96834 - NORTH-SOUTH RELATIONS IN INTERNATIONAL HISTORY

Learning outcomes

The course aims at providing students with the skills and tools to understand the historical evolution of relations between the countries of the North and the countries of the South during the XIX and the XX centuries. At the end of the course students know the processes of colonization and decolonization, the interaction between the nation-building processes pursued by the governments of the countries of the South after independence and the Cold War, the role played by the countries of the South within international organizations such as the United Nations, and their contemporary efforts aimed at promoting regional integration and reshaping international power relations.

Course contents

The course analyses the evolution of North-South relations in historical perspective, from colonialism to the end of the Cold War. More specifically, the course analyses the colonisation of Asia and Africa by the European powers, the imposition of different models of colonial rule and their long-term political, economic and social impact on the countries of Asia and Africa, the process of decolonisation, the economic development strategies pursued by the countries of the South after the Second World War, the relations between the North and the South during the Cold War, the military interventions in the South after the end of the Cold War (in particular in Iraq and Afghanistan), and recent South-South cooperation efforts.

Readings/Bibliography

Syllabus and readings for attending students

FIRST PART

1) The "tribe" in international politics

R. Gonzalez, Going ‘tribal’: Notes on pacification in the 21st century, in Athropolocy Today, vol. 25, no. 2, 2009, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8322.2009.00655.x.

G. Viswanathan, Colonialism and the Construction of Hinduism, in G. Flood (ed), Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, Oxford, Blackwell, 2003, pp. 23-44.

2) Dutch colonization of Indonesia

M. C. Ricklefs, History of Modern Indonesia since c.1200, Fourth edition, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 143-168.

3) Resistance to colonial conquest: the 1857 revolt in India

P. Robb, "On the Rebellion of 1857: A Brief History of an Idea", in Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 42, no. 19, 2007.

4) British rule in colonial India after 1857

M. Mann, State Formation in India: From the Company State to the Late Colonial State, in H. Fischer-Tiné, M. Framke (eds), Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia, Abington, Routledge, 2022.

5) The partition of Africa

I. Phimister, Empire, Imperialism and the Partition of Africa, in S. Akita (eds), Gentlemanly Capitalism, Imperialism and Global History, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp. 65-82.

G. Austin, The Economics of Colonialism in Africa, in C. Monga, J. Y. Lin (eds), Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, volume 1: Context and Con­cepts, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199687114.013.4.

6) French colonial empire: the case of Vietnam

C. Goscha, The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam, London, Penguin, 2016, pp. 69-126.

7) North and South between the two world wars

J. Jansen, J. Osterhammel, Decolonization, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2017, pp. 35-70.

8) The decolonization of India and the partition

H. Kulke, D. Rothermund, A History of India, Sixth edition, Abington, Routledge, 2016, pp. 231-265.

9) Mao's rise to power in China

N. Jun, The birth of the People’s Republic of China and the road to the Korean War, in M. Leffler, O. A. Westad (eds), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, volume 1, Origins, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

10) The Korea war

W. Stueck, The Korean War, in M. Leffler, O. A. Westad (eds), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, volume 1, Origins, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

11) The end of the French colonial empire: Indochina and Algeria

C. Goscha, The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam, London, Penguin, 2016, pp. 226-294.

J. J. Byrne, "Our Own Special Brand of Socialism: Algeria and the Contest of Modernities in the 1960s", in Diplomatic History, vol.33, no. 3, 2009, pp 427 -447, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.2009.00779.x.

12) Suez 1956

A. Hewedi, Nasser and the Crisis of 1956, in Wm. R. Louis, A. Shlaim (eds), Suez 1956: The Crisis and Its Consequences, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012.

D. Little, The Cold War in the Middle East: Suez crisis to Camp David Accords, in M. Leffler, O. A. Westad (eds), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, volume 2, Crises and Détente, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

13) The decolonization of Africa

F. Cooper, Africa since 1940, second edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, 87-115.

14) Bandung and the NAM

J. Dinkel, The Non-Aligned Movement: Genesis, Organization and Politics (1927-1992), Leiden, Brill, 2019, pp. 42-131.

15) The NIEO

T. M. Shaw, The Non-Aligned Movement and the New International Economic Order, in H. Addo (ed), Transforming the World Economy? Nine Critical Essays on the New International Economic Order, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1985.

16) The second Indochina war

C. Goscha, The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam, London, Penguin, 2016, pp. 330-370.

 

SECOND PART

1 & 2) The decolonization of Southern Africa

O. A. Westad, The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 207-249.

3) The Lomé Convention

I. Montana, "The Lomé Convention from Inception to the Dynamics of the Post-Cold War, 1957-1990s", in African and Asian Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/156920903763835670.

4) The debt crisis

G. Arrighi, The world economy and the Cold War, 1970–1990, in M. Leffler, O. A. Westad (eds), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, volume 3, Endings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

5) Regional integration in the Global South and the BRICS

S. Krapohl, Regionalism: In Crisis?, in T, Shaw, L. Mahrenbach, R. Modi, X. Yi-chong (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary International Political Economy, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2019.

J. van der Merwe, Notes from the hinterland: theorising BRICS and their geographies of resistance, in J. van der Merwe, P. Bond, N. Dodd (eds), BRICS and Resistance in Africa, London, Zed Books, 2019.

6) A new interventionism? Iraq and Rwanda

G. Prunier, “Opération Turquoise: A Humanitarian Escape from a Political Dead End”, in H. Adelman, A. Suhrke (eds.), The Path of a Genocide. The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 2000.

7) The war in Afghanistan

A. Saikal, Islamism, the Iranian revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, in M. Leffler, O. A. Westad (eds), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, volume 3, Endings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

A. Monsutti, "Anthropologizing Afghanistan: Colonialism and Postcolonial Encounters", in Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 43, 2013.

 

PARALLEL SECOND PART

1. Between the II WW and the beginning of the Cold War

L. Zanatta, «Old West versus New West: Perón’s ‘Third Position,’ Latin America, and the Atlantic Community», in M. Mariano (ed.), Defining the Atlantic Community. Culture, Intellectuals, and Policies in the Mid-Twentieth Century, London, Routledge, 2010.

2. The Cultural Cold War in Latin America

P. Iber, Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America, Cambridge, MA and London, England, Harvard University Press, 2015. [only Chap. 3:«The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Imperialism of Liberty»].

3. The Cuban Revolution: Before and After

Tanya Harmer, «The “Cuban Question” and the Cold War in Latin America, 1959–1964», in Journal of Cold War Studies; 21 (3), 2019.

4. The Cold War in Central America

J. Coatsworth, «The Cold War in Central America, 1975- 1991», in M. Leffler - O. Westad (Eds.), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

5. The Falkland/Malvinas War

S. Krepp, «A view from the South: the Falklands/Malvinas and Latin America”, in Journal Of Transatlantic Studies, vol. 15, n. 4, 2017, pp. 348-365 .

6. The Latin American Regionalism

A. Malamud, Overlapping regionalism, no integration : conceptual issues and the Latin American experiences, EUI RSCAS, 2013/20, Global Governance Programme-42, European, Transnational and Global Governance, 2013.

7. China in Latin America

M. Myers,« Shaping Chinese Engagement in Latin America», in J. Dominguez - A. Covarrubias, Routledge Handbook of Latin America in the World, London, Routledge, 2014.

 

Readings for non attending students

J. Jansen, J. Osterhammel, Decolonization, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2017.

V. Prashad, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, London, Verso, 2014.

O. A. Westad, The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

J. Dinkel, The Non-Aligned Movement: Genesis, Organisation and Politics (1927-1992), Leiden, Brill, 2019.

Teaching methods

The course is organized in lectures and seminars, as detailed in the following program. Lectures (32 hours) aim to introduce students to the core tenets of the discipline. Seminars (14 hours) aim to provide occasions for in-depth discussions of class materials and exercises. For the seminar section of the course, students will be divided in 3 groups. Students attend a total of 46 hours of classes.

Assessment methods

Students attending classes:

Three written exams (3 questions, 1 hour) during the course and a final written exam (on all the topics of the course). The final mark is the average of the marks of the four exams.

Students not attending classes:

Written exam

Teaching tools

Power point

Office hours

See the website of Arrigo Pallotti

See the website of Francesco Davide Ragno