African Activists in a Decolonising World

A history of global decolonisation and anticolonialism, told through East and Central African activists in the 1950s and 1960s.

Through the perspective of activists from East and Central Africa, Milford presents a history of global decolonisation and anticolonialism in the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing on multi-archival research, she foregrounds the role of these activists in transnational networks and the limits of the solidarity projects in which they participated.As wars of liberation in Africa and Asia shook the post-war world, a cohort of activists from East and Central Africa, specifically the region encompassing present-day Malawi, Zambia, Uganda and mainland Tanzania, asked what role they could play in the global anticolonial landscape. Through the perspective of these activists, Ismay Milford presents a social and intellectual history of decolonisation and anticolonialism in the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing on multi-archival research, she brings together their trajectories for the first time, reconstructing the anticolonial culture that underpinned their journeys to Delhi, Cairo, London, Accra and beyond. Forming committees and publishing pamphlets, these activists worked with pan-African and Afro-Asian solidarity projects, Cold War student internationals, spiritual internationalists and diverse pressure groups. Milford argues that a focus on their everyday labour and knowledge production highlights certain limits of transnational and international activism, opening up a critical – albeit less heroic – perspective on the global history of anticolonial work and thought.