How an international community of anticolonial activists, thinkers, and campaigners came together during the interwar period to demand the end of formal imperialism across the world
This book chronicles the formation of a global community of anticolonial activists and thinkers and how they developed ideas about universal decolonization and the end of empires. At the turn of the twentieth century, the global imperial order was imperiled. In cities across the world, revolutionary factions emerged where nationalists deliberated radical, even violent paths to a post-imperial world.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin belonged to and wrote about this world, one primarily defined by the crisis of imperial order and the looming question of the future of national communities. As he and his compatriots seized power in Moscow in October 1917, he announced the dawn of a new era in which the empires of the world would eventually fall in the throes of the impending world revolution. Zaib un Nisa Aziz shows how Lenin’s call resonated with imperial decriers, who saw in his victory the possibility of a new world. Anticolonialists from all over the world turned to Moscow to help realize their own political visions. In so doing, they forged an international revolutionary movement that sought universal liberation and social revolution.