Customer Reviews

The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New Press People's History)

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This book is an ambitious effort to chart the fortunes of the political project of unifying the postcolonial world into 'the third world'. It is not, however, a 'people's' history, either in the senses of charting the demographic transformations of ordinary people (literacy, urbanization, etc) or anthropologically describing how they understood the dramatic events (revolutions, counterrevolutions, development experiments, etc) unfolding. It is almost exclusively concerned with the major leaders and some of the intellectuals and artists who shaped the consciousness of the period. Indeed, even if it was not titled 'people's history', I think it could be faulted by being a little vague about 'the people'.

In any case, the book is basically divided into three parts. The first section, 'Quest', considers some themes (economics, nationalism, gender, etc) through the optic of major conferences. The second, 'pitfalls', highlights places that epitomize themes like military coups and socialism from above. The third section, 'Assassinations' describes the demise of the third world as a subject as a result of neoliberalism, the IMF, the rise of East Asia, and religious fundamentalism. In all sections, Prashad tends to move between the focus of the chapter and historical geographical events that are far afield and occur before and after the moment in question. The effect can be a little vertiginous. Certainly he deserves credit for attempting such an expansive work, and his knowledge about the time period appears to be vast.

However, I found his organization a little too tidy, and his political perspective restricted by his focus on state leaders. Particularly since he regards the UN as something of an instrument for third world advancement (an interesting contrast with Perry Anderson, who claims its just a front for the US), why does he disregard the international conferences held under its auspices in the last fifteen years regarding the environment, women, and racism? Although attended by people from countries in the North as well as the South, at these forums it is probably fair to say that Southern perspectives tended to prevail and throw the North on the defensive. And why is not a word breathed about the World Social Forum? Is it because he regards NGOs (also almost completely absent from his book) as instruments of Northern domination, or because he regards social movements as insignificant compared to states? The absence of any discussion of these issues seems almost sectarian, as does his fairly crude analysis of religion (focused on Saudi-backed Wahhabi Islam--the Iranian revolution is practically unmentioned). Finally, he doesn't seem to have noticed, as have some other writers, that a number of third world states have begun to recover from neoliberalism and seem to be gradually reasserting themselves.

Well done. Bringing together material usually found in national, regional, and international histories the author orders material topically with chapter titles of cities where major events related to each theme happened.

Although not easy reading because much of the material is unfamiliar to most readers, the discussions are handled well and judgements usually sound. It is a wonder that this book could be written at all because of the breadth required. If you know one region of the world this volume will open your eyes and provide rich information for comparison.

Even if one is put off by views reflecting sympathy for the "Darker Peoples", critical of colonial mythmaking and neoliberal globalization alike - the control of the facts and history demands attention.

This book gets high marks for its sheer wealth of information, though it's not a casual reading experience. Here Vijay Prashad has continued the spirit of Howard Zinn's classic "A People's History of the United States," and this book is a strong inaugural release in what will hopefully be a continuing series. Here Prashad constructs the "Third World" as a Cold War term for all the disadvantaged nations that were caught in the crossfire between the First and Second Worlds, and were usually abused as pawns in the era's strictly bilateral games of geopolitics and development. Specifically, most of Prashad's work concerns the Non-Aligned Movement of nations that tried to resist taking sides in the bilateral Cold War, and attempted to build a coalition of nations that could stand as a viable entity with its own ideologies and political strategies. Prashad provides a wealth of little-known information on the nations and leaders that attempted to build this movement, and the political and economic realities faced by the peoples and societies that were being used and left behind by the superpowers.

Those familiar with Zinn's book will recognize the travails of the passionate historian who can't figure out how to synthesize vast quantities of historical knowledge. The first half of this book is tough to digest, consisting of an interminable laundry list of names and events with little over-arching analysis, giving the impression that Prashad is trying to describe every single thing that happened during the Cold War era outside of the US, Europe, and USSR. Occasional snippets of theory also seem forced and awkward, such as Prashad's examinations of unnatural borders or the behavior of military dictators. Fortunately, the book improves in the second half, as Prashad manages to develop his previously disconnected bits of history and theory into a strong overall analysis of how the superpowers "assassinated" (in his rather hyperbolic term) the Third World movement and its promises of social and economic progress, through globalization, conquest, and corporatism. Most importantly, Prashad does not refrain from criticizing the Third World nations too, as many of them have compounded their own misery by reverting to old styles of inequality and dictatorship. While this book has some real readability issues, and Prashad can sometimes be faulted for steering historical data toward his own theories, the reader is rewarded with a great amount of knowledge on peoples and leaders who have been forgotten in the histories of winners. [~doomsdayer520~]

The Third World is a Cold War term, meaning mostly former nations that were ruled by Europeans and won their political independence in the decades after the second world war. That's how most people understand it anyway. It started off as a term of empowerment and hope by the leaders of the newly independent countries in the 1950s, after years of trying to bind the colonized into a single cause. These leaders saw that the First capitalist world and the Second Soviet-bloc world needed the Third world for its resources, people, and support in the global cold war, and they did not want to be pawns anymore.

The Third World Project started in the 1955 at the Bandung Asian-African Conference, when the Nonaligned Movement was founded (NAM) in opposition to the 1st and 2nd Worlds. From here, the Third World was split by internal divisions, attacks by the West and Eastern blocs, and finally outright destruction of the "Third World" by economic policies pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States, as well as political and military attacks by the USA and its allies. In "The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World" by Vijay Prashad, the history of this push for unity, the contradictions of the class of leaders in trying to build this better Third world, the splits within the movement, and the final assassination of the Third World Project.

The book switches between different locations and different situations. Prashad points out that there was a strange contradiction in the work of building a Third World. The ruling class of the decolonized countries supported the new rulers, in many places, who wanted to stand up for themselves. But at the same time, as time went on, they also supported all-powerful dictators and neo-liberal economics that lead to the resources of the country being drained out like vampires (leading to continuation of places which have some of the richest resources of the world and some of the poorest people, like in Congo.) Projects like OPEC started as the "darker nations" tried to control their own politics, though it soon disintegrated into just rulers enriching themselves. In the end, they worked better with ruling classes of the 1st world than the people of their own countries.



Prashad goes to each place, from Singapore, to Indonesia and Suharto, to Baghdad, and explores the rise and fall of the Third World. Today, he ends, the Third World is dead. However, an international movement, free of imposed movements from above or directly by the elites of the government, has arisen and the world is changing to oppose the US. The book is an interesting look at an attempt by the leaders of former colonized places to fight back, though it can be a little disorienting traveling across so many places so fast (which is probably what trying to organize all those places to act together would have been like.) How the First World was able to destroy this movement is a pretty good lesson of history for any person to know.

In 1927, two hundred delegates from thirty-seven states and regions gathered in Brussels and formed the League Against Imperialism. In doing so they gave an institutional voice to the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of the vast majority of the people in the world who eventually found their countries sandwiched between the "first" world of the United States and the "second" world of the Soviet Union. Not wanting to align with either empire, from that meeting onward the "third world" (a word coined in 1952 by Albert Sauvy) became a prolonged international project and not just a place of misery. The setting was fraught with irony, for Belgium was then led by King Leopold II, whose shameless pillage of the Congo had few peers. In this history of the majority of the world's peoples, Vijay Prashad traces their elusive quest, its problems and pitfalls, and the causes and consequences of its failure.

Prashad's organization takes one on a global tour; each one of his eighteen chapter titles is a major city of the third world project. In Part 1 he considers the quest (Paris, Brussels, Bandung, Cairo, Buenos Aires, Tehran, Belgrade, and Havana); in Part 2 the pitfalls (Algiers, La Paz, Bali, Tawang, Caracas, and Arusha); then in Part 3 the "assassinations" of the project (New Delhi, Kingston, Singapore, Mecca). The third world sought three goals, he says: political independence and self-rule; peaceful co-existence and non-violent international relations; and using the United Nations as the means to push its agenda, all in contrast to the militarism, economic dominance, and ostensible superiority of the American and Soviet spheres. Along the way Prashad tackles most every aspect of this struggle, including education, bureaucratism, land reform, suffrage, religion, revolutionary violence, foreign aid, transnational corporations, the "villigization" of millions of people, the debt crisis, natural resources, and women's discrimination.

The third world project failed badly for many complex reasons. After freeing themselves from the shackles of imperial overlords, countries tended to centralize power in the state instead of establishing effective social democracies, stifled dissent, ignored rule of law, plundered national treasure, and set up military regimes ruled by dictator-thugs ("Nothing good comes from a military dictatorship."). The predator first world continued their economic plunder thanks to the threat of overwhelming military, political, and economic means (globalization, the IMF, etc.). And thus the "catastrophic demise" of the third world project. Crushing debt and widening income gaps between rich and poor nations are only the most obvious signs that most people in the world remain marginalized by their own states and exploited by the first world. But at least they now have a history of their struggle, thanks to Prashad.

I've heard Prashad occassionally on WBAI and am kicking myself for taking so long to get around to his work. This is one of the greatest books ever written on the Third World. Its cogent, lucid and thorough. What I found very interesting was the book's balance. I can imagine how diffult it must've been to explicate each Nation's history in a few hundred pages adequately. He also excelled at depicting just how connected - Poitically / Sociologically and Economically - Third World Nations really are. This is indispensable in understanding the current state of the Third World. Undoubtedly, one for the shelves.

Vijay Prashad's book "The Darker Nations" is a mix between modern history, political pamphlet and political economic analysis. Subtitled "A People's History of the Third World", it should not be thought of as a history of this part of the world as such, but as a history of the concept of the 'Third World' and its political implications.

Prashad's main thesis is that the Third World project was a national liberation project, generally progressive and secular, born out of anti-colonialism and popular mass mobilization to achieve independence for formerly colonized nations. Prashad describes the various institutions and movements all over the world involved in this, their respective leaders and backgrounds, and why they succeeded or failed (mostly the latter). He puts many well known institutions and developments in the Third World into this context, from OPEC to the 'Asian Tigers', which gives new insight into familiar phenomena, while at the same time chronicling the often unfortunately short history of the defeat of mass leftist movements in the underdeveloped world.

The general gist here is that whereas the initial national liberation governments were varied in their class background and aims, they all came from mass mobilizations against imperialism and as such were imbued with a developmental, egalitarian and nationalist-secular ethos. However, the combined force of the world market and the neo-colonialist states (essentially the entire First World) defeated these movements and funded and enabled reactionary movements in these Third World nations, leading to the destruction of the left in many places where it was formerly strong, such as Indonesia and Sudan. The now familiar story of IMF 'structural adjustment', unfair terms of trade, regressive policies on the part of local elites and bourgeoisie supported (sometimes myopically) by First World governments, and the selfish approaches of supposed defenders of international socialism like the USSR and China combine to tell the tale of why the Third World project failed.

The book is evocative, strong and well-written. One could make two objections to it: the first being that while Prashad is understandably enthousiastic about the initial idea of left-wing, secular anti-imperialism in the Third World, one might say he tends to portray it as more viable and as better than it was, and the second being the related charge that Prashad is often much better at describing how a given movement failed than why this happened. The book could definitely have benefited from a more in-depth political economic approach, explaining why exactly Third World attempts at egalitarian development failed from Tanzania to Indonesia, and how the reactionary forces managed and still manage to have the support to stay in power; a good example of this is the chapter on Singapore, which explains the regressive nature of the Singaporean elite state (as well as those of Taiwan and South Korea), but it does not explain very well why they nonetheless had much more success at development than African or Latin American left-wing governments did.

On the other hand, the actual political chronicling and the 'snapshots' of the various nations and their political histories in terms of anti-imperialist development are very good, and Prashad is an engaged and compelling author. Recommended as an addition to more specific political economic studies of the Third World.

I actually bought it to help study for my final but it took forever to get to me because of winds shutting down airlines, but I still enjoyed the book. It was huge compared to other college texts and was an easy read. When I saw Howard Zenn as the editor I knew it was going to be good because the books he is involved with are generally much more interesting than normal history texts. This gives a great account of the sie of history people don't normally hear of and even if it isn't for school i would recommend it to history enthusiasts.

The Darker Nations isn't the easiest book I've ever read, but it's easily one of the most enlightening and significant. I learned not only that the term "Third World" was originally a self-adopted marker of ex-colonies' reluctance to align themselves with either the U.S.-dominated First World or the Soviet-dominated Second World, but also a great deal about the anticolonial struggles that birthed the Third World; how Third World countries tried to articulate and achieve their social-democratic goals both internally and through such international (and internationalist) institutions as NAM; the oft-fatal mistakes the darker nations made in their efforts to attain justice for the whole of the Third World; and how the U.S.-controlled IMF and World Bank have effectively re-colonized much of the Third World and promoted the rise of Islamism.

Anyone at all curious as to why the so-called "developing world" (the new, putatively p.c. label for the former Third World) is in the impoverished and tyrannized state it's in would do well to sit down and engage with this book. I came away wondering, given the pernicious--to the U.S., as well as, of course, the ordinary people of the Third World--consequences of the Cold War and "structural adjustment," what unforeseen horrors the "War on Terror" will one day mean for a future generation.