in the last sentence. One can only assume he means the colonial government, which means that it gets to determine the entire process of rule and devolution.
14. George Wilson, The First Year of the League of Nations (Boston: Little, Brown, 1921), 75.
15. Jawaharlal Nehru, Toward Freedom (New York: John Day, 1941), 125.
16. “Manifest des Brüsseler Kongresses gegen den Imperialismus, 1927,” no. 10, League against Imperialism Papers, IISG.
17. “Resolution. Südafrika von den Delegierten der Südafrikanischen Union. D. Colraine, J. A. la Guma, J. Gumeda,” no. 19, League against Imperialism Papers, IISG.
18. Helmut Müller, “Antikolonialer Widerstand im subsaharischen Afrika und Antiimperialistische Lige,” Die Liga gegen Imperialismus und für nationale Vnabhängigkeit, 1927–1937 (Leipzig: Karl-Marx-Universität, 1987), 116–17.
19. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Renascent Africa (Accra: n.p., 1937).
20. Owen Mathurin, Henry Sylvester Williams and the Origins of the Pan-African Movement, 1869–1911 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1976), 60–65.
21. W.E.B. DuBois, “To the Nations of the World,” in Report of the Pan-African Conference at Westminister Town Hall (London: Pan-African Association, 1900). His speech is also available in Herbert Aptheker, ed., Writings in Non-Periodical Literature (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1982).
22. Immanuel Wallerstein, Africa: The Politics of Independence (New York: Vintage, 1961), 104; Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 45.
23. George Padmore, ed., History of the Pan African Congress: Colonial and Coloured Unity (London: Hammersmith Books, 1963), 5.
24. Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology (London: Heinemann, 1961), xi–xiv.
25. “Resolution vorgeschlagen von der syrischen delegation,” no. 22, and “Resolution gegen den französischen imperialismus in Syrien,” no. 23, League against Imperialism Papers, IISG.
26. Gerhard Höpp, “Die arabischen Nationalrevolutionäre in Berlin und die Liga,” and Mario Kessler, “Antikoloniale Bündnisse im syrischen Volksbefreiungskrieg, 1925–1927,” in Die Liga gegen Imperialismus und für nationale Unabh&ngigkeit, 1927–1937 (Leipzig: KarlMarx-Universität, 1987).
27. Muhammed Khalil, The Arab States and the Arab League (Beirut: Khayats, 1962), 2:57.
28. Yeshoshua Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, 1930–1945 (London: Cass, 1986) and Majid Khadduri, “Towards an Arab Union,” American Political Science Review 1,000, no. 1 (February 1946).
29. John Charles Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), 203.
30. One of APRA’s main theorists and organizers was José Carlos Mariátegui, the greatest Marxist thinker outside the pale.
31. Quoted in Arthur P. Whitaker, Nationalism in Latin America: Past and Present (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1962), 63. For Haya de la Torre in Brussels, see Max Zeuske, “Haya de la Torre, die APRA und der Brüsseler Weltkongreß der Antiimperialistischen Liga,” in Die Liga gegen Imperialismus und für nationale Unabh&ngigkeit, 1927–1937 (Leipzig: Karl-Marx-Universität, 1987).
32. Olga Cabrera, “Julio Antonio Mella und die Gründung der kubanischen Sektion der Antiimperialistischen Liga,” and Anja Alert, “Antiimperialistishce Liga und revolutionäre Bewegung Venezuelas,” in Die Liga gegen Imperialismus und für nationale Unabh&ngigkeit, 1927–1937 (Leipzig: Karl-Marx-Universität, 1987).
33. Víctor Alba, Nationalists without Nations (New York: Praeger, 1968), 73.
34. Arthur Whitaker and David Jordan, Nationalism in Contemporary Latin America (New York: Free Press, 1966), 167.
35. Final Act of the Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace, Mexico City, February–March 1945 (Washington, DC: Pan-American Union, 1945), Articles 1 and 2.
36. Quoted in K.P. Karunakaran, India in World Affairs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 85.
37. Even a canonical work like Evan Luard’s A History of the United Nations (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989) offers evidence for this interpretation.
38. Víctor Alba, Nationalists without Nations: The Oligarchy versus the People in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1968), 59.
39. In November 1921, delegates from the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party met with Lenin and asked if they should change their party into a Communist Party. In anticipation of the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920, Lenin had written that the delegates must “adjust both Soviet institutions and the Communist Party (its membership, special tasks) to the level of the peasant countries of the colonial East. This is the crux of the matter. This needs thinking about and seeking concrete answers.” Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “Material for the Second Congress of the Communist International,” in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), 42:202. A peasant society with little industrial development and almost no proletariat, with a weak bourgeoisie and strong landlords, with weak national sovereignty and strong imperial control, could not immediately forgo an alliance with the old social classes and fight on all fronts at once. Instead, Communist forces should create “independent contingents of fighters and party organizations” to both build the power of the working people and anticipate the time when proletarian parties “can emerge in them” for a full frontal assault on the national bourgeoisie. For this reason, Lenin told the Mongolians that “a mere change of signboards is harmful and dangerous.” Quoted in “The Second Congress of the Communist International,” in Collected Works, 31:241–44. National liberation had to be given its due, as Lenin argued in his debate with the Indian revolutionary M.N. Roy, even as it should not be allowed to squelch the independent organization of workers and peasants for a future and inevitable confrontation.
40. Quoted in George McTurnan Kahin, ed., The Asian-African Conference: Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1956), 40.
Bandung
1. John R.W. Smail, Bandung in the Early Revolution, 1945–1946 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Modern Indonesia Project Monograph Series, 1964), chapter 6.
2. My thanks to Muhammed Dasuki, Bandung Padjadjaran University, Indonesia, and Agus Hadi Nahrowi for this translation.
3. Cees van Dijk, Rebellion under the Banner of Islam: The Darul Islam in Indonesia (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981).
4. Quoted in George McTuran Kahin, ed., The Asian-African Conference: Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1956), 42.
5. P. Sitaramayya, The History of the Indian National Congress (Bombay: Padma Publications, 1946), 1:363–64.
6. Quoted in Kahin, The Asian-African Conference, 43.
7. Quoted in ibid., 44, 45.
8. Keith Buchanan, “The Third World,” New Left Review (January–February 1963): 5–23, collects the demographic details and makes the case for a Third Worldist position regarding world revolution.
9. Quoted in Kahin, The Asian-African Conference, 45–46.
10. Which is why it is the only full document available in Kahin’s influential collection from 1956.
11. Sukarno, Sukarno: An Autobiography as Told to Cindy Adams (Hong Kong: Gunung Agung, 1966), 26.
12. On the ilustrados, see Renato Constantino, Dissent and Counter-Consciousness (Quezon City, Philippines Malaya Books, 1970).
13. Most of the main facts are in George McTuran Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1952), Bernhard Dahm, Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969).
14. Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution, 108.
15. Rex Mortimer, Indonesian Communism under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics, 1959–1965 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974).
16. Geoff Simons, Indonesia: The Long Oppression (London: Macmillan, 2000), 161.
17. Carlos Romulo of the Philippines described Zhou like this: “At Bandung, Premier Chou En-Lai comported himself as one who had taken a leaf from Dale Carnegie’s tome on How to Win Friends and Influence People.… At the Asian-African Conference, he was affable of manner, moderate of speech.” Carlos Romulo, The Meaning of Bandung (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956), 11. Nehru hosted a dinner for Zhou where the Communist leader was “cordial and pleasant.” Tillman Durdin, “Chou, Anti-Reds Dine with Nehru,” New York Times, April 21, 1955.
18. China and the Asian-African Conference: Documents (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1955).
19. In 1943, in Yan’an, China, Mao had offered the slogan “From the Masses, to the Masses” as a way to capture the tone that Communists should follow in their relationship to the “masses,” an ambivalent term that referred either to the revolutionary classes (workers and peasants) or all the Chinese people. “This means: take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action. Then once again concentrate ideas from the masses and once again go to the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and carried through. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge.” Mao Tse-tung, “Some Questions concerning Methods of Leadership (June 1, 1943),” in Selected Works (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1976), 3:119.
20. Romulo, The Meaning of Bandung, 91.
21. Quoted in ibid., 22.
22. “Appraising Bandung,” New York Times, April 24, 1955, E10; “Sir J. Kotelawala on Value of Bandung,” Times (London), April 27, 1955; “Impact of Bandung on the Asian Community,” Times (London), April 26, 1955. The publisher of the New York Times offered this patronizing judgment: “Our friends at the world’s first assembly of African and Asian statesmen proved more numerous and more stanch than predicted.” C.L. Sulzberger, “Bandung Draws Attention to a Problem,” New York Times, April 23, 1955, 18.
23. Benedict J. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).
24. Richard Clutterbuck, The Long, Long War: The Emergency in Malaya, 1948–1960 (London: Cassell, 1967).
25. I am guided by Peter Gowan, “Triumphing toward International Disaster: The Impasse in American Grand Strategy,” Critical Asian Studies 36, no. 1 (2004): 3–36.
26. Quoted in Samuel P. Huntington, “Transnational Organizations in World Politics,” World Politics 25 (April 1973): 333–68.
27. Carlos Romulo, “What the Asians Expect of the U.S.,” New York Times Magazine, June 19, 1955, 8, 55, 60–61; and The Meaning of Bandung, 41–43.
28. Romulo, “What the Asians Expect of the U.S.,” and The Meaning of Bandung, 51–52.
29. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy: Selected Speeches, September 1946–April 1961 (Delhi: Government of India, 1961), 89.
30. Quoted in Kahin, The Asian-African Conference, 68.
31. Sulzberger, “Bandung Draws Attention to a Problem,” 18.
32. “Sir J. Kotelawala on Value of Bandung,” Times (London), 10; John Kotelawala, An Asian Prime Minister’s Story (London: G. G. Harrap, 1956), 177–94.
33. The denial of Israel did not stem entirely from any perceived relationship that it had with the colonial powers. In his memoirs, the director general of the Israeli Mission of Foreign Affairs, Walter Eytan, dismissed the arguments made for the isolation of Israel by the new states of Africa and Asia as not “logical.” In his view, “There seems little doubt that Moslem hostility to Israel is still the stumbling block.” In general, he points out, “Israel’s relations with Asia were bedeviled by the Moslem factor.” The reason for the denial of Israel did not come from the “Moslem factor,” but because, despite the entireties of India and Burma, Pakistan felt that its presence would upset the many Arab states whose representation was crucial. Many Arab leaders, particularly the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian monarchies, used Israel as a convenient means to distract the attention of their own people from the appalling injustice of their states. Walter Eytan, The First Ten Years: A Diplomatic History of Israel (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958), 183. For Pakistan’s sentiments about the Arab states, see Kahin, The Asian-African Conference, 3. U Nu, with the support of Nehru, led the way to include Israel, but they could not succeed. Mizra Khan, “Israel-Burma Ties,” The Guardian, no. 4, December 1957; Richard Butwell, U Nu of Burma (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1963), 186.
34. Thomas Hovet, Bloc Politics in the UN (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 79.
35. Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy, 279.
36. Quoted in Kahin, The Asian-African Conference, 82.
37. Quoted in Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (New York: The New Press, 2001), 31.
38. Quoted in Kahin, The Asian-African Conference, 83.
39. UN General Assembly Resolution 502 (VI), January 11, 1952.
40. Kahin, The Asian-African Conference, 83; UN General Assembly Resolution 914 (X), December 16, 1955.
41. The conventional history of the IAEA states that its formation came as a result of U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech to the United Nations in 1953. Indeed, it was in this speech that Eisenhower broached the subject of an atomic energy agency to “set up a completely acceptable system of world-wide inspection and control.” The idea comes from the speech, but eighty-one nations might not have come to the United Nations in 1956 eager to create such an agency without the Bandung conference of the previous year. International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA: What It Is and What It Does (Vienna: IAEA, 1961); Mohamed El Baradei, The Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy: The Contribution of the IAEA (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2003).
42. In 1982, this was established in the declassified Truman Papers. A memorandum from the State Department to President Truman, dated May 28, 1952, notes, “The Soviet Union has contended with some success on the propaganda front that the Western Democracies do not wish reduction in arms but merely wish a vast intelligence operation. It is believed that if this proposal [an arms control working paper] can be introduced in time to be included in the First Report of the Disarmament Commission, which will be submitted to the Security Council about June 1st., some of the effect of the Soviet propaganda will be offset.” UN Disarmament Commission, Folder no. 1, PSF, Truman Papers, Truman Library, Independence, MO. On the question of disarmament, the USSR was more reliable after Stalin’s death in 1953: in 1955, the USSR proposed an end to nuclear tests, and it took four years of pressure to bring the United States and Britain to partially accept this position.
