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

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.

This proposed research is expected to yield a number of conclusions of significance for the international scholarly community as well as a range of external organisations and civil society groups.
The impacts will be threefold:

1. Collectively Rethinking Histories of the Left in Southeast Asia
This first impact activity is expected to be the most effective, as it will directly engage scholar-activists and public historians in the project who are expected to be impacted by the project, and who will be shaping the broader historical narratives which emerge from it for wider public audiences in Southeast Asia. It involves collectively recovering and rethinking forgotten histories of the Left in Southeast Asia, particularly within the broader global context of the Afro-Asian Era and the Cold War. The core activity is a week of collaborative research at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam with scholar-activists and public historians from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Myanmar. Through seminar discussion and collective archival inquiry, this activity is expected to open up new ways of thinking about the transnational and comparative histories, and transform researchers' own way of thinking, writing, and disseminating such histories for local audiences in their respective countries. I will be working with the editor of the popular Indonesian history magazine Historia to publish a special issue on this period and a Malaysian women's history organisation to plan a potential online exhibition based on what we find in the Amsterdam archive.

These conversations will continue with a workshop at the University of Gadja Mada in Indonesia with scholars, activists and public intellectuals in Jogjakarta, Indonesia to reflect on the history of socialism and transnational activism in the country. This will highlight to a broader audience of intellectuals, students, and activists the Indonesian engagement with the wider world of transnational activism in the post-colonial era. I will be looking to replicate the model of this workshop while conducting fieldwork, building my academic contacts, and gauging interest and current sensitivities around this topic in Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and the Philippines.

2. Rethinking Histories of Aid with/for Development Policy-makers
The outcomes of this research will also be relevant to policy-makers in the development sector in understanding the historical role of socialist-inspired experts from the Global North (from the early days of the Fabian Society) and socialist-inspired Asian and African intellectuals and technocrats in shaping both the international development sector and the NGO sector. I am in discussion with Dr. Michael Woolcock at the World Bank in Washington D.C. on the possibility of giving a talk on these themes there, and will be interviewing and discussing these themes with staff at the regional offices of the UN and UNESCO in Bangkok. These discussions will feed into the drafting of a History and Policy Working Paper on the important role played by Asian and African socialist intellectuals within the emerging world of international development in the latter half of the twentieth century, contesting the view of development as a process where aid flows from the Global North to the Global South.

3. Highlighting Global Histories of Socialism in Wider Public Discourse Students and the Wider Public in the US/UK.
With 'socialism' back in fashion, particularly among millennial and younger generations of students, this research will have popular appeal in highlighting historical legacies of socialism and activism in the non-Western world. I will aim to write one essay for a magazine or newspaper based in the US/UK on the global history of socialism in the Afro-Asian world, and will contribute posts on this for our popular Afro-Asian Visions blog (a product of the AHRC Afro-Asian Networks research grant).