The body of political thought produced by the struggle against colonial and imperial domination across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, from 19th-century independence movements through the 20th-century wave of decolonisation. It theorises national liberation and self-determination, the psychology and culture of colonisation and its undoing, and the predicament of the postcolonial state — often synthesising Marxism with nationalism (Ho Chi Minh, Thomas Sankara) and overlapping with Pan-Africanism and the Black radical tradition (W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X). Its strands range from armed revolutionary liberation (Patrice Lumumba) to the reconciliation politics of Nelson Mandela and the non-violent mass mobilisation of the Gandhian and broader independence movements. Distinct from generic Marxism, nationalism, or liberalism, it is unified by the experience of empire and the project of overcoming it.
Anti-Colonial Thought
The tradition of political thought generated by resistance to colonial and imperial rule, theorising national liberation, self-determination, and the recovery of dignity, sovereignty, and culture from the colonised world.
Malcolm X
1925–1965
Malcolm X was a Black nationalist who preached self-reliance, separatism, and self-defense 'by any means necessary' — until a pilgrimage to Mecca turned him toward a global human-rights vision cut short by assassination
ThinkerNelson Mandela
1918–2013
Nelson Mandela was the anti-apartheid revolutionary who emerged from 27 years in prison to lead South Africa's transition to multiracial democracy, choosing reconciliation over retribution as its first Black president
ThinkerPatrice Lumumba
1925–1961
Patrice Lumumba was the Congolese nationalist and Pan-Africanist whose murder as the Congo's first elected prime minister, with Western complicity, made him African independence's defining martyr
ThinkerThomas Sankara
1949–1987
Thomas Sankara was the revolutionary socialist leader of Burkina Faso whose four-year experiment in anti-imperialism, women's rights, and austere self-reliance earned him the title "Africa's Che Guevara"
ThinkerW.E.B. Du Bois
1868–1963
W.E.B. Du Bois was a civil rights pioneer and co-founder of the NAACP whose analysis of race, class, and democracy made him the most important African American political thinker of the 20th century
ThinkerHo Chi Minh
1890–1969
Ho Chi Minh was the communist revolutionary founder of modern Vietnam, whose synthesis of communism and nationalism defeated French colonialism and outlasted American intervention