What do you think?
Rate this book
Post-Imperial Possibilities: Eurasia, Eurafrica, Afroasia
A history of three transnational political projects designed to overcome the inequities of imperialism
After the dissolution of empires, was the nation-state the only way to unite people politically, culturally, and economically? In Post-Imperial Possibilities , historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper examine three large-scale, transcontinental projects aimed at bringing together peoples of different regions to mitigate imperial legacies of inequality. Eurasia, Eurafrica, and Afroasia―in theory if not in practice―offered alternative routes out of empire.
The theory of Eurasianism was developed after the collapse of imperial Russia by exiled intellectuals alienated by both Western imperialism and communism. Eurafrica began as a design for collaborative European exploitation of Africa but was transformed in the 1940s and 1950s into a project to include France’s African territories in plans for European integration. The Afroasian movement wanted to replace the vertical relationship of colonizer and colonized with a horizontal relationship among former colonial territories that could challenge both the communist and capitalist worlds.
Both Eurafrica and Afroasia floundered, victims of old and new vested interests. But Eurasia revived in the 1990s, when Russian intellectuals turned the theory’s attack on Western hegemony into a recipe for the restoration of Russian imperial power. While both the system of purportedly sovereign states and the concentrated might of large economic and political institutions continue to frustrate projects to overcome inequities in welfare and power, Burbank and Cooper’s study of political imagination explores wide-ranging concepts of social affiliation and obligation that emerged after empire and the reasons for their unlike destinies.
After the dissolution of empires, was the nation-state the only way to unite people politically, culturally, and economically? In Post-Imperial Possibilities , historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper examine three large-scale, transcontinental projects aimed at bringing together peoples of different regions to mitigate imperial legacies of inequality. Eurasia, Eurafrica, and Afroasia―in theory if not in practice―offered alternative routes out of empire.
The theory of Eurasianism was developed after the collapse of imperial Russia by exiled intellectuals alienated by both Western imperialism and communism. Eurafrica began as a design for collaborative European exploitation of Africa but was transformed in the 1940s and 1950s into a project to include France’s African territories in plans for European integration. The Afroasian movement wanted to replace the vertical relationship of colonizer and colonized with a horizontal relationship among former colonial territories that could challenge both the communist and capitalist worlds.
Both Eurafrica and Afroasia floundered, victims of old and new vested interests. But Eurasia revived in the 1990s, when Russian intellectuals turned the theory’s attack on Western hegemony into a recipe for the restoration of Russian imperial power. While both the system of purportedly sovereign states and the concentrated might of large economic and political institutions continue to frustrate projects to overcome inequities in welfare and power, Burbank and Cooper’s study of political imagination explores wide-ranging concepts of social affiliation and obligation that emerged after empire and the reasons for their unlike destinies.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published November 7, 2023
4 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 24, 2024
This fascinating book digs into the histories of imagined futures of three super-sized political domains.
Trial balloons about ideal futures of countries or breakaway republics routinely get launched and routinely fall to earth. Yet proposals of far wider scope, embracing multiple countries and whole continents, used to draw a lot of attention and raise expectations. Even today, among leaders in a few places such as Moscow and Istanbul, such grand visions get pulses racing. This book tells the story of three such ‘macro’ visions about reconfiguring and binding nation-states together in larger wholes.
Least viable among these was ‘Eurafrica’, a term referring to a vision of France’s colonial empire refashioned for mutual gain. About this post-imperial possibility the authors zero in on its most remarkable feature, namely the promise of equal rights and freedoms, including freedom of movement, for everyone within it. In today’s migration-phobic political contexts, such a scheme sounds absurd. And indeed, as the lures of national independence proved irresistible to both French and African elites, the idea of ‘Eurafrica’ collapsed and took on merely ritualistic forms.
Utterly different in motivation and viability was what the authors call ‘Afroasia’. Emerging in mid-20th century Africa, Asia and Latin America, this project aimed not to perpetuate colonialism, but to repudiate it. Social movements, intellectuals and political leaders worked to forge transnational alliances to end injustice, armed intervention and exploitation in the name of post-colonial Western hegemony. Predictably, the USA and other Western powers saw such geo-politics as the work of dangerous upstarts and promptly applied forceful financial, philanthropic, diplomatic and military countermeasures. The book provides a succinct account of these largely unrealized Afro-Asian ambitions to join forces horizontally and 'from below'. Unmentioned are emerging cases of sub-imperialism exercised vertically by some erstwhile colonies, such as India. Also neglected are subtler forms of overrule, such as the “global assemblages” and “denationalised state agendas” which the political economist Saskia Sassen uses to analyse how centralizing power works without a formal apparatus of empire. Such systems largely nullify many post-imperial possibilities of ‘Afroasia’. Yet the authors see that anti-hegemonic initiatives, in contrast to the gimmicky, unsustainable ‘Eurafrica’, as not necessarily destined for the dustbin of history.
Most instructive for me are the book’s two extensive chapters on ‘Eurasia’ a term Russian exiles in the 1920s and 1930s used to describe a vision reflecting Slavophile and ‘Orientalist’ thinking. One chapter discusses how, after the 1917 revolution, intellectuals worked to promote Eurasianism, a neo-imperial notion opposed both to the Soviet Union and to a materialist, decadent Europe. A second chapter examines Eurasianism as a leitmotif in a 21st century Russian efforts to revive and assert cultural and political power. Its chief proponent is Vladimir Putin, who relishes opportunities to bloviate about the empire's past and his wish to Make Russia Great Again. Sound familiar? It is now apparent that Western strategists have largely ignored, or at least discounted, the Russian leadership’s intense wish to repudiate Western mores and to resurrect a multi-cultural but Russian-led imperium.
Trial balloons about ideal futures of countries or breakaway republics routinely get launched and routinely fall to earth. Yet proposals of far wider scope, embracing multiple countries and whole continents, used to draw a lot of attention and raise expectations. Even today, among leaders in a few places such as Moscow and Istanbul, such grand visions get pulses racing. This book tells the story of three such ‘macro’ visions about reconfiguring and binding nation-states together in larger wholes.
Least viable among these was ‘Eurafrica’, a term referring to a vision of France’s colonial empire refashioned for mutual gain. About this post-imperial possibility the authors zero in on its most remarkable feature, namely the promise of equal rights and freedoms, including freedom of movement, for everyone within it. In today’s migration-phobic political contexts, such a scheme sounds absurd. And indeed, as the lures of national independence proved irresistible to both French and African elites, the idea of ‘Eurafrica’ collapsed and took on merely ritualistic forms.
Utterly different in motivation and viability was what the authors call ‘Afroasia’. Emerging in mid-20th century Africa, Asia and Latin America, this project aimed not to perpetuate colonialism, but to repudiate it. Social movements, intellectuals and political leaders worked to forge transnational alliances to end injustice, armed intervention and exploitation in the name of post-colonial Western hegemony. Predictably, the USA and other Western powers saw such geo-politics as the work of dangerous upstarts and promptly applied forceful financial, philanthropic, diplomatic and military countermeasures. The book provides a succinct account of these largely unrealized Afro-Asian ambitions to join forces horizontally and 'from below'. Unmentioned are emerging cases of sub-imperialism exercised vertically by some erstwhile colonies, such as India. Also neglected are subtler forms of overrule, such as the “global assemblages” and “denationalised state agendas” which the political economist Saskia Sassen uses to analyse how centralizing power works without a formal apparatus of empire. Such systems largely nullify many post-imperial possibilities of ‘Afroasia’. Yet the authors see that anti-hegemonic initiatives, in contrast to the gimmicky, unsustainable ‘Eurafrica’, as not necessarily destined for the dustbin of history.
Most instructive for me are the book’s two extensive chapters on ‘Eurasia’ a term Russian exiles in the 1920s and 1930s used to describe a vision reflecting Slavophile and ‘Orientalist’ thinking. One chapter discusses how, after the 1917 revolution, intellectuals worked to promote Eurasianism, a neo-imperial notion opposed both to the Soviet Union and to a materialist, decadent Europe. A second chapter examines Eurasianism as a leitmotif in a 21st century Russian efforts to revive and assert cultural and political power. Its chief proponent is Vladimir Putin, who relishes opportunities to bloviate about the empire's past and his wish to Make Russia Great Again. Sound familiar? It is now apparent that Western strategists have largely ignored, or at least discounted, the Russian leadership’s intense wish to repudiate Western mores and to resurrect a multi-cultural but Russian-led imperium.
March 25, 2024
4 stars
I read this for my Empire and Post-Imperialism class. I think the framework and comparison of the three transcontinental projects was fascinating. Eurasia especially is still so relevant in global politics today.
I read this for my Empire and Post-Imperialism class. I think the framework and comparison of the three transcontinental projects was fascinating. Eurasia especially is still so relevant in global politics today.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews