Yearly Archives: 2014

Connected Histories of Decolonisation Workshop, Senate House, 13-14 November 2014

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Connected Histories of Decolonisation

 A two-day workshop organised by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in conjunction with the Centre for European and International Studies Research at the University of Portsmouth and King’s College London

The Senate Room, Senate House (First Floor)

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Thursday 13th November 2014

11-11.30: Coffee and welcome

11.30-13.00: Panel 1 – Creating spaces, connections and networks of resistance

  • Clemens Hoffmann (Bilkent University) – Anti-colonial empires and the creation of Afroasian spaces of resistance
  • James Renton (Edge Hill) – The Theatre of the anti-colonial nation: colonial Asia in the age of nationality
  • Uma Kothari (University of Manchester) – Contesting colonial rule: transnational networks of resistance and the politics of exile

13.00-14.00: Lunch

14.00-15.30: Panel 2 – Competing narratives of decolonisation

  • Andrew Kuech (The New School of Social Research, New York) – Duelling Chinese nationalism: a postcolonial confrontation with American power
  • Tim Livsey (King’s College London) – Connected histories of decolonisation and development: the United States, Britain and African universities
  • Robert S. G. Fletcher (University of Exeter) – Decolonisation and the arid world

15.30-16.00: Tea

 16.00-17:30: Panel 3 – Connected histories of nationalism

  • Thomas Sharp (Oxford Brookes) – A transnational nationalism: the UPC and the decolonisation of Cameroon, 1948-1961
  • Camille Evrard (University of Paris I) – Morocco, France and the UN in the Mauritanian decolonization process
  • Marta Musso (University of Cambridge) – Decolonisation and oil politics: economic interdependence and struggle for self-determination

17.30-17.45: Short break

17.45-18.45: Panel 4 – Networks, models and interconnections 

  • Bruno C. Reis (ICS-UL) – The trauma of Belgium decolonization in Portugal: real impact or legitimizing discourse?
  • Nathalie Mrgudovic (Aston University) – The Cook Islands: a new model of decolonisation for New Caledonia?

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Friday 14th November 2014

9-9.30: Coffee

9.30-11.00: Panel 5 – Diplomacy, development and domestic influences on British decolonisation and its aftermath

  • Andrew W M Smith (UCL/ University of Chichester) – ‘Information about empire’: British overseas representation and Francophone Africa
  • Charlotte Riley (University of York) – ‘Overseas aid is no longer a form of charity’: Britain, decolonisation and the UN decade of development
  • Rosalind Coffey (LSE) – British press coverage of the Sharpeville massacre

 11.00-11.30: Coffee

11.30-13.00: Panel 6 – France in Anglophone Africa

  • Joanna Warson (University of Portsmouth) – A French vision of Africa: Franco-African relations beyond colonialism and Francophone Africa
  • Anna Konieczna (Sciences Po, Paris) – The dialogue with Pretoria or a dialogue at cross purposes
  • Roel van der Velde (University of Portsmouth) – Marketing helicopters to Pretoria: reconstructing parallel French and South African military and industrial development, 1955-1977

13.00-14.00: Lunch 

14.00-15.30: Panel 7 – Forced labour

  • Romain Tiquet (Humboldt University at Berlin/ForcedLabourAfrica) – Accident at work or “self-inflicted” wounds in Senegalese penal camps ? Administrative archive and colonial order
  • Víctor Fernández Soriano (University of Thessaly, Greece/ForcedLabourAfrica) – The Belgian enigma: reform and stagnation in the Province of Equateur, Belgian Congo (1945-1960)
  • Alexander Keese (Humboldt University at Berlin/ForcedLabourAfrica) – Business as usual: repressive practices, the “vagabond problem”, and labour policies in the Middle Congo (1945-1968)

15.30-16.00: Tea

 16.00-17.00: Panel 8 – Human rights, anti-imperialist nationalism, decolonisation: mapping the global impact of the August 1941 Atlantic Charter

  • Martin Evans (University of Sussex) – From the general to the specific: the regional impact of the Atlantic Charter in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia
  • Clive Webb (University of Sussex) – African Americans, the Atlantic Charter and the global Civil Rights movement

17.00-17.30: Concluding round table discussion

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To register for this event, please visit the Institute of Commonwealth Studies website.

New book announcement – We are no longer in France: Communists in colonial Algeria by Allison Drew

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This new book by Professor Allison Drew (University of York) recovers the lost history of colonial Algeria’s communist movement. Meticulously researched – and the only English-language book on the Parti Communiste Algérien – it explores communism’s complex relationship with Algerian nationalism. During international crises, such as the Popular Front and Second World War years, the PCA remained close to its French counterpart, but as the national liberation struggle intensified, the PCA’s concern with political and social justice attracted growing numbers of Muslims. When the Front de Libération Nationale launched armed struggle in November 1954, the PCA maintained its organisational autonomy – despite FLN pressure. They participated fully in the national liberation war, facing the French state’s wrath. Independence saw two conflicting socialist visions, with the PCA’s incorporated political pluralism and class struggle on the one hand, and the FLN demand for a one-party socialist state on the other. The PCA’s pluralist vision was shattered when it was banned by the one-party state in November 1962. This book is of particular interest to students and scholars of Algerian history, French colonial history and communist history.

For more information and details on how to purchase this book, please visit the Manchester University Press website.