Summary of Vijay Prashad's The Darker Nations

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The French were also responsible for the second betrayal, when they sent their forces to suppress the Vietnamese, West Indians, and Africans who had once been their colonial subjects. This happened in 1955.

#2 The French government used the same logic as John Locke to claim that only Europeans were competent users of God’s nature, and that only they could own it.

#3 In 1952, French author Albert Sauvy wrote a tripartite division of the planet into the First, Second, and Third Worlds. When Sauvy wrote in the Parisian press, most people understood what it meant to live in the First and Second Worlds.

#4 The Cold War was a fundamentally unequal conflict between the First and Second Worlds, and it was experienced that way on both sides. The USSR and the United States presented each other as equal adversaries, although the former had an economic base that was far inferior to the latter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822529557

IRB Media

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Insights on Vijay Prashad's The Darker Nations

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The French were also responsible for the second betrayal, when they sent their forces to suppress the Vietnamese, West Indians, and Africans who had once been their colonial subjects. This happened in 1955.

#2

The French government used the same logic as John Locke to claim that only Europeans were competent users of God’s nature, and that only they could own it.

#3

In 1952, French author Albert Sauvy wrote a tripartite division of the planet into the First, Second, and Third Worlds. When Sauvy wrote in the Parisian press, most people understood what it meant to live in the First and Second Worlds.

#4

The Cold War was a fundamentally unequal conflict between the First and Second Worlds, and it was experienced that way on both sides. The USSR and the United States presented each other as equal adversaries, although the former had an economic base that was far inferior to the latter.

#5

The First World saw the colonies as poor, overly fecund, and profligate. Images of poverty in the formerly colonized world flooded the magazines and newspapers of the First World, and they were used to justify the lack of aid given to these countries.

#6

The First World saw the Second World as prey that could be exploited. The anticolonial movements that attained political independence had a strong attraction to egalitarianism, which was something the First World could offer.

#7

The term Third World was coined at the founding conferences of the United Nations and UNESCO, where the delegates from the Third World held their own. While there has been much-deserved attention to the role of Eleanor Roosevelt for the drafting of the human rights agenda at the San Francisco meeting, the Latin American delegates were crucial in shaping it.

#8

The term Third World was coined by Sauvy to describe the political platform being constructed by the new nations in Africa and Asia. It was adopted by Nehru, the prime minister of India, in 1958, who did not like the idea of force because it was measured by armed strength.

#9

The Third World was a term created by the anticolonial nationalist movement, and it was used to describe the colonies that had been taken away from their nations. It was an act of artifice for a global social movement that had only a short history behind it.

#10

The term Third World was used by leaders of the main social tendencies against colonialism to define themselves. They did not reject the term, only the dangerous camps it represented. They referred to themselves as the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77, or else.

#11

The texts produced by the political project of the Third World are often misleading.