This expansive history of Black political thought shows us the
origins—and the echoes—of anticolonial liberation on a global
scale.
On the Scale of
the World examines the reverberations of anticolonial ideas that
spread across the Atlantic between the two world wars. From the 1920s
to the 1940s, Black intellectuals in Europe, Africa, and the
Caribbean established theories of colonialism and racism as
structures that must be understood, and resisted, on a global scale.
In this richly textured book, Musab Younis gathers the work of
writers and poets, journalists and editors, historians and political
theorists whose insights speak urgently to contemporary movements for
liberation.
Bringing together
literary and political texts from Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone,
France, the United States, and elsewhere, Younis excavates a vibrant
and understudied tradition of international political thought. From
the British and French colonial occupations of West Africa to the
struggles of African Americans, the hypocrisy of French promises of
'assimilation,' and the many-sided attacks on the sovereignties of
Haiti, Liberia, and Ethiopia, On the Scale of the World shows
how racialized imperialism provoked critical responses across the
interwar Black Atlantic. By transcending the boundaries of any single
imperial system, these counternarratives of global order enabled new
ways of thinking about race, nation, and empire.