Another World? East Africa, Decolonisation, and the Global History of the Mid-Twentieth Century

This article proposes that there is a gap in our current understanding of the globalising and deglobalising dynamics of mid-twentieth-century East Africa, one that might be addressed by consolidating and taking forward recent developments in the historiography of decolonisation. Recent work by international historians has recovered the connected world of the 1940s to 1960s: the era of new postcolonial states, the ‘Bandung moment’, pan-African cooperation, and the early Cold War. Yet East Africa is less prominent in these histories than we might expect, despite the vibrancy of current work on this period in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Bringing these two fields into dialogue, through an explicitly regional East African framework and with a particular focus on individual lives, expands our understanding not only of the ‘globalisation of decolonisation’ but also of the deglobalising dynamics of the following decades that are frequently reduced to a history of global economic crisis.

Racial militarism and civilizational anxiety at the imperial encounter: From metropole to the postcolonial state

In this article, I ask three key questions: First, what is the relationship between militarism and race? Second, how does colonialism shape that relationship to produce racial militarism on both sides of the imperial encounter? And, third, what is the function of racial militarism? I build on Fanon’s psychoanalytic work on the production of racial hierarchies and internalization of stigma to argue that militarism became a means through which the European imperial nation-state sought to mitigate its civilizational anxiety and assert itself at the top of a constructed hierarchy. In particular, I argue that European militarism is constituted by its colonization and historical constructions of the so-called Muslim Orient, stigmatized as a rival, a threat and an inferior neighbour. However, this racial militarism and civilizational anxiety is not only a feature of the colonial metropole, but also transferred onto colonized and postcolonial states. Drawing on examples of racial militarism practised by the Syrian regime, I argue Europe’s racial-militarist stigmas are also internalized and instrumentalized by postcolonial states via fleeing and transferral. Throughout the article, I demonstrate that racial militarism has three main functions in both metropole and postcolony: the performance of racial chauvinism and superiority; demarcation of boundaries of exclusion; and dehumanization of racialized dissent in order to legitimate violence.

Foreign policy change as rhetorical politics: domestic-regional constellation of Global South states

Although the recent advancements in critical constructivist IR on political rhetoric has greatly improved our understanding of linguistic mechanisms of political action, we need a sharp understanding of how rhetoric explains foreign policy change. Here we conceptualize a link between rhetoric and foreign policy change by foregrounding distinct dynamics at the regional and domestic institutional environments. Analytically, at the regional level, we suggest examining whether norms of foreign policy engagement are explicitly coded in treaties and agreements or implicit in conventions and practices of actors. And at the domestic level, we suggest examining whether a particular foreign policy issue area is concurrent or contested among interlocutors. In this constellation, we clarify how four different rhetorical strategies underwrites foreign policy change – persuasion, mediation, explication and reconstruction – how it operates, and the processes through which it unfolds in relation to multiple audiences. Our principal argument is that grand foreign policy change requires continuous rhetorical deployments with varieties of politics to preserve and stabilize the boundaries in the ongoing fluid relations of states. We illustrate our argument with an analysis of Brazil’s South-South grand strategy under the Lula administration and contrast it against the rhetoric of subsequent administrations. Our study has implications for advancing critical foreign policy analysis on foreign policy change and generally for exploring new ways of studying foreign policies of nonwestern postcolonial states in international relations.

Social Stratification in the Sahel

This chapter explores the politics of social status hierarchies in the Sahel (freeborn, “castes,” slaves) and the rich literature devoted to this theme. It looks specifically at two themes. First, the paradoxical relationship between Islam and social status stratification. The doctrinal equality of the believers before God has often been negated in practice, as “freeborn” lineages have taken over positions of Islamic leadership. But recently some religious movements (Islamism, Sufism, perhaps some jihadism as well) and social movements have challenged the hierarchy of status differences, some in words only, others in deeds as well. The second theme covers the relationship between the construction of colonial and postcolonial states and status hierarchies. Officially, in postcolonial states all citizens are equal under the law. But informally, little is done to counter practices that perpetuate status discrimination such as slavery. Also, electoral politics can both crystalize social status differences and trigger mobilization against status inequalities.

Whether Sovereignty?: The Failure of Indonesia in Taking Over Flight Information Region from Singapore 2015-2019

The concept of ‘complete and exclusive sovereignty as defined in international and national law remains poses challenges, especially concerning the effort of Indonesia in taking over the Flight Information Region (FIR) from the Singapore context. The management of FIR by Singapore over the Riau Islands of Indonesia was begun during the British colonial period over Malay territory, which partly became a sovereign state of Singapore in 1965. However, under the syndrome of post-colonialism Indonesia has legalized it through the 1995 bilateral agreement between Indonesia and Singapore. On the other hand, since independence, Indonesia has gradually initiated to take over the FIR until the peak time of the 2015 Presidential Instruction which explicitly orders to take over the FIR of Singapore at the latest in the next four years (2015-2019). However, until the end of 2020, there had been no significant progress. This paper critically investigates such failure within the evolving concept of ‘sovereignty through the Third World Approach to International Law (TWAIL) paradigm in terms of the global justice system. It is proved that the meaning of ‘sovereignty in postcolonial states remains a political rhetoric as also known as ‘negative sovereignty’. Hence, this paper contributes to clarifying the meaning of sovereignty in the Indonesian context, so that a new awareness arises to increase the national capacity to take over FIR from Singapore, and hopefully, the ‘complete and exclusive’ meaning of sovereignty can be perceived in near future, for the maximum benefit of people in Indonesia.

Rethinking the taproot of the security challenges in Africa: bringing back the colonial legacy

This paper offers a counter-narrative to the constricted Western narratives that often discount how colonial domination, exploitation, and external interference have shaped Africa’s past and present, especially in the area of security. It focuses on the numerous security challenges in Africa and its complex historical nexus to the colonial legacy. The piece draws from the variegated dominant arguments and counterarguments on African (in)security issues, colonial rule, and the theoretical security models and concepts. The paper demonstrates, through an exploration of the formation of postcolonial states, that colonialism cannot be excused as some distant root cause of the security problem on the continent, but has deliberately crafted some specific subjects, societies and states that serve to perpetuate the challenges in the security complex of Africa. Keywords: security, colonial legacy, nation-state, Africa

Medina Gounass: Constructing Extra-National Space in a West African Borderland

The historical autonomy of the religious community of Medina Gounass in Senegal represents an alternative geographic territory to that of colonial and postcolonial states. The borderland location of Medina Gounass allowed the town to detach itself from colonial and independent Senegal, creating parallel governmental structures and imposing a particular interpretation of Islamic law. While in certain facets this autonomy was limited, the community was able to distance itself through immigration, cross-border religious ties, and smuggling. Glovsky’s analysis of the history of Medina Gounass offers a case study for the multiplicity of geographical and territorial entities in colonial and postcolonial Africa.

Transnational Intimacies and the Construction of the New Nation

This article examines love as a facet of nation building in constructions of modern womanhood and national identity in the 1950s and 1960s. In Tunisia and France, romantic love was evoked to define an urban, middle-class modernity in which the gender norms implicit in companionate marriage signaled a break with the past. These ideals were represented in fiction and women's magazines and elaborated in the novel genre of the advice column. Yet this celebration was interrupted by concern about “mixed marriage” and the rise of anti-immigrant discrimination targeting North Africans in France. Referring to race or religion, debates about interracial marriage in Tunisia and the sexual stereotyping of North African men in France reveal the continuity of colonialism's racial legacies upon postcolonial states. The idealization of marital choice as a testament to individual and national modernity was destabilized by transnational intimacies revealing the limits of the nation-state's liberatory promise to women.