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Worldmaking After Empire

by Adom Getachew · 288 pages · ~5 hrs

HistoryPolitics & GovernmentForeign Policy

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Political theorist Adom Getachew recovers the political thought of anticolonial nationalists, showing how figures like Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, and Eric Williams sought not merely national independence but a fundamental restructuring of the international order. These leaders recognized that formal sovereignty meant little in a world economy designed to advantage former colonial powers, and they developed ambitious projects for regional federation, international economic reform, and genuine self-determination. Getachew, a professor at the University of Chicago, draws on the writings and speeches of African and Caribbean independence leaders to reconstruct their sophisticated engagement with questions of imperialism, sovereignty, and international law. She gives particular attention to the New International Economic Order, a 1970s initiative to restructure global trade that has largely been forgotten in mainstream accounts of decolonization. Her work challenges the view that postcolonial nations simply failed to develop, showing instead that they faced a world system actively hostile to their aspirations. The book speaks to contemporary debates about global inequality and the limits of national sovereignty in an interconnected world. For readers interested in postcolonial history, political theory, or the intellectual traditions of the Global South, Getachew provides rigorous analysis of thinkers too often reduced to footnotes in Western-centered narratives.

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