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In April 1955, twenty-nine countries from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East came together for a diplomatic conference in Bandung, Indonesia, intending to define the direction of the postcolonial world. Representing approximately two-thirds of the world’s population, the Bandung conference occurred during a key moment of transition in the mid-twentieth century—amid the global wave of decolonization that took place after the Second World War and the nascent establishment of a new cold war world order in its wake. Participants such as Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Zhou Enlai of China, and Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia seized this occasion to attempt the creation of a political alternative to the dual threats of Western neocolonialism and the cold war interventionism of the United States and the Soviet Union.

The essays in this volume explore the diverse repercussions of this event, tracing the diplomatic, intellectual, and sociocultural histories that have emanated from it. Making a World after Empire consequently addresses the complex intersection of postcolonial history and cold war history and speaks to contemporary discussions of Afro-Asianism, empire, and decolonization, thus reestablishing the conference’s importance in twentieth-century global history.

Contributors: Michael Adas, Laura Bier, James R. Brennan, G. Thomas Burgess, Antoinette Burton, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Julian Go, Christopher J. Lee, Jamie Monson, Jeremy Prestholdt, Denis M. Tull

This special issue of Radical History Review offers a range of perspectives on the intellectual formation of the global South. Spanning time periods and objects of study across the global South, the essays develop new theoretical frameworks for thinking about geography, inequality, and subjectivity. Contributors investigate the construction of gender and racial formation in the global South and also explore what is politically and theoretically at stake in considering under-studied places like Guyana, or peripheries like Melanesia.  One essay considers how encounters between spaces in the global South, specifically between Lebanon and West Africa, help to refocus attention from the preoccupations of northern nations with their former colonies to the frictions of decolonization. Several articles focus on the role of popular culture in regard to the geopolitical formation of the global South, with topics ranging from film to music to the career of Muhammad Ali.

Contributors: Afro-Asian Networks Research Collective, Phineas Bbaala, Emily Callaci, Aharon de Grassi, Pamila Gupta, Mingwei Huang, Sean Jacobs, Maurice Jr. M. LaBelle, Christopher J. Lee, Roseann Liu, Marissa J. Moorman, Michelle Moyd, Ronald C. Po, Savannah Shange, Sandhya Shukla, Pahole Sookkasikon, Quito Swan, Sarah Van Beurden, Sarah E. Vaughn, Jelmer Vos, Keith B. Wagner