Anti-Imperial Metropolis
Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism

This book traces the spread of a global anti-imperialism from the vantage point of Paris between the two World Wars.

Michael Goebel (Author)

9781107073050, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 August 2015

360 pages, 22 b/w illus.
23.1 x 15.7 x 2.5 cm, 0.64 kg

'In this fascinating and well-researched study of non-Western expatriates in Paris between the wars, Michael Goebel combines meticulous social history with several broad claims about the significance of this experience … Anti-Imperial Metropolis is an excellent book that builds upon the work of scholars like Jennifer Boittin and Marilyn Levine to create a masterful portrait of a unique time and place … Michael Goebel crafts an engaging portrait of a diverse group of workers and intellectuals from many different shores who developed in Paris visions of their own nations and futures that would reshape the world in the mid-twentieth century. Anyone interested in the transnational history of the modern world will find this an intriguing and at times provocative study.' Tyler Stovall , H-Soz-u-Kult

This book traces the spread of a global anti-imperialism from the vantage point of Paris between the two World Wars, where countless future leaders of Third World countries spent formative stints. Exploring the local social context in which these emergent activists moved, the study delves into assassination plots allegedly hatched by Chinese students, demonstrations by Latin American nationalists, and the everyday lives of Algerian, Senegalese and Vietnamese workers. On the basis of police reports and other primary sources, the book foregrounds the role of migration and interaction as driving forces enabling challenges to the imperial world order, weaving together the stories of peoples of three continents. Drawing on the scholarship of twentieth-century imperial, international and global history as well as migration, race and ethnicity in France, it ultimately proposes a new understanding of the roots of the Third World idea.

Introduction
1. Surveying the crossroads of the world: Paris at the intersection of global migrations
2. Building communities: everyday ethnicity and popular culture
3. Lovers, husbands, fathers, workers, and soldiers: private life and work
4. Learning and imparting lessons in anti-imperialism: students in the Latin Quarter
5. The clearinghouse of world politics: international relations and colonialism
6. Communist intermediaries: the French Left, the Comintern, and anti-imperialists
7. A revolutionary lingua franca: anti-imperialism, civic rights, and the republican ethos
8. Vernacularizing nationalism: an outcome foretold?
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Social & cultural history [HBTB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD], General & world history [HBG]