European radicals and the 'Third World’: imagined solidarities and radical networks, 1958-1973

This article addresses the importance of Third Worldism/tiersmondisme as a source of inspiration for European radicals on both sides of the Iron Curtain 1958-73, focusing on the cases of France, the Netherlands and Hungary. Using both oral history and archival material, it considers the decline of domestic anti-fascist traditions as a source of revolutionary identity; the emergence of new political networks both within and outside Europe based on solidarity with 'Third World' anti-imperial movements; and the way in which the Algerian anti-colonial movement, the Cuban revolution, the Chinese cultural revolution and the struggles of Vietnam provided inspiration for, and were 'domesticated' by, European activists. Finally, the article considers the decline of Third Worldism as a source of inspiration for political practice in the early to mid-1970s.