[DUNIA Book Club] Review of Vijay Prashad’s The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World: What If the "Third World" Was Never About Being Third-Class, but About Imagining a Third Path?

By Goeun Jo (Translator, Administrative Specialist)

One way to understand who I am is to understand my past. That is why amnesia is so often portrayed in literature as the loss of one's identity. In this sense, The Darker Nations is a book that explores what the Third World was, more precisely, what it aspired to become, through the history of the post-Second World War era. Vijay Prashad begins by emphasizing that the Third World was not merely a geographical region or a collection of countries, but a project. It was a project through which newly decolonized nations across Asia, Africa, and Latin America sought to build new societies, each guided by its own political vision and historical aspirations. Prashad traces both the ideals and the realities of this project by focusing not only on the political leaders who championed it, but also on the lives and labor of the diverse social classes that either supported or challenged it.

From the 1940s through the 1990s, the peoples of the Third World sought to build new nation-states capable of reshaping the global order. Their project emerged during the Cold War, when the world was divided between the capitalist bloc led by Europe and the United States(the First World) and the socialist bloc led by the Soviet Union(the Second World). Rather than aligning themselves with either side, newly independent countries attempted to forge their own political solidarity in pursuit of a more just international order that could serve as an alternative to the imperialism that had dominated them. The French intellectual Alfred Sauvy, who first coined the term "Third World," hoped that, just as the Third Estate had transformed France during the French Revolution, anti-colonial movements led by newly independent nations, including India's struggle for independence, would create a new international order. While those countries themselves were never particularly attached to the label, nations across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, including India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Ghana, found unity not in the name itself but through collective action. By resisting the enduring legacies of imperialism, supporting one another through anti-colonial struggles, and earning political legitimacy together, they gradually became a political force bound by a shared identity.

The Immediate Challenges of the Third World Project

Prashad structures this journey in three parts: Quest, Pitfalls, and Assassination. The first section, Quest, follows the efforts of Third World countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, through the early 1960s as they sought to establish independent political systems. How does a country rebuild itself after existing merely as a colony serving European powers?

Three questions from this section struck me in particular:

1) How could newly independent nations secure an autonomous place in the international order without being swept into Cold War rivalry?

2) How could they transform colonial economies that had been left with little more than low-value primary industries despite their vast territories and populations?

3) And how could they cultivate national cultures capable of serving as the spiritual foundation of independent states in a world still shaped by the Enlightenment belief that Western culture was inherently superior and more "advanced"?

The answer to the first question emerged in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. Representatives from twenty-nine newly independent nations gathered at the Asian–African Conference and rejected both the arms race and the expansion of predatory capital. Instead, they declared a distinct Third World vision grounded in peaceful coexistence and economic cooperation. They also responded to the cultural and racial humiliation imposed by imperial powers by advocating cultural exchange, forging a powerful sense of emotional solidarity among postcolonial nations.

On the economic front, Prashad turns to debates that unfolded in Buenos Aires, Argentina. One proposal was to protect domestic industries through tariffs while establishing a Third World trade organization capable of regulating the prices of primary commodities exported by developing countries. The aim was clear: by acting collectively, Third World nations could reshape the structure of global trade, resist imperial exploitation, and pursue economic development on their own terms. The book's discussion of culture focuses on intellectuals in Tehran, Iran, who sought a path beyond cultural imperialism without retreating into an idealized medieval past in the name of preserving national tradition. Their vision embraced pluralism that recognized ethnic and cultural diversity, democracy built upon autonomous communities, and a rational commitment to literacy, science, and technological education.

Reading this section reminded me of The Genealogy of Patriotism by Sheila Miyoshi Jager, a book I translated into Korean. Jager likewise examines the nation-building project in Korea around the time of liberation, exploring the narratives and political imagery that Korean leaders sought to construct. Using gender as her primary analytical framework, Jager argues that, in the case of Park Chung-hee, the country's chronic problems were framed as stemming from two forms of flawed masculinity: the weak and overly intellectual masculinity associated with the Confucian yangban elite of the Joseon Dynasty, and the lazy, incompetent masculinity attributed to ordinary people, particularly peasants. Park, by contrast, cast himself in the image of Admiral Yi Sun-sin — a decisive and capable military hero — and sought to remake South Korea according to that ideal through projects such as the Saemaul (New Village) Movement. Yet despite presenting himself as the father of the nation, Park's government failed to guarantee the political and economic rights of its citizens.

The Political and Economic Crisis of the Third World Project

The second part of The Darker Nations, titled Pitfalls, unfolds as a sobering account of familiar internal contradictions. The ruling elites of many Third World countries, who had initially pursued national independence and development with the support of workers and peasants, gradually abandoned the political and economic needs of their own people in favor of bureaucracy and authoritarian rule. Popular demands for democracy and justice were suppressed, paving the way for military coups and military governments. From the 1970s onward, as left-wing movements declined and conservative elites gained influence, many Third World countries including Indonesia and India embraced forms of conservative nationalism rooted in religion, ethnic identity, and social hierarchy. At the same time, territorial disputes intensified nationalist sentiment in both China and India. Across Latin America and the Middle East, governments once again surrendered control over their natural resources and labor in order to attract capital from the First World.

The third part, Assassination, turns to the 1980s, when transnational finance capital, what Prashad describes as "IMF-style globalization", began penetrating Third World economies on an unprecedented scale. Conservative elites within these countries abandoned the earlier goal of building self-reliant, democratic nations and instead aligned themselves with the interests of landlords and capitalists. As a result, Third World economies became increasingly dependent on the First World once again, while the lives of ordinary people deteriorated. Following the oil crises of the 1970s, countries such as Peru, Jamaica, and Sudan accepted IMF structural adjustment loans. In exchange, they were required to overhaul their economies through low-wage labor, deregulation, and privatization, effectively restoring an exploitative economic order in which multinational corporations could acquire Third World resources and products at minimal cost and with few protections.

By the end of the first part, it becomes clear that the "Third World" was never simply a discriminatory label imposed on former colonies. It represented a genuine political alliance built on shared agendas and active cooperation among newly independent nations. The second and third parts, however, remind us that building a new nation does not mean everyone within that nation shares the same interests. This, of course, is a story that feels familiar in Korea as well. Park Chung-hee's economic development strategy, promoted in the name of strengthening the nation, rested on the low wages of male industrial workers, the even lower wages of female workers, unpaid domestic labor performed by women, and agricultural policies that kept grain prices artificially low in order to sustain cheap labor. Popular resistance was met with military dictatorship and state violence. Later, even the middle class, which had managed to share in a small portion of the country's economic growth, was devastated by the IMF-led restructuring that followed the Asian Financial Crisis. In the end, the greatest rewards of Korea's economic development did not flow to its citizens as a whole, but to a small ruling elite whose interests had become increasingly aligned with First World capital.

A Past That Illuminates an Inescapable Present

The book's Korean translator, Sohyun Park, observes that The Darker Nations is also the story of how the dream of a new society gradually collapsed under the weight of internal contradictions and external pressures. I found myself wanting to turn away from that painful story as I reached the middle of the second part. Yet history, as the story of a society that continues to exist across generations, has one defining characteristic: even after failure, people do not disappear. They continue living in the very place where that failure occurred. Whether the world is shaken by war, a nuclear disaster, or a pandemic, there is no way to erase what has happened and begin again with a clean slate. People must carry on amid the ruins, bearing the scars left by history while searching for ways to rebuild the societies they inhabit.

For that reason, even after witnessing the long history of failure described in this book, we should remember that people across Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, Cuba, and every other place featured in its pages are still struggling today to reclaim political rights, economic justice, and peace. The fact that we cannot escape the world we live in compels us to confront reality and, somehow, to continue searching for hope within it. If we are to understand ourselves today, and the Third World that still surrounds us, we cannot afford to forget the past that Prashad asks us to remember: the time when people dared to imagine that another world was possible and worked together to build it.

The second half of the DUNIA Book Club begins on July 28.

Join us as we read books that explore the many faces of Asia, exchange ideas with fellow readers, and meet people who have come to care about the region through different journeys and experiences. We look forward to welcoming you.

Goeun Jo has translated numerous works on feminism and queer theory and currently works as a certified translation and administrative specialist.