Varieties of Decolonization: How Alliance Formation Enabled and Constrained Anticolonial Revolutionary Capacity in Vietnam and Senegal

• In Event: 50864 - Resistance and Repression

Abstract

Why did some colonies turn toward revolutionary anticolonialism and others not? Decolonization was not only about targeting colonial states but also about paramount shifts in precolonial structures and relationships negotiated between indigenous actors. I examine dynamic processes concerning the construction of indigeneity and emergent nationalisms as part of a broader scholarly conversation in explaining the historical roots of independent nation-states in Africa and Asia. In particular, this study analyzes how alliance formation across space (urban/rural) and status (elite/popular mass) can result in fundamental reconfigurations even if they do not forcibly change an existing regime. In doing so, it looks at how the mechanisms that generate revolutionary capacity among indigenous actors are enabled and constrained by shifting indigenous relationships and strategies throughout colonialism. Using a paired comparison between two former French colonies, I examine why Vietnam bridged both spatial and status divides while Senegal maintained geographic fragmentation despite forging alliances across status. This advances an analysis into varieties of decolonization that seeks to explore different historical paths, and why certain paths are not taken. I extend this paired comparison using counterfactual analysis on each case, in which a process was attempted but failed in one case but succeeded in the other. By comparing national liberation struggles in this way, I draw attention to how each case is internally differentiated and isolate out the dimensions that allow anticolonial trajectories to converge and diverge, creating legacies of paths not taken. I integrate historical ethnography using local-level archival records collected in Vietnam, Senegal, and France with structural analysis to examine the construction of anticolonialism as a dynamic and contingent processes emerging across indigenous, colonial, and postcolonial entanglements.

Author

• Austin Hoang-Nam Vo, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill