Peace, Decolonization, and the Practice of Solidarity

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Description

This book shows that connected histories of decolonization and globalization are found in the everyday activities of individuals as much as they are histories of states, institutions and formal organizations. Viewing decolonization through non-state activist practices, and setting anti-colonial solidarity in the context of contemporary global peace movements, it argues that seemingly marginal histories can illuminate aspects of the end of empire that are not readily apparent in studies centered on state diplomacy and nationalist movements. Taking the work of anti-apartheid pioneer and British churchman Michael Scott as a starting point, Skinner explores connected global histories of anti-nuclear peace campaigns, anti-colonialism and decolonization to illuminate new perspectives on the end of empire and the Cold War. Studying an ambitious scheme to irrigate the Kalahari Desert, a failed attempt to infiltrate the French atom bomb test site in southern Algeria, and a mass march across the border between Tanganyika and Northern Rhodesia that never took place, these examples provide valuable insights into the interactions between local and global scales of historical experience. In presenting these histories in this manner, this book demonstrates how global and transnational histories can challenge and disrupt, rather than reinforce hierarchies of power and privileges. In doing so, it also contributes to ongoing debates surrounding the nature of decolonization as a historical phenomenon by focusing on the practices of activism that shaped - and were shaped by the political and intellectual structures of decolonization.

Author Bio

Rob Skinner is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Bristol, UK. He has written extensively on the global and transnational histories of South Africa and anti-apartheid activism, and is the author of Modern South Africa in World History (Bloomsbury, 2017).