Vijay Prashad: Historic 1955 Anti-Colonial Bandung Conference Inspired New Era in Global South

[Uncle Joe]

This week marks the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference, when 29 nations from Asia and Africa gathered in Indonesia for a historic anti-colonial conference that was meant to chart a new path for developing countries amid a tide of decolonization sweeping the globe. The 1955 Bandung Conference announced the arrival on the world stage of peoples from the Global South, and it marked the birth of what would later become the Non-Aligned Movement at the height of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Key nations participating included China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Burma and Vietnam. The conference was hosted by Indonesian President Sukarno, a major anti-imperialist figure who would later be overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup.

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