What We Are Reading Today: Post-Imperial Possibilities

Author: Jane Burbank & Frederick Cooper

After the dissolution of empires, was the nation-state the only way to unite people politically, culturally, and economically?
In Post-Imperial Possibilities, historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper examine three transcontinental projects aimed at bringing together peoples of different regions to mitigate imperial legacies of inequality.
Eurasia, Eurafrica, and Afroasia — in theory — offered alternative routes out of empire. The theory of Eurasianism was developed after the collapse of imperial Russia by exiled intellectuals alienated by both Western imperialism and communism.
Eurafrica began as a design for collaborative European exploitation of Africa but was transformed in the 1940s and 1950s into a project to include France’s African territories in plans for European integration.
The Afroasian movement wanted to replace the vertical relationship of colonizer and colonized with a horizontal relationship among former colonial territories that could challenge both the communist and capitalist worlds.