Ghosts of Bandung: Black Power and Palestine in the Global Cold War

Ghosts of Bandung makes the major new argument that the fates of the Black and Palestinian revolutions were bound together through the rise and fall of a larger Third World political project. Drawing on English and Arabic archives, Derek A. Ide shows how Afro-Arab solidarities shaped and were shaped by geopolitics and grand strategy. Through biographical vignettes of forgotten figures and underexplored groups, Ghosts of Bandung interweaves the histories of movement dynamics and those of contending states in the global Cold War. This story binds the United States and the Middle East―Detroit and Damascus, Oakland and Algiers―while spanning the globe. From the Sino-Soviet split to the Beijing-Jakarta Axis, this global retelling of Black Power and the Palestinian Revolution engages China, Cuba, Ghana, Indonesia, Jordan, and others. At the heart of this broader project is the hitherto untold story of CONEFO, Indonesian President Sukarno’s attempt to construct an alternative United Nations–like organization in Jakarta. Centering on 1965 and the collapse of CONEFO, Ide links the fates of Black Power and the Palestinian Revolution to the fall of Third Worldism and the “Bandung Spirit.” Read more