The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World by Vijay Prashad

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

• 
  Kevin

  An absolute favorite dive into censored history to reemerge with the present conditions, so I have to give a worthy review...
  
  Preamble on Vijay:
  --As in his lectures (highly recommended, see below), Vijay Prashad has such mastery of articulating overarching social issues, drilling down to give detailed examples before resurfacing to tie the ideas together. So well-read, articulate, and with so much humanity... an inspiration.
  --Prashad brings to life the side of history that is censored, the decolonization movements that shook 20th century power structures against all odds, their triumphs and their setbacks.
  --Main concept = class analysis of anti-colonial independence movements, revealing their short-term compromises that escalated into long-term crises.
  
  Fair Warning:
  --This is an in-depth, radical analysis into the roots of global inequities.
  1) For Western audiences trapped in their domestic liberal vs. conservative “debates” with little world history: I’m impressed you stumbled across this book, but a “gentler” introduction may be advisable to review the history/economics of imperialism (from the bloody military interventions to the opaque power politics of debt and “free trade”):
  The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
  
  2) Vijay Prashad’s recent books have focused on accessibility, and his energy shines through in his lectures:
  -
  Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism
  -
  Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations
  -global South playlist (feat. Prashad and others):
  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
  -On ideological censorship of imperialism:
  https://youtu.be/6jKcsHv3c74
  -On capitalism as abstract social domination, turmoil from automation, and reactionary backlash:
  https://youtu.be/z11ohWnuwa0
  -On labels of "capitalism", "socialism" (ex. China):
  https://youtu.be/3X7U2W6ryjE
  -On US empire, wars, and capital accumulation:
  https://youtu.be/hTb2uVIWG5Q?t=44
  -With more details on Global South examples:
  https://youtu.be/DiHtfeof15s
  -Conversation on today’s capitalism:
  https://youtu.be/HXhogt3Zq9c
  -What is the meaning of the Left?:
  https://youtu.be/M-frUMXKcEw?t=344
  
  3) Once you’re ready to dive in, I recommend taking hierarchical notes, keeping in mind to highlight the general ideas and use the historical details as case studies; so much information to organize. Below is my attempt to distill the lessons...
  
  Censored Successes
  1) Universal Human Rights:
  --Wait, from the Global South? Surprised? Didn’t read this in your history books?
  --Power requires a level of consent, so it appropriates social innovations originating from the bottom. The framing then becomes Enlightened superiors handing down progress to their backward underlings. The logic is rather perverse; which side has the incentives/grievances to push for social change in the first place?
  --Consider “Liberalism”, which is now associated with its political rhetoric of tolerance (multiculturalism, feminism, human rights). In reality, the world has experienced Liberalism (from the Atlantic Slave Trade to the Enclosures to the Age of Imperialism to today’s global division of labour) by the following definition (going back to Locke): those who developed the land deserve to own the land. Even if we set aside genocidal displacement and accept “development”, the ownership was highly inequitable with most labourers owning little.
  --In the case of the Third World, sensitive Liberals may put a spotlight on Eleanor Roosevelt’s “human rights” agenda at the UN, ignoring the various Latin American representatives efforts to expand human rights (education, work, healthcare, social security).
  --Meanwhile, Western Liberals saw the Global South as a treasure-trove of valuable resources and cheap/free labour during colonialism. After resistance mounted on these liberal business practices, the view on the Global South switched to “overpopulation” fear-mongering. Ah, Liberalism… first you commit genocide (ex.
  Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World), and then you entertain quasi-genocide (
  Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis).
  
  2) Internationalist Nationalism united against Imperialism:
  --The first 1/3 of this book highlights the solidarity of global anti-imperialism; with a shared history of enduring the teeth of colonialism and the overwhelming imbalance in arms, the Global South/"Third World” became the voice of reason on the global stage, using the United Nations (despite its limitations) as a platform. Disarmament has been a key demand, from the 1955 Afro-Asian Conference at Bandung to the 60s Non-Aligned Movement focusing on nuclear disarmament (which is after all an existential threat to humanity).
  --Thus, this nationalist (sovereignty) internationalism (united against imperialism) provided space to experiment with cultural development outside of Europe's conceptions of nationalism. Instead of nativism, there were experiments in multiplicity: a secular state to acknowledge multiple religions, anti-racism to mend colonialism's divide-and-conquer scars, and multilingualism.
  --A key outcome from experiments in social development is economic justice and Global South contributions to Development Economics. For example, UNCTAD's New International Economic Order (NIEO) provided alternative visions to the imperialist GATT (and convenient Liberal smokescreens like “Modernization Theory” which focuses on blaming poverty on “traditional” culture, covering up imperialism forcing dependency through “free trade” and usurious debt).
  --Economic justice focuses on redistribution of world’s resources + more dignified rate-of-return for labour (including more high-productivity sectors i.e. manufactured goods, instead of relying on exporting raw materials) + shared acknowledgement of the heritage of science/technology/culture.
  --The 1966 Tricontinental Conference (Africa + Asia + Latin America) during Vietnam’s resistance to American bombardment epitomizes the hope of solidarity (and global diplomacy), which is why Prashad has started the Tricontinental Institute of Social Research.
  --“[…] who would have thought that by the mid-twentieth century the darker nations would gather in Cuba, once the playground of the plutocracy, to celebrate their will to struggle and their will to win? What an audacious thought: that those who had been fated to labour without want, now wanted to labour in their own image!”
  
  Contradictions to Crises
  1) Domestic Elites, Class Contradiction, and Cruel Cultural Nationalism:
  --The central contradiction at the heart of the Third World project was uniting with hostile domestic classes (i.e. landlords, emerging industrial/financial capitalists) in order to prioritize the abolition of colonialism.
  --While this may have been pragmatic at the start, domestic hierarchies were protected and the contradictions grew. Radical Left groups led anti-colonialism and programs for social development, but domestic elites used them to their benefit and purged them at their discretion.
  --Using nationalism to fight colonialism thus became perverted, as solidarity increasingly gave way to crude nationalism.
  --For example, the Sino-Indian border conflicts led to prioritizing militarization; this derailed the Global South’s demands for global disarmament and moved various members into the nets of Cold War spheres.
  --More generally, independence required systemic transformations and great sacrifices to attend to the scares of colonialism and challenge the neocolonialism of global economics. This was not in the class interest of domestic elites, who pivoted to apolitical (safer) market-oriented liberal-globalization “development” (see below). The failures here (rampant inequity, losing economic sovereignty) combined with capitalism's abstraction (
  And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future) opened the doors to cruel cultural nationalism, which diverted blame onto visible minorities instead of the abstractions of global division of labour/debt financing etc (reactionary politics 101, as seen in Nazism/Fascism/Global Trumpism):
  
  2) Imperialism’s Dollars:
  --Country-by-country comparisons of “advanced” vs. “developing” conveniently assume national economies, obscuring the dependencies/violence of global trade/finance/militarism (i.e. “imperialism”).
  --Liberal economics is built on cheap raw materials and labour, which requires the divide. Forced (often by violent means) into dependency on the loser end of the global division of labour, liberal free trade laws forces open “free markets” in weaker countries (weaker states) while the stronger countries maintain non-market protection (stronger states). Open markets prevent domestic planning to build higher-productivity sectors, which requires nurturing before it is ready for global competition (“Infant Industry argument”); this is how the advanced West developed (along with violently smashing competition), in particular Britain and America.
  -Crucial in-depth economic theory to supplement Prashad:
  Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
  -
  The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
  -
  Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
  --A key example is agriculture. The Global South, without protection to build other sectors and forced to swim in the open seas of the global market (free trade), competes in the global agriculture market with the US. The US creates enormous agricultural surpluses, with its immense technological scale and (perhaps more importantly) strong state protectionism. Thus, global market price shocks disproportionally ravage the Global South. Would like to read more on the Green Revolution in this context…
  --Liberal finance (IMF, World Bank), like all private capitalist banking, profits from interest payments (usury). Post-colonial countries are of course in desperate need of capital for their social development projects, but Liberal finance targets the ill-planned projects of Global South elites. Falling into debt traps, productivity gains end up going to debt services (interest payments). A discussion on this "Super Imperialism":
  https://youtu.be/paUgY6SGlgY
  --"The mecca of IMF-driven globalization is therefore in the ability to open one's economy to stateless, soulless corporations while blaming the failure of well-being on religious, ethnic, sexual, and other minorities."
  --The 1970s-80s Nixon Shock, Oil Shocks, and Volcker Shock are popular turning point events in Western-centric narratives on the collapse of Keynesianism/Welfare State, but what is unmentioned is the overwhelming costs to the Global South’s social development/industrialization projects and subsequent Third World Debt Crisis:
  -more accessible:
  The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
  -dive:
  Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance
  --For structural solutions, see:
  -
  Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
  -
  Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
  -
  A People’s Green New Deal
  
  3) Imperialism’s Bombs:
  --Not only was the radical Left hunted down at home; imperialism (built on divide-and-rule) provided military/financial/political support for such purges. Strategies for social development became limited and easily perverted by the looming aggression of imperialism. The Eisenhower Doctrine supported monarchs (Saudi, Shah of Iran, Jordan, Iraq) against Nasser Arab socialism and those further Left. The Truman Doctrine ensured the "concept of socialism had to pay the penalty for Soviet limitations.” The Carter/Reagan Doctrine brought proxy terrorism to new heights. Plenty of resources here:
  -Prashad's
  Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations
  -
  The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
  -
  Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II
  -
  The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump
  
  In his words:
  Quoting the beginning of "The Darker Nations":
  
  

  Among the darker nations, Paris is famous for two betrayals.
  
  The first came in 1801, when Napoleon Bonaparte sent General Victor Leclerc to crush the Haitian Revolution, itself inspired by the French Revolution. The French regime could not allow its lucrative Santo Domingo to go free, and would not allow the Haitian people to live within the realm of the Enlightenment's "Rights of Man." The Haitians nonetheless triumphed, and Haiti became the first modern colony to win its independence.
  
  The second betrayal came shortly after 1945, when a battered France, newly liberated by the Allies, sent its forces to suppress the Vietnamese, West Indians, and Africans who had once been its colonial subjects. Many of these regions had sent troops to fight for the liberation of France and indeed Europe, but they returned home empty-handed. As a sleight of hand, the French government tried to maintain sovereignty over its colonies by repackaging them as "overseas territories." A people hungry for liberation did not want such measly hors d'oeuvres.
• 
  Vartika

  Emerging from the throes of colonialism in a postwar world, the countries that constituted the so-called Third World came together—first as the League against Imperialism and later under the aegis of Bandung and beyond—to resist bipolar influence and maintain their independence from the cultural influence of the First and Second worlds. Much more than its stance of 'non-alignment,' the Third World was bound together with a commitment to anti-colonialism and egalitarianism.
  
  In The Darker Nations, Vijay Prashad puts together a brilliant political history of the Third World as a cultural project rather than a place (hat tip to Frantz Fanon here). Prashad's cogent analysis is made in three parts: "Quests" for national liberation; the "Pitfalls" of the rule of the domestic elite and its dalliances with policy without analysis or mass mobilisation; and finally, the "Assassinations" of an egalitarian dream due to 'dollar imperialism' and the cultural chauvinism and fundamentalism set off by the IMF-led neoliberal regime.
  
  While not quite a "People's History" as the subtitle of some editions call it (perhaps to draw methodological parallels with Howard Zinn's book on the United States), A Darker Nations presents an important challenge to narratives about the 'global south' written from without by taking a closer look at the intellectual history of the Third World nations and the manner in which decisionmaking therein shaped, and was shaped by, global events over the years.
  
  Most striking is Prashad's reading of the abandonment of the social transformation agenda which had led to the formation of a 'Third' world in the first place. A post-independence vision of stability led to the demobilisation of the masses and rule in the interests of the domestic elites, which weakened the resolve of these nations for economic and cultural cooperation and prevented it from happening. The obsession with borders created by the colonial powers led to militarisation gaining over the nation-building project.
  
  Even more importantly, however, the sham of 'development economics' hit the darker nations, who were asked to modernise instead of being provided with reparations, and the eventual 'structural adjustment' was accompanied, as we know, by a loss of political sovereignty while the (uneven) productivity gains made went into the repayment of debts and attempting to cover the gaps widened, and often created, by the free-market.
  
  In many places Prashad's analysis reads rather dryly (and requires at least a basic understanding and/ or familiarity with the history of the darker nations). However, his explanation on the economics front; from the theoretical aspects of Prebisch and import-substitution to the history of projects like OPEC and of the rise and fall of East Asia; cannot be recommended enough for its accessibility and the way it has been substantiated. This book also presents a commendable explanation of the failures of the Second World vis-a-vis the Third, which is a rather rare find in scholarship across the ideological spectrum.
  
  There is, of course, also the weight of the concluding observation:

  "Indeed, cultural nationalism is the Trojan horse of IMF-driven globalization. The mecca of IMF-driven globalization is therefore in the ability to open one's economy to stateless, soulless corporations while blaming the failure of well-being on religious, ethnic, sexual, and other minorities."

  This is a heavy text that requires much context, but is entirely worth the effort. I would recommend a close reading.
• 
  Kaśyap

  A brilliant dialectical analysis of the political phenomenon of third world and the global political economy. This is an analysis and not a narrative and assumes some rudimentary knowledge of the world history of the 20th century on part of the reader.
  
  The main thesis of Parishad is that the third world is a project among the formerly colonised states of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, for political, economic and cultural sovereignty and mainly for dignity. It thoroughly examines the major leaders of the third world, their ideologies and the institutions they formed and their struggles for economic and cultural sovereignty.
  
  I liked the way the book is structured. The first part titled quest deals with the beginnings of the third world, from the League against imperialism conceived in the Brussels conference and the Bandung conference that happened after many of the third world nations have become politically independent. The second part titled pitfalls deals with the failures of the third world nations through authoritarianism, failures in land reforms, corrupt bureaucracy, failures in socialising production, local opposition from the dominant classes of the old and trying to implement policies without any proper analysis and mass mobilisation. The third part deals with the death of the third world through IMF-led liberalisation of economies and the rise of cultural nationalism in the form of chauvinism, religious intolerance and racism. In each chapter, he also provides a historical analysis of race, class and gender in the specific case.
  
  One flaw however is that Vijay Parishad didn’t provide much attention to the people’s struggles apart from just a small mention, especially as this is titled “people’s history”. But I guess this can still be called a people’s history as it offers a view from the global south instead of being Eurocentric.
  
  Highly recommended for anyone interested in the history of international relations, neoliberalism and the global capital.
  
  
• 
  Craig Werner

  A classic case of where even smart Marxist history can go off the tracks. Prashad's one of he best writers about Asian American experience and he can be a fiery speaker whose anger about the state of the world, especially white supremacy and economic injustice, is usually on target. I was hoping that The Darker Nations would be the kind of overview that could serve as a foundation for readers wanting to orient themselves to the dizzying range of experiences subsumed under the "Third World" terminology. Unfortunately, Prashad assumes that his readers are a. familiar with the frequently turgid vocabulary of Marxist class analysis; and b. in agreement with how he's worked through all the issues. All too often he winds up sounding like a delegate to a hallucinatory contemporary version of the Bandung Conference which he correctly identifies as a key moment in the development of "pan-Third-World" thinking. Problem is that a lot's happened in the interim (much of which Prashad touches on), so anyone who wants to make an impact on the way people outside the very small choirboy think about these issues had better come up with a new approach. In addition to passages that descend into not-particularly-engaging political theory, Prashad has a tendency to elide the differences between various Third World countries in the support of generalizations that simply don't hold up if you know the local histories in any detail at all. It's too bad because he sprinkles in enough real insight, especially into the decay and collapse of the promising post-colonial states into dictatorship and corruption. He makes particularly good use of Fanon.
  
  Ultimately, though, the only people who I recommend this book to are those with a solid background in Third World histories and an interest in finding a rhetoric to communicate issues of injustice for whom Prashad will mostly be a cautionary tale of how not to craft a voice.
• 
  Robert Maisey

  Brilliant political history of the Third World project, but the prospective reader will need to brush up on their prior knowledge of events. This book won’t explain Suez, or Vietnam, but it will help the reader make sense of the political universe these events produced. The aspects on development economics are well explained and very enlightening.
• 
  Malcolm

  The title unsettled me a bit – but this had received good reviews and the series it is in (The New Press's People's History series edited by Howard Zinn) is really quite good. I am so pleased I read this: it is a cogent, politically charged and engaged analysis of the 'Third World' as a political project. Prashad sees the Third World as a potentially a powerful challenge to but also product of the two worlds of the Cold War, and a movement and concept with enormous promise. He argues that the concept was weakened by the Third World's oppositionalism – it was defined by what it wasn't – and a fundamental problem of a focus on 'the people' as a largely undifferentiated anti-colonial mass at the expense of class. His concluding case, then, that the Third World as a political project was destroyed by resurgent class and imperialist power using three weapons – IMF related structural adjustment policies, an abandoned social transformation agenda leading to neo-liberal policies at home, and atavistic forms of cultural nationalism and religious anti-nationalism – is powerful and hard to refute. It adds together then to be a major contribution to contemporary history and to analyses of the current global political economy, as well as pointing to many of the weaknesses in the current wave of people's movements. The case that neo-liberal globalisation and cultural nationalism are bedfellows is essential to understanding the current shape of global politics, and one that needs more extensive analysis and exploration. Extremely good, highly recommended (one of my must-reads for the year), the kind of history we need more of.
• 
  Ramil Kazımov

  Vijay Prashad İkinci Dünya Savaşı sonrası ortaya çıkmış "Üçüncü Dünya"nı kapsamlı bir çalışma olarak ele almış. Kitabın önsözünde yazar "Üçüncü Dünya bir yer değildi. Bir projeydi.." diyerek başlar yazmaya. İlk önce Parise, daha sonra Brüksele ve sırasıyla bir çok başka kente geçiş yapar ve sömürge sonrası toplumların tarihini daha sömürgeyken anlatmaya başlar. Nehru, Tito ve Nasır gibi titanların nasıl batı yönümlü tarih yazımı tarafından çarpıtıldığını gösterir, tarihi Üçüncü Dünya halklarının gözünden anlatır bizlere. Üçüncü Dünyanın doğuşunu, gelişimini, gerilemesini ve çöküşünü anlatan bu kitabı bana göre aykırı bir ruha sahip her birey mutlaka okumalı..
• 
  Hamza Sarfraz

  This book is one of a kind. A comprehensive historical survey of the Cold War era from the perspective of the wretched of the earth. And it does so within 300 pages. It is worth a read.
• 
  JC

  I really appreciated this book. It gave a really helpful overview of Third World history, and the etymological history of Albert Sauvy’s coinage of the term ‘Third World’ after the ‘Third Estate’ of the French Revolution was particularly useful for framing the general perspective of the book’s history of the Non-Aligned Movement unfolding under the terrifying shadow of nuclear extinction that Cold War decades threatened:
  
  “In the ancien regime prior to 1789, the monarchy divided its counselors into the First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (aristocracy), with a Third Estate being for the bourgeoisie. During the tumult of the French Revolution, the Third Estate fashioned itself as the National Assembly, and invited the to­tality of the population to be sovereign over it. In the same way, the Third World would speak its mind, find the ground for unity, and take posses­sion of the dynamic of world affairs. This was the enlightened promise of the Third World.”
  
  Considering the reputation Prashad has garnered for being in the most unserious of terms a so-called ‘tankie’, it may be surprising how critical in fact Prashad was of Third World socialist leaders, such as Ben Bella and the FLN (who Martin Luther King Jr. met with and spoke of positively) and of Julius Nyerere in Tanzania. Prashad on Ben Bella:
  
  “Ben Bella central­ized power. The 1963 Constitution of Algeria abolished all political par­ties except the FLN, and elevated the president of the FLN to the sole formulator of state policy. The energy of the Algerian Revolution would now be concentrated in the body of the president, who for the moment was Ben Bella. The 1964 Charter of Algiers defended the abol­ishment of parties other than the FLN. "The multiparty system allows all particular interests to organize into different pressure groups. It frustrates the general interest, that is, the workers' interest," and therefore, in the workers' name, there should only be one party, the "vanguard party." In November 1962, the regime cracked down on the Commu­nist Party of Algeria, which was otherwise in line with the socialist agenda of the FLN, and it soon went after the Parti de la Revolution Socialiste, headed by the former FLN leader Mohammed Boudiaf; the leadership of both parties languished in jail.”
  
  Prashad on Nyerere:
  
  “When the government's "improvement" scheme faltered, it tried a more radical approach called "transformation." The regime encouraged peasants to move to experimental farms called "village settlements" where they worked cooperatively to increase, theoretically, the value of their efforts. On these farms, mechanical implements and fertilizers re­ placed manual labor (mainly the hand hoe). The people, in Nyerere's terms, had to learn to live in "proper villages." Of the millions who lived in rural Tanzania, only 3,500 families moved to set up these village settlements, which had cost the government upward of two million pounds. The famous French agronomist… Rene Dumont wrote a report in 1969 that came close to the government's own view of the creation of vil­lages: the scheme had produced appalling results…”
  
  I was surprised at how closely Prashad’s reading of this period of decolonization aligned with James Scott’s writing on Nyerere. Prashad writes in a more generalized conclusion:
  
  “Tanzanian ujamaa is quite of a piece with a vast number of examples of Third World development or Third World socialism in a hurry. Most of the Third World states hurriedly built industrial factories and dams, cleared forests, and moved populations… Yet its modernist dream-to administer nature and society, and build vast industrial monuments without either a democratic governance structure or a mobilized population-led to the worst ex­cesses of commandism and bureaucratism.”
  
  More recently reading some of Fanon’s writings as well as some of Ho Chi Minh’s, this perspective is actually quite consistent with the orientations of Third World revolutionary literature, which again is not wholly consistent with the way this discourse is painted in broad strokes by some segments of the Western left.
  
  Prashad was also surprisingly very critical of the Soviet Union at some points, writing in the context of nuclearism: “…both Moscow and Washington made empty promises in return provides a measure of the limited value of moral pleas in a nuclear age.”
  
  Prashad was particularly critical of Soviet accommodation to Nimeiri’s brutalities and intervention in Afghanistan:
  
  “In Sudan, Nimeiri came to power on a Nasserite agenda… The Nimeiri regime arrested the party leadership, exe­cuted most of them (including Abdel al-Khaliq Mahjub, Joseph Garang, and Ahmed El Sheikh), and urged their followers to "destroy anyone who claims there is a Sudanese Communist Party. Destroy this alleged Party." When news of the events in Sudan reached the Soviet leader­ ship, it tried to negotiate with the Nimeiri government, as well as with the Egyptians and the Libyans, for asylum to the Scp's leaders. Once rebuffed, it did not pursue the matter. It is not that Moscow felt nothing for its comrades in the tropics, but that the fortunes of the Communist parties in the Third World came second to the strategy mapped out by the USSR and the People's Republic of China.”
  
  “That the Marxists in­vited the Soviets into the country in 1979 showed their weakness and proved to their detractors that they were epigones of the USSR. As such, the CIA-WML-backed conservatives within Afghanistan and Pakistan had threatened the government, which was the reason they turned to the Soviet Union. All this was irrelevant as the Soviets entered an unwinnable situation, further alienated the people from their govern­ment, and gave legitimacy to the jihadists who now repackaged them­ selves as freedom fighters. It did not help the Marxist cause that the Soviet army engaged in a rash of brutal campaigns in the countryside that sent millions of people toward Iran and Pakistan as refugees.”
  
  And I wasn’t actually aware how biting some of the commentary of Third World socialists were concerning the Soviet Union at the time, though this is consistent with Maoist interpretations of Soviet history today:
  
  “Militants and national liberation organizations in this period flooded the meetings of the Third World and demanded armed action against imperialism. They challenged the Soviet delegates and brushed aside any consideration of the limitations of popular anti-imperialist sentiment in the countries to be liberated by the gun. Some of the mili­tants adopted the critique of the two-camps theory to suggest that both the United States and the USSR were imperialists, and the only force able to stand up to them was armed national liberation.”
  
  My favourite chapter however, was the one on Singapore, the postcolonial nation-state which became a beacon for the Third World bourgeoisie and capitalist development. Prashad’s was one of the best brief histories I’ve encountered of the island. Some excerpts:
  
  “Seized by the British as commercial bases for their China trade, Singapore (1819) and Hong Kong (1841) inherited few of history's problems. There was little agriculture, and what there was soon van­ished before the hunger for buildings (Hong Kong not only urbanized its landscape but also reclaimed land from the sea for its airport and res­idential areas). Both Singapore and Hong Kong thrived as duty-free ports for opium and other commodities. These were paradises of capi­tal, where the problem of production (and hence workers) was shipped elsewhere. These were almost purely entrepots.”
  
  “World War II devastated the Pacific Rim. It left Singapore in sham­bles. The growth of the Communist movement in Malaysia and Singa­pore threatened the British hold on the region. A brutal war between the British and the Communist Party ran from 1948 until Malaysia's inde­pendence in 1957. In Singapore, the Communist movement developed mass support among the Chinese working class. Aware of the growing strength of the Left, an England-educated group led by Lee Kuan Yew created the People's Action Party (PAP). PAP made an alliance with the Communist trade unions to throw out the British. For the first elections of 1959, PAP developed a manifesto that reflected its eclectic ideology­ a mix of socialism, pragmatism, multiculturalism, and nationalism. In 1961 , as PA P gained confidence, it ejected its left wing (which re-formed as the Barisan Sosialis, the Socialist Front). In 1963, the PAP state engi­neered Operation Cold Store to "obliterate the BS's [Barisan Sosialis's] top level leadership." 17 PAP's lead economist and first finance minister of Singapore, Goh Keng Swee, warned the cabinet not to be swayed by either the lures of the free market or socialism. What Singapore needed, he argued, was the guided development of its free enterprise.
  Lee Kuan Yew, the leader of PAP, came from an established, mon­eyed Chinese Singaporean family. He attended the best of the English­ medium schools (Raffles Institution and Raffles College) and took his degree at Fitzwilliam College (Cambridge).”
  
  Singapore is also mentioned in many other chapters, and it was fascinating to hear that it was the main antagonist against Castro within Non-Aligned Movement gatherings:
  
  “Castro's main antagonist in New Delhi was the Singaporean deputy prime minister Sinnathamby Rajaratnam. A founder of the People's Ac­tion Party with Singapore's strongman Lee Kuan Yew, Rajaratnam brought the island nation into NAM in 1970 and helped create the Asso­ciation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1977.
  
  In Delhi, Rajarat­ nam circulated a speech that offered a resolutely anti-Soviet, pro-U.S. position. "We are witnesses to our own slow-motion hi-jacking," wrote this former columnist of the Straits Times, "and if we do not wake up to this fact and do something to abort it then the ship of non-alignment and all those who sail in it may wake up one day to find that they have docked in a Soviet port.””
  
  Anyway, a very excellent book. I learned a lot.
• 
  Sami Eerola

  This was way better than i expected. The book is pretty balanced in its recounting of the history of the world throw the perspective of the global south. Its gains, success and failures. No ideology here is presented as better than any one else. For example the failures and contradictions of the communist system and countries is presented as the same way as capitalistics.
  
  The amount of detail and theoretization of different strains of anti-imperialism and counter strategies are well researched and written in a clear way. I enjoined reading this book
  
  The only flaw that i perceived in this book was at the end describing the 1980-Afghan war as a fight between "progressive" communist dictatorship and US-backed Islamists. This description is not exactly wrong, but it lacks nuance
  
• 
  Jon Morgan

  An excellent overview of the Third World as a conscious project, one that started giddily in the newly liberated states but deflated in the face of neoliberalism. Although the book has a broad outlook, it avoids cliche and jargon. The use of chapters that focus on subthemes of how the Third World created itself (e.g. cultural projects, development strategies) allows the book to move quickly while packing in detail and comparative analysis of national and regional situations. A great introduction to the history of decolonization and a dramatic narrative to boot.
• 
  Katherine

  This is an amazing book that tracks the history of the Third World Movement and its foundation of the Nonaligned Movement and how the efforts existed and the story of how it failed.
  
  It's such a great read and it would be a great text book for International Relations degrees to get a much more Global South perspective than what you get in the mainstream academia.
  
  Anyone in the field should read this book at some point!
• 
  Kersplebedeb

  A history of the idea of the Third World, and how it played out in the 20th century, from a socialist perspective. Snapshots, examples and anecdotes, used to illustrate the trajectory of a dream - not a comprehensive history.
• 
  Avani

  Well written, but surprisingly dry for a book by Vijay Prashad. I was a bit disappointed, honestly.
• 
  Claire

  As happens with other People's Histories, this one tells of a promising moment and its end. The third world colonies became countries with united vision for a time, a vision of independence and ability to serve their own people. Their nationalism was an anticolonialism and that goal united folks with varied other goals. Nationalism deteriorated to issues of similar race and culture, pushing to a tradition that may or may not have ever existed, and this one one factor of weakening the venture.
  
  Economic control was another factor. Though there was an attempt to gain internal control, factors of politics and trade kept the balance in favor of the first world. Neoliberal economics had rules stacked against the emerging nations. And as they lost their unity, they lost hope of having voice in global organizations.
  
  There were nuances, differences in how various countries reacted to challenge and difficulty, and some deterioration was due to internal class factors as well, where profit as a goal outsrtipped community good.
  
  The titles appear to be organized by place, in the first section the conference that happened at that place and the second the conference where there was a loss. However, each chapter also covers a topic, presumably the issue that dominated a conference. So each chapter is a survey of a history of an issue. Sometimes I wished I'd made a list of conference and date to refer back to, and might do so if I reread it.
• 
  Jason Friedlander

  This is a concise but comprehensive look at the development of the political concept of the “third world” from its inception as a non-aligned force between the U.S. and Soviet powers throughout the bulk of the 20th century to its ideological dissolution by the end of it. It traces a movement initially formed to work together to protect and help flourish those recovering from the socio-economic darkness of colonization as it struggled to weather various political problems both within (competing local powers) and without (U.S. and IMF interventions). We are left with a story that starts with the promotion of a “third world nationalism” tied to the collective economic upliftment of its nations in opposition to their historical colonizers, and ends with its devolution into forms of heightened cultural nationalism that lay blame instead on internal social factors such as race and religion as cover for the lavish enrichment of local economic and political elites who benefit from the neoliberal status quo upheld by the promotion of “globalization”.
• 
  Sue Chant

  A thought-provoking examination of the Third World's anti-colonial struggles in the C20th, from co-operating to try and make their agenda herd in the UN to organizing as a Non-Aligned Movement to distance thmselvs from both First and Second world interference. There are case studies of liberation movements which are often, to quote Franz Fanon, "better at the struggle for freedom or the creation of manifestos than governance", sometimes usurped by military coups (frequently sposored by the US) or by elites who speak "freedom" but are closely aligned with the First world capitalists who of course will only give financial assistance (at extortionate interest rates) in return for corporate concessions that don't benefit the local people. In the end it's an instructive but depressing book. Highly recommended.
• 
  Wim

  This is such a great book, connecting so many dots and revealing a hidden part of history, usually distorted by an imperialist, western worldview. Full of unexpected insights, this book helps me better understand the world and answers lots of questions.
• 
  James

  "The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World"
  
  By Vijay Prashad
  
  Review by James Generic
  
  
  
  The Third World is a Cold War term, meaning mostly former nations that were ruled by Europeans and won their political independence in the decades after the second world war. That's how most people understand it anyway. It started off as a term of empowerment and hope by the leaders of the newly independent countries in the 1950s, after years of trying to bind the colonized into a single cause. These leaders saw that the First capitalist world and the Second Soviet-bloc world needed the Third world for its resources, people, and support in the global cold war, and they did not want to be pawns anymore.
  
  The Third World Project started in the 1955 at the Bandung Asian-African Conference, when the Nonaligned Movement was founded (NAM) in opposition to the 1st and 2nd Worlds. From here, the Third World was split by internal divisions, attacks by the West and Eastern blocs, and finally outright destruction of the "Third World" by economic policies pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States, as well as political and military attacks by the USA and its allies. In "The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World" by Vijay Prashad, the history of this push for unity, the contradictions of the class of leaders in trying to build this better Third world, the splits within the movement, and the final assassination of the Third World Project.
  
  The book switches between different locations and different situations. Prashad points out that there was a strange contradiction in the work of building a Third World. The ruling class of the decolonized countries supported the new rulers, in many places, who wanted to stand up for themselves. But at the same time, as time went on, they also supported all-powerful dictators and neo-liberal economics that lead to the resources of the country being drained out like vampires (leading to continuation of places which have some of the richest resources of the world and some of the poorest people, like in Congo.) Projects like OPEC started as the "darker nations" tried to control their own politics, though it soon disintegrated into just rulers enriching themselves. In the end, they worked better with ruling classes of the 1st world than the people of their own countries.
  
  
  
  Prashad goes to each place, from Singapore, to Indonesia and Suharto, to Baghdad, and explores the rise and fall of the Third World. Today, he ends, the Third World is dead. However, an international movement, free of imposed movements from above or directly by the elites of the government, has arisen and the world is changing to oppose the US. The book is an interesting look at an attempt by the leaders of former colonized places to fight back, though it can be a little disorienting traveling across so many places so fast (which is probably what trying to organize all those places to act together would have been like.) How the First World was able to destroy this movement is a pretty good lesson of history for any person to know.
• 
  Faaiz

  Quite impressive in its scope and breadth of analysis, covering a period roughly between the 40's and 90's. This book chronicles the rise and fall of the Third World, a dizzying and disorienting melting pot of nations with vastly differing political orientations and leanings but who are characterized by gaining their independence post the second world war, most through an anti-colonial struggle, and mostly with the aim of national liberation.
  
  As someone without much prior knowledge of the histories and politics of most of the countries that come under the umbrella term of the Third World, this was an absolute fascinating read but at times was confusing and disorienting as well. Confusing and disorienting in that the author jumped from country to country, event to event, movement to movement, historical figure to historical figure and time period to time period in every new chapter which interrupted the flow and needed some getting used to. It is definitely a work meant for multiple readings, the events and the chronology are much easier to follow once an understanding of the author's thesis develops.
  
  There are many things that were surprising to me. That the Third World played an active role in the formulation of many of the UN agencies, that it considered in earnest that the UN Agencies were avenues were it could not only participate in but also actively play a role in forming and molding it to serve the interests of the Third World. It is very difficult to imagine, looking from the current lens, these international agencies as nothing but stooges of capital propped up by the First World. Also surprising was the effort to prop up a non-aligned movement made up of countries with an eclectic mix of political ideologies and orientation but who nevertheless tried to survive and grow in a world vastly ambiguous to their struggles.
  
  As someone who is a citizen of a country with a history of anti-colonial struggle, Prashad's treatment in the recounting of the history of the Third World - its aspirations, struggles, failures - resonated deeply. Prashad accords the Third World the respect it deserves even in light of all its vast contradictions, limitations and failures which in itself is empowering and inspiring. This book will give you a fresh new perspective on the nations that emerged after their independence and anti-colonial struggle, it will inspire, but it will also show you the bitter failures and outcomes as it tried to breathe and grow in a world characterized by the Cold war polarity, IMF/World Bank led globalization, unraveling by its own internal contradictions and class interests of the bourgeoisie and the eventual unipolar hegemony of the US.
• 
  Nidhi Jakhar

  The book presents an erudite narrative on the Third World, which was created as a result of the cold war between the first two worlds. Post World War II, the world changed completely; not only politically but also economically. From the rubble of the war arose two worlds - First World comprising of USA and Western Europe and the Second World comprising of Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The colonized nations across Asia, Europe and Latin America fought for independence and amassed as the Darker Nations or the Third World.
  
  Thrown between the compulsions of being loyal to either of the two blocs, the Third World countries led by Nehru, Naseer, Marshal Tito, Nkrumah and Sukarno formed the Non-Aligned Movement at Belgrade in 1961. The book sheds light on how USA driven IMF’s structural adjustment policies completely destroyed the development agenda of the Third World countries as they became pawns in the hands of transnational companies which assassinated their economies, social welfare agenda, and communism ultimately falling into the deep quagmire of debt trap, as a result of neo-liberal policies.
  
  Its astounding to know how selfish economics on part of USA and Europe (to lesser degree post WWII) have sought to alter geo-political situations in other parts of the world; turning one against the other for their own selfish interest. The new unipolar world led by hegemony of USA led to the demise of the Third World; which has resulted in a much impoverished international political scenario as all nations made to toe the line drawn by the United States of America.
• 
  Eren Buğlalılar

  İddialı bir Marksist 20. yüzyıl siyasi tarihi çalışması. Prashad Avrupa ve ABD merkezli tarihe karşı, Güney Amerika, Afrika ve Asya ülkelerinin ulusal kurtuluşçu ve anti-emperyalist tarihini odağına almış. Yer yer çok güzel, ufuk açıcı. Yer yer isim, yer adı ve tarih bombardımanına dönüşen bir monotonluk.
  
  Kitabın güzel yanlarından birisi 2. Paylaşım Savaşı'nın ardından ulusal bağımsızlığını kazanan ülkelerin kendi aralarında birlik olup "Bağlantısızlar Hareketini" kurma girişimlerini aktarması. Bir başka güzel yan, bu ulusal kurtuluşçu rejimlerin nasıl yavaş yavaş emperyalist ekonomiye ve siyasete entegre olduğunu verebilmesi. 1974 krizi. Lanetli 80'ler. Serbest piyasa ekonomisini benimseyen Çin. Ekonomik krize giren ve Gorbaçov'la birlikte sosyalizm, enternasyonalizm fikirlerini bir kenara atan Sovyetler. Bağlantısızlar Hareketi içerisinde sağ ve sol kanatların ortaya çıkışı, mücadelesi.
  
  Prashad yeni kuşağın üretken Marksist araştırmacılarından. Ülkemizden de E. Ahmet Tonak'ın içerisinde bulunduğu "The Tricontinental Institute for Social Research" adlı kurumun idarecisi. Batı Marksizmi'nin çoğu yanılgısı Prashad'da yok. Bir ezilen ulus Marksisti olduğu hemen kendini belli ediyor ve bu açıdan Türkiye'deki devrimci harekete yakınlık duyanlar Prashad'ı sevecektir.
• 
  Simon Parent

  This book weaved such a direct and clear thread between the historical events plaguing the "Third World", the IMF, the suppression of "Leftist", coups, imperialism, the poverty, our collective dependance on their cheap labor.... It's a huge undertaking that look self evident in this book.
  
  From anti-armement and progressive alliance between socialists of the "third world", being pulled in the cold war internal battles, anti-colonialist struggle, falling by coups one after the other, surviving American-supported dictators killing millions (purging Socialists), economic reforms that keep a corrupt elite in place and their population in poverty, the co-optation of parts of the slums to exploit the other part, using the cheap desperate workforce in the factories of the world, polluting, to IMF loans designed for austerity and police presence, to loss of fiscal sovereignty, to neo-colonialism.... the line is clear.
  
  This taught me that to solve the issues in the "third-world", Socialism, power to the people, is the first step.