Socialist Internationalism and Activist Lineages in the Afro-Asian World, 1950-present

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This project challenges Eurocentric and diplomatic histories of internationalism in its focus on the emergence of a global socialist intelligentsia of activists and technocrats in the Afro-Asian world. At a time when interest in socialism is undergoing a revival, the project adds new dimensions to the history of socialism in the Global South by synthesising a range of local, transnational and inter-generational perspectives regarding the impact of socialist internationalism on civil society and the developing world. It employs an innovative research methodology that brings together academics, scholar-activists, and young public historians to engage in collaborative research on transnational activist histories in Southeast Asia. An international conference on 'Socialist Internationalism in the Decolonising World' will bring together a group of scholars examining the long history of socialism from the perspective of historical actors across Asia and Africa. Through collaborative and individual research, the project will explore the nature of solidarity, hierarchy, and division in Afro-Asian histories of the international Left, which are at risk of being buried with the passing of a generation and the continued polarisation of Cold War history. The project will thus transform our understanding of the post-1945 world order by uncovering the neglected experiences of a powerful sector of civil society in Afro-Asia who challenged U.S./European and Soviet/Chinese attempts to polarise the world into competing power blocs and left important legacies for ensuing generations. While the project brings together academic researchers of different area specialisms, the core research focus is on Southeast Asia as a battleground of the 'Global Cold War' and an incubator of the Afro-Asian project. In 1950s Southeast Asia, socialist activists and intellectuals promoted an alternative 'Third Way' out of a polarising Cold War in their commitment to democratic socialism and the end of colonial rule across Asia and Africa. Many of these figures emerged as leaders of political opposition parties, powerful members of civil society, leading feminist activists, and technocrats co-opted into post-colonial states and the international arena, as well as mentors to subsequent generations of activists and intellectuals. Beginning with this first generation of activists and intellectuals, this project traces the emergence of a global socialist intelligentsia in Southeast Asia and the wider post-colonial world. It breaks new ground in moving away from a state-led perspective on socialism to identify the transnational networks that emerged between multiple generations of socialist political leaders, feminists, activists, intellectuals, and technocrats in Southeast Asia who shared a commitment to democratic socialism as a guiding ideology, and forged networks of socialists across the Asia and Africa. The proposed research has three distinct components, which will contribute to the publication of journal articles and chapters of a forthcoming monograph. The first component focuses explicitly on the participation of socialist women in Europe and Southeast Asia who engaged in transnational socialist feminist networks from the 1950s to the 1970s. The second component examines the intimate and inter-generational histories of transnational socialist networks in Southeast Asia and beyond, taking as its starting point socialist intellectuals involved in the Asian Socialist Conference (1952-1956). The third component focuses on the emerging world of socialist technocracy, and the entry of socialist intellectuals into the international development sector and in global civil society from the 1950s to the 1970s. The project will add a fresh dimension to the history of internationalism and global civil society in its attention to the inter-generational legacies of socialism in the Global South.