Revolutionary Self-Determination? Third-Worldism, Anti-Colonialism and Ethnonationalism in Western Europe (1955-1980)

Abstract Cultural transfers between metropolitan cores and colonial peripheries, have been a constant feature of the history of modern nationalism. Anti-colonial movements also influenced to some extent the development and strategies of European national movements before 1939. After 1945, and with particular intensity following the Algerian War of Independence, claims for national self-determination from the colonial possessions of the European empires also influenced the development of regional and national movements within Western Europe. This was flanked by the adoption of Marxist-Leninist and New Left doctrines by the post-war generation leading Western European minority nationalisms. The article deals with the reformulation of national self-determination in Europe under the influence of anti-colonial thought, particularly since the adoption of the theories of “internal colonialism”, and the new dimension given to the theory of national liberation by authors such as Frantz Fanon. It also looks at the emergence of radical ethno-nationalist parties in the 1960s and their commitment to this new wave of anti-colonial self-determination. Finally, the attempts of some of these movements to articulate a transnational programme will be analysed.