Table Of ContentThe Discovery of the Third World
An innovative account of how the concept of the Third World emerged
in France from the mid-1950s through to the mid-1970s alongside a
new leftist movement. The book reveals how, in an age of Cold War,
decolonization, and development thinking, French activists rose to
prominence within the political Left, established transnational contacts,
and developed a new global consciousness. Using the Third World con-
cept to reinvigorate anticolonial solidarity, they supported the Algerian
FLN, the Cuban Revolution, and the liberation movements in Vietnam
and Portuguese Africa. Insisting on the postcolonial character of France
after the end of empire, they promoted new forms of cooperation with
developing countries and immigrant workers. Examining the work of
French leftists in publications such as Partisans, parties such as the
PSU, and associations like the Cedetim, Christoph Kalter sheds new
light on a crucial moment in France’s history, the global contexts that
prompted it, and its worldwide ramifications.
Christoph Kalter is an assistant professor of European history at the
Freie Universität Berlin.
The Discovery of the
Third World
Decolonization and the Rise of the
New Left in France, c.1950–1976
Christoph Kalter
Freie Universität Berlin
Translated by
Thomas Dunlap
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
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© Christoph Kalter 2016
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permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2016
Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Kalter, Christoph, author.
Title: The discovery of the Third World: decolonization and the
rise of the new left in France, c.1950–1976 /
Christoph Kalter (Free University Berlin); translated by Thomas Dunlap.
Other titles: Entdeckung der Dritten Welt. English
Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York,
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016016144 | ISBN 9781107074514 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: France – Relations – Developing countries. |
Developing countries – Relations – France. | New Left – France –
History – 20th century. |Radicals – France – History – 20th century. |
Decolonization – Developing countries – History – 20th century. |
Anti-imperialist movements – France – History – 20th century. |
Anti-imperialist movements – History – 20th century. | France –
Politics and government – 1945– | World politics – 1945–1989. |
BISAC: HISTORY / Europe / General.
Classification: LCC D888.F8 K3513 2016 | DDC 320.530944–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016016144
ISBN 978-1-107-07451-4 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred
to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such
Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften
International – Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and
Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen
Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society
VG WORT, and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German
Publishers & Booksellers Association).
Contents
List of Figures page vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xv
1 Introduction: From “Discovery” to Historiography 1
2 A New Concept of the World: The Third World in the
Social Sciences and Politics 34
3 Conflicts, New Diversity, and Convergence: The New
Radical Left in France 66
4 “From the Résistance to Anticolonialism”: The
Politics of Memory in the New Radical Left 104
5 “Today We Have to Learn a Lesson from Them”: The
Journal Partisans and the Opening Up to the Third World 188
6 “With Socialist Greetings”: The PSU, the Cedetim,
and the Praxis of “International Solidarity” 282
7 Conclusion: Eyes on the World 419
Appendix 435
Bibliography 441
Index 491
v
Figures
1 Partisans 1, 1961 page 203
2 Partisans 73, 1968, cover 204
3 Partisans 10, 1963 213
4 Siné, Confidences cubaines, Partisans 2, 1961, n.p. 261
5 Logo of the Tricontinental, here from Tricontinental 4/5, 1968 272
6 Gilles Aillaud, La bataille du riz, 1968 273
7 Bulletin du Cedetim 7, 1968, title page 326
8 Libération Afrique 3, 1972, p. 17 377
9 Libération Afrique 4, 1972, title page 378
vi
Preface
On July 3, 1962, Jean-Paul Margnac, ambitious hobby photographer
and sublieutenant in the French army in Algeria, left the quarters of
his unit in Bab El Oued, a popular neighborhood in Algiers. He and his
comrades had received orders to stay put; on the streets of the capital,
crowds were celebrating the end of colonial rule in exuberant sponta-
neous gatherings, and the French authorities wished to avoid anything
that might be interpreted as a provocation. Being a very curious young
man, however, Jean-Paul disobeyed these orders. Changing his uniform
for plain clothes, he sneaked outside, taking his camera and some rolls
of Ektachrome film with him. The photos he shot that day constitute
a beautiful series and a most valuable historical document, not least
because of their vivid colors that stand in impressive contrast to the far
more common black-and-white images that we have come to associate
with the Algerian War.
One of Jean-Paul’s photographs adorns the cover of this book. It shows
young men and boys piled onto a truck, waving flags as they make their
way down the broad seaside boulevard in the center of Algiers. The
truck’s bumper is marked with ALN – the Algerian Liberation Army,
the military branch of the national liberation movement FLN. When
the photo was taken, the FLN had just achieved its ultimate victory: It
was announced that day that in a referendum on Algeria’s future, no
less than 99.7 percent of voters had approved Algeria’s independence
from France, and it was this freshly acquired freedom that the men on
the truck were celebrating with their proud display of the new nation’s
flag. Prior to the referendum, the FLN had challenged French army and
police forces during eight years of protracted and extremely violent con-
flict. The Algerian War was fought simultaneously in the French colony
of Algeria and in metropolitan France, and with both sides complement-
ing their military efforts with diplomatic warfare and propaganda, it was
also waged in French and international media, in diplomatic circles, and
in the United Nations. While the French dominated the FLN militarily
vii
viii Preface
at all times, they lost the war politically, in a defeat that was comprehen-
sive, irreversible, and heavy with ramifications that extend well beyond
the summer of 1962 and Franco-Algerian history.
Among these ramifications, the rapid rise of a politicized, anticolo-
nial Third World concept in France, Western Europe, and the United
States as well as in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and in parts of the
so-called socialist bloc stands out. To be sure, the global success story
of the Third World concept cannot be traced back to French decoloni-
zation and the Francophone world alone. All over the globe, the “long
1960s” marked the heyday of Third World solidarity, and it would make
no sense to argue that France and the Algerian War were the cradle for
all forms of this worldwide trend that in reality had many sources and
faces: the Bandung conference of 1955; the emergence in 1961 of the
Non-Aligned Movement led by countries as diverse as India, Indonesia,
Egypt, Ghana, and Yugoslavia; the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and its
leaders’ attempts to export their model of guerrilla warfare throughout
Latin America; the death of Patrice Lumumba and the debates about
postcolonial development and neocolonial dependency in Africa; the
claims of Maoist China to a leadership position for the Third World; the
colonial wars in the Portuguese colonies and the fight against apartheid
in South Africa; the Black Power movement in the United States; and,
most famously, the American war in Vietnam and the worldwide oppo-
sition to it – all of these contributed to a new global consciousness that
posited a community of anticolonial and anti-imperialist activists united
under the banner of the Third World.
Not everything began with Algeria, therefore, but the Algerian War
certainly was a key moment in the rise of the new Third World cosmology
to its global prominence. And with regard to France, the war’s impact
on political forces and intellectual life, most notably on the left of the
political spectrum, can in fact hardly be overestimated. For the activists
of the emerging New Radical Left around 1960, the colonial endgame
in Algeria seemed to demonstrate, in the most tangible ways, affecting
their lives on a daily basis, that the traditional organizations of the polit-
ical Left had lost their moral compass and political legitimacy. These
new activists, just like the traditional social-democratic and communist
parties they now distanced themselves from, subscribed to the idea of
a radical, revolutionary change that would end capitalist exploitation
not only in France, but all over the world. However, according to this
New Radical Left, the future world revolution could no longer be led
by workers’ parties and trade unions in the First and Second Worlds.
Rather, peasants and guerilla fighters of the underdeveloped, colonized,
