This chapter explores those transformations in intimate lives that have been collectively shorthanded with the term “sexual revolution.” Whether thought of as a gradually evolving process spanning the 1950s to the 1990s or rather understood as referring to the briefer era of heightened incitement and excitement around sex that reached its heyday in the 1960s-1970s, the story of sexual developments in the second half of the twentieth century has long been written in a linear, teleological fashion. Scholars emphasize the rise of reproductive freedom, women”s equality, rights for sexual minorities, and a more general attitude of sex-positivism. However, by reconceiving the story of the sexual revolution as a global one, inextricable from tectonic geopolitical shifts in both East-West and North-South relations – from the Cold War to decolonization and development projects and obsession with the purported dangers of “overpopulation” in the global South, and from the eventual collapse of Communism to the rise of a neoliberal economic order – this chapter challenges the “liberalization paradigm” and instead explores the sexual revolution as a multi-form, multi-sited, but also profoundly ambivalent process, met with recurrent backlashes as well as marred by its own intrinsic complexities.

In the early twenty-first century, nations across Africa celebrated their fiftieth birthdays. The symbols employed to mark the occasion and the memories evoked bore witness to the joys as well as the trials and tribulations of a fifty-year history. For many, fifty years of independent nationhood was an occasion for celebration.1 But at the same time, the history of nationalism and nationhood is not purely a celebratory story. The politics of the early twenty-first century, in African countries as elsewhere in the world, served as a reminder that modern nationalism also has a dark side, and that violence and dispossession can follow when dynamics of inclusion and exclusion are drawn along national lines.

Chapter 4 examines the tradition of Gandhian political thought. It explores the critique of liberal parliamentarism in the writings of M. K. Gandhi and those of his supporters.

In French colonial history, we can read the world wars as a single conflict. The Great War and World War II broke the French empire as it existed in the previous century. The empire contributed substantially in blood and treasure to victory in 1918, though mobilization for that war deepened existing colonial tensions and created new ones. Shifting dynamics pointed to a renegotiation of basic colonial bargains. An ostensibly new colonial doctrine, the mise en valeur, sought to make the empire a more cohesive economic and political unit. Anti-colonial movements became stronger and more articulate throughout the interwar period, though repression and military force had little trouble preserving imperial authority, for the time being. The defeat of 1940 upended imperial relationships. How could the Vichy regime rule an empire when it had very limited authority even in the Hexagon? Yet Free France promised only continued, if reformed, imperial rule. This situation made questions of collaboration and resistance at least as complicated in the empire as in Europe. By 1945, it became clear to the attentive that the French empire would either have to expire or become something else.

The year 1919 saw an unprecedented wave of female activism unleashed by women who collectively decried the exclusion of ’half of humanity’ from the peace negotiations. Promises of a new international order rooted in self-determination, popular sovereignty and social justice served as the catalyst for these women: suffragists, pacifists, labour activists, pan-Africanists and anti-colonialists from Europe, North America, India, Korea, Egypt, China and beyond. Throughout 1919, they congregated in meeting halls and marched in the streets, demanding a voice in the peace negotiations and insisting on representation in democratic states and the new institutions of global governance. In their vision, a just and secure international order depended as much on safeguarding the rights of individuals as it did on facilitating the peaceful coexistence of nations. The result of their activism was an ever-expanding and intersecting network of women’s organisations dedicated to securing gender equality around the world

The year 1919 is now remembered primarily as the year in which peace was restored to Europe following the cataclysm of the Great War. But it was also, no less importantly, a time of upheaval across much of the colonial world. In North Africa, Egyptians rose in revolt against British control and Tunisian protesters demanded the restoration of the constitution from their French overlords. Indians, too, rose against British rule, launching a concerted campaign that year for Indian self-determination. And across East and Southeast Asia – in China, Korea, Indochina, the Dutch East Indies – uprisings against imperialism transformed polities and societies. In short, the wake of the Great War saw the rise of a transnational revolt against the imperial world order, a revolt that would profoundly shape the transformation of international order in the ensuing decades.

No account of the global convulsions of Britishness in the decades after the Second World War can ignore the outbreak of the Northern Ireland Troubles in the late 1960s. This chapter sets out to tie this explosive episode into the global dynamics of the break-up of Greater Britain in two key respects. First, the climate of acute adveristy for colonialism worldwide provided ample encouragement and legitimacy to the ‘anti-colonialist’ credentials of militant nationalism. And second, and more significantly, the reaction of the Unionist majority cannot be viewed in isolation from the wider repercussions of Britain’s imperial endgame. The spectacle of a British government turning its back on longstanding moral commitments abroad (from East of Suez to Rhodesia, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands) only heightened suspicion that Protestant Ulster would be next in line. Ultimately, it was as much to combat English incomprehension of their plight that Protestant Loyalists resorted to a beleaguered militancy as the touchstone of their Britishness, unwittingly distancing themselves further from their ‘mainland’ counterparts.

This chapter examines the history of Black diasporic fiction in the Atlantic world as it informed, and continues to be informed by, the artistic and geopolitical coordinates of the surrealist movement. From the surrealist interest in and appropriation of Blackness in Jazz-age Paris through the post-WWII development of pan-African and Third World movements, the writing and cultural production of African, Afro-Caribbean, and African American intellectuals fuelled the global development of leftist and anti-colonial politics. So too did Black writing and art both inform and, in part, constitute the proliferation of aesthetic radicalism throughout the Atlantic world. This chapter traces the intersecting histories of surrealism, existentialism, and the Black radical tradition through the production of fiction; in doing so it traces the politics of literary activism – as well as the vexed histories of racism, cultural appropriation, exploitation, and erasure – in the work of Black writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It contends not only that surrealism should be understood as a significant coordinate in the Black radical tradition (as e.g. Robin D.G. Kelley has demonstrated), but also that the surrealist movement is inconceivable without an appraisal of its relation to race, diaspora, and the writing and cultural production of Black intellectuals.

Tolstoy’s life and works have been interpreted in myriad ways in India. His emergence in the South Asian literary scene coincided with an important moment in the development of anti-colonial resistance to British imperial rule. In this moment, competing strands of ideological influence sought to interpret and introduce Tolstoy to the Indian reading public in their own way. This chapter studies two major streams into which these interpretations can be divided – the well-known one of Tolstoy as a pacifist, religiously based intellectual by Mohandas Gandhi, and the lesser-known, radical interpretation of Tolstoy as a figure of active resistance to issues ranging from landlordism to patriarchal oppression. The chapter investigates how the image of Tolstoy moved seamlessly between different cultural and linguistic entities across the region, providing insights into the category of “Indian literature” itself.

This chapter taks Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s re-approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in 2019 as a starting point to understand the productive tensions between hegemonic, counter-hegemonic, and grassroots political formations. On the same day Trudeau re-approved the pipeline, a stunning display of counter-hegemonic solidarity occurred, as representatives from the Tsliel-Waututh, Squamish, and Musqueam nations, alongside elected officials from the City of Vancouver and the Grand Chief of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, redoubled their commitment to protecting their shared coastal ecosystem. Days later there was yet another display of resistance to Trudeau’s policies: this time in the form of a 20 km march, at the head of which was a Tiny House. Destined for Secwepemcul’ecw, in the interior of British Columbia, this Tiny House was pulled by a coalition of grassroots Indigenous leaders and settlers. Placing these tactics into relief alongside one another reveals the remarkable diversity of anti-imperialist struggles at work today and shows the possibilities of collective liberation that emerge through committed internationalism grounded in local struggle.

This book presents a comparative study of the historical experiences of Britons who entered the international civil service between 1945 and 1970 with those who worked and volunteered in international non-governmental and civil society organizations. International service assumed two forms after the Second World War. One was the international civil service, much of which was concentrated in the United Nations (UN) family of international organizations. The other was international civil society, comprised of older voluntary organizations that expanded their activities after the war, and new transnational civil society organizations created between the 1940s and the 1970s. The book assesses the respective influence of Britons in these sectors on the post-1945 development of international public policy and on Britain’s transition from a great power to one that sought to position itself as a leading contributor to international governance and voluntary activism. It presents a comparative analysis of the personal histories of hundreds of Britons who represented Britain at the UN and worked in the UN Secretariat; served in UN humanitarian, development, and social governance institutions and missions; participated in the world government movement; volunteered in the Friends Postwar International Service; and lobbied for decolonization and anti-racism through the Movement for Colonial Freedom.

The accelerated pace of decolonization by the 1950s led many Britons to engage with questions of colonial nationalism. The Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF) was one of the largest postwar British civil society associations that addressed these questions. This chapter examines the MCF’s work as an international advocacy organization and a central node in transnational anti-colonial networks. It highlights similarities between the MCF and the initiatives pursued by some of the UN’s development agencies. It addresses the MCF's assistance to colonial nationalist movements in Africa, its role as an ally and supporter of African human rights activists, and its active role in identifying and combatting racism as a political and human rights problem at home in Britain.

This book presents a comparative study of the historical experiences of Britons who entered the international civil service between 1945 and 1970 with those who worked and volunteered in international non-governmental and civil society organizations. International service assumed two forms after the Second World War. One was the international civil service, much of which was concentrated in the United Nations (UN) family of international organizations. The other was international civil society, comprised of older voluntary organizations that expanded their activities after the war, and new transnational civil society organizations created between the 1940s and the 1970s. The book assesses the respective influence of Britons in these sectors on the post-1945 development of international public policy and on Britain’s transition from a great power to one that sought to position itself as a leading contributor to international governance and voluntary activism. It presents a comparative analysis of the personal histories of hundreds of Britons who represented Britain at the UN and worked in the UN Secretariat; served in UN humanitarian, development, and social governance institutions and missions; participated in the world government movement; volunteered in the Friends Postwar International Service; and lobbied for decolonization and anti-racism through the Movement for Colonial Freedom.