Books by R Joseph Parrott
The Tricontinental Revolution: Third World Radicalism and the Cold War, 2022
The introduction offers an overview of the Tricontinental worldview and its place in the historio... more The introduction offers an overview of the Tricontinental worldview and its place in the historiography. Secular, socialist, and militant, Tricontinentalism aimed to empower states in Latin America, Asia, and Africa to mount a revolutionary challenge against the unjust international system and Western imperialism through armed revolts and confrontational diplomacy. More closely aligned with communism, this iteration of Third Worldism broke with Bandung’s self-conscious neutralism by reuniting socialism and the global revolution for national liberation. In recognizing this shift, the introduction offers a revised framework and chronology of Third World internationalism by challenging the idea of a single, evolving movement. Instead, it argues Tricontinentalism was one component of a century-long Anti-Imperial Project that existed in the overlapping goals of diverse movements that ultimately informed the Third World challenge to the Cold War. This project encompassed an array of competing ideologies and alliances that hoped to achieve sufficient unity to advance the interests of the Global South, with Tricontinentalism emerging as the most prominent worldview in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Tricontinental Revolution: Third World Radicalism and the Cold War, 2022
The chapter positions the revolutionary African theorist Amílcar Cabral as part of a Tricontinent... more The chapter positions the revolutionary African theorist Amílcar Cabral as part of a Tricontinental generation that believed coordinated, parallel liberation struggles would erase inequalities between Global North and South. A dedicated nationalist, he viewed socialism as a toolkit for evaluating and challenging the international system. His party, the African Party for the Independence of Guiné and Cabo Verde (PAIGC), combined armed revolt and social reconstruction in an attempt to erase the economic inequalities and racism central to Euro-American imperialism. As the PAIGC became enmeshed in diverse solidarity networks that sustained its war, Cabral refined his ideology to better explain his party’s position at the intersection of Third World anti-imperial traditions, international socialism, and Pan-Africanism. Identarian and ideological frictions hampered the movement, but PAIGC philosophy legitimized the creation of an inclusive revolutionary coalition and proved effective at building solidarity in North and South. As a result, Cabral became a leading political theorist of revolution and anti-imperialism, placing him in the foundational canon of the Tricontinental movement.
African Islands: Leading Edges of Empire and Globalization, 2019
Peer Reviewed Articles and Projects by R Joseph Parrott
Modern American History, May 25, 2018
In the early 1970s, the African American divestment and boycott campaign against Gulf Oil's opera... more In the early 1970s, the African American divestment and boycott campaign against Gulf Oil's operations in colonial Angola bridged the gap between Black Power and anti-apartheid, two movements generally viewed separately. The success of the Boston-based activist couple Randall and Brenda Robinson in educating and mobilizing African Americans against investment in colonialismfirst with the Southern Africa Relief Fund (SARF) and later with the Pan-African Liberation Committee (PALC)-reveals how a leftist anti-imperial ideology linked the domestic concerns of black Americans with African revolutions. At the same time, the Gulf campaign's participatory tactics, moral appeals, and critique of the global economic system proved attractive beyond radical Black Power advocates, allowing the PALC to cultivate relationships with African American politicians and build alliances across racial divides. Randall Robinson later replicated this organizing model as the founding director of TransAfrica, which became the most prominent African American organization opposing apartheid in the 1980s. In Harvard Yard, 500 black crosses stood stark against the white snow. Professors hurrying to class on the cold March day of 1972 could have been forgiven for assuming this was another protest against the Vietnam War, but most students knew the demonstration was different. The cross in John Harvard's hand did not represent a fallen American or Vietnamese soldier but untold numbers of dead Angolan revolutionaries, killed by Portuguese colonialists armed with Western weapons (Figure 1). 1 Fifty African Americans associated with the Boston-area Pan-African Liberation Committee (PALC) and the Harvard-Radcliffe Association of African and Afro-American Students (Afro) had placed them in neat rows to protest Harvard's refusal to sell its shares of Gulf Oil, the single largest foreign business operating in Portugal's colony. The Gulf divestment and boycott campaign that grew from this Harvard demonstration stood out as an early manifestation of the tactics that would become pivotal to the antiapartheid movement. 2 Sponsored by the PALC and its charismatic leader Randall Robinson, this Boston initiative took shape within a wider movement that helped cultivate a new wave of leftist black internationalism. In the 1970s, as African Americans sought to build political I would like to thank all those who agreed to speak with me for this article, the participants of the 2014 International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War for their comments on an early draft, Paul Adler, and the staffs at the African Activist Archive Project at Michigan State University, WGBH Media Library and Archives, and the Harvard University Archives. I am especially indebted to Brenda Randolph, whose personal papers and memories relating to these events made this article possible.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
The United States never sought to build an empire in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, as di... more The United States never sought to build an empire in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, as did European nations from Britain to Portugal. However, economic, ideological, and cultural affinities gradually encouraged the development of relations with the southern third of the continent (the modern Anglophone nations of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, the former Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola, and a number of smaller states). With official ties limited for decades, missionaries and business concerns built a small but influential American presence mostly in the growing European settler states. This state of affairs made the United State an important trading partner during the 20th century, but it also reinforced the idea of a white Christian civilizing mission as justification for the domination of black peoples. The United States served as a comparison point for the construction of legal systems of racial segregation in southern Africa, even as it became more...
Race and Class 57, no 1 (July 2015)
While the anti-apartheid movement has emerged as the premier illustration of transnational solida... more While the anti-apartheid movement has emerged as the premier illustration of transnational solidarity activism, little attention has been paid to the earlier success of the Portuguese African liberation movements. During the 1970s, parties like Mozambique’s FRELIMO established global alliance networks that helped sell their revolutions to ambivalent western societies. In the African American community, the construction of these transnational linkages was aided tremendously by radical filmmaking in the form of American Robert Van Lierop’s A Luta Continua. This transnational collaboration created a film that captured the universal and practical elements of FRELIMO ideology in a way that became a model for local organising, particularly in the African American community. Activists concerned about solidarity with southern Africa, communal control of resources and racial equality all used Van Lierop’s interpretation of FRELIMO’s socialism in A Luta Continua to construct grassroots movements that would spread nationally in the 1970s and lay the groundwork for more familiar anti-apartheid activism in the next decade.
Digital History and Short Pieces by R Joseph Parrott
A conversation with Dr. Joan Neuberger on the role of the United States in European decolonizatio... more A conversation with Dr. Joan Neuberger on the role of the United States in European decolonization in Asia, Africa, and Latin America after World War II.
A long review of Connie Field's documentary Have You Heard From Johannesburg (2010) exploring the... more A long review of Connie Field's documentary Have You Heard From Johannesburg (2010) exploring the medium and its relation to historical scholarship, published in the African Studies Review.
Post on the Imperial and Global Forum exploring the transnational segregationist network that lin... more Post on the Imperial and Global Forum exploring the transnational segregationist network that linked the U.S. South with Rhodesia and South Africa in the context of the tragedy in Charleston. Featured in History News Network's Top Ten Roundup for July 10th, 2015 and re-posted on Not Even Past.
Blog post profiling artist/archivist Lincoln Cushing and his website Docs Populi, which is devote... more Blog post profiling artist/archivist Lincoln Cushing and his website Docs Populi, which is devoted to preserving and making publicly available revolutionary poster art from Cuba, China, and the United States. His ongoing work cataloging the Rossman Collection at Oakland Museum will make more than 24,000 images available for research online. From Not Even Past (12 March 2015).
My interview with Dr. Joan Neuberger on Apartheid and the anti-Apartheid movement as part of the ... more My interview with Dr. Joan Neuberger on Apartheid and the anti-Apartheid movement as part of the 15 Minute History podcast, a program aimed to introduce educators and the public to historical events and figures. 18 December 2013.
Conference Presentations by R Joseph Parrott
In 1961, the Angolan revolution began a decade of war in which Portugal fought tenaciously to mai... more In 1961, the Angolan revolution began a decade of war in which Portugal fought tenaciously to maintain its African empire in this large oil-rich colony, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. That the small European nation could maintain a three front war owed much to its ties to Europe and the United States. Trade and financial agreements helped Portugal stabilize its economy as it devoted much of its public spending to the military, while illicit transfers of weapons supplied by countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization provided Lisbon with a distinct military advantage. African nationalists repeatedly highlighted the role of NATO in propping up the Portuguese regime, using the trans-Atlantic connection to portray all allied countries as complicit in Portuguese imperialism.
The paper examines the ways that an American solidarity movement with Portuguese African liberation developed by using the framing device of the NATO alliance. They used the issue to co-opt a growing domestic frustration with Vietnam and other interventions in the developing world, channeling popular anger into action and legislation against Portugal. In doing so, the nationalists and their growing number of American allies helped extend popular criticism of the Cold War beyond the fall of South Vietnam, making NATO and other military alliances permanent symbols of American militarism and international overreach. That a number of constituencies – religious, radical, and African American – viewed classical colonialism as unquestionably immoral and regressive helped mainstream the heretofore radical Third World criticisms of the Cold War linked to the anti-Portuguese cause, contributing to new proactive domestic constraints on American military power.
Between 1961 and 1975, Portuguese Africa emerged as a heated intersection of two of the twentieth... more Between 1961 and 1975, Portuguese Africa emerged as a heated intersection of two of the twentieth century’s most important events – the Cold War and decolonization. The nationalist campaigns to oust the last European empire garnered global attention, but they have been largely absent from the international historiography. Scholars focused overwhelmingly on 1950s anti-colonialism, solidarity with South Africa, and post-independence intervention have marginalized the important transnational - and transitional – movement that developed in support of the wars for independence. At the time, the liberation struggles in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau represented the frontlines in the battle for racial and economic egalitarianism. Socialist revolutionaries offered flexible, universal models of communal self-determination that challenged blind acceptance of stifling Cold War iterations of liberal capitalism. Under the direct influence of these Lusophone militants, western activists merged local struggles with African models in an effort to combat shared problems of economic exploitation, racial inequality, and social injustice. The nationalist victories in 1975 and the failure of western intervention in Angola legitimized this leftist ideology and helped reinforce popular critiques of the democratic, capitalist alliance in the final decade of the Cold War.
This paper will focus specifically on the importance of the Portuguese African revolutions to the African American community in Boston. Leaders like FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) President Eduardo Mondlane and PAIGC (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) representative Gil Fernandes developed strong ties with black Americans, which they used to construct a network of sympathetic activists throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The contours of this relationship are especially clear in the city of Boston, where WGBH recorded Lusophone nationalist appeals and neighborhood reformulations of radical revolutionary goals. Using this virtually untapped resource, primary documents from archives and personal collections, and interviews with former supporters, I reconstruct the transnational solidarity movement in the birthplace of the American Revolution. The narrative reveals not only the innovative diplomacy of these stateless African actors, but the way African Americans actively incorporated foreign ideologies into their attempts to transform American society and foreign policy.
The Boston case study is especially valuable, as the city served as both headquarters and hub for larger national campaigns. Groups like Randall Robinson’s Pan-African Liberation Committee organized local disinvestment protests against Gulf Oil, the Portuguese empire’s single largest corporate sponsor, before taking the effort nationwide. The resulting boycott sought to isolate Portugal, while also providing participants with a concrete representation of transnational economic exploitation. The Boston chapter of the African Liberation Support Committee worked in conjunction with the PALC to push this message, holding informational sessions and coordinating solidarity rallies in the city and Washington, D.C. Throughout, Portuguese African revolutionaries provided guidance in the form of personal appearances and collaborative media projects. This network of activists and nationalists produced a mass solidarity movement, which united the African American community and demanded the attention of influential politicians. It laid the groundwork for the high tide of anti-Apartheid activism in the next decade along with wider domestic criticism of Cold War adventurism in places like Nicaragua. As such, my paper recovers the transnational exchange that sustained activist anti-colonial sentiment after its supposed peak in the 1950s. It also illustrates the direct, micro influence of Portuguese African struggles on American revolutionary thought, demonstrating the ways that individuals and ideas were able to bridge the ideological divide of the Cold War.
The historiography of European decolonization and anti-colonialism generally divides itself along... more The historiography of European decolonization and anti-colonialism generally divides itself along national lines. Historians have documented the growth of anti-colonial protest in Britain and France and the impact of this activism on official policy. But what of states like Portugal that lacked domestic freedom itself? Though historians have been slow to identify it, just such a movement took shape in the 1960s and 1970s as the colonial wars raged in Africa. It operated not on the national or imperial level, but in the realm of the transnational, where Lusophone Africans mobilized Europeans in countries allied with the metropolis. Groups of activists in Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom pushed their governments to adopt an array of policies that helped isolate the Lisbon regime and strengthen the colonial movements.
My paper examines the growth and activities of this trans-national movement as it developed in Europe, focusing on activities in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It recovers the specific national campaigns of a handful of key organizations, as well as the ways they cooperated across borders to support freedom in Africa. Importantly, African nationalists were central to this European activism, providing guidance through personal diplomacy and conferences. This intercontinental coalition helped empower the liberation groups and revitalized European social engagement with questions of African freedom. The result was a small contribution to independence in the countries of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau and a new popular momentum, which would inform the more famous Anti-Apartheid struggle of the 1980s.
The paper examines the transnational influence of Lusophone liberation, with a special emphasis o... more The paper examines the transnational influence of Lusophone liberation, with a special emphasis on the United States. Key groups like the PAIGC and FRELIMO served as important exemplars of an assertive African identity. Both Amilcar cabral and Eduardo Mondlane – as well as the competing Angolan groups – cultivated such images in order to develop transnational support for their movements. During the 1960s and 1970s, the practical ideologies of these nationalists directly informed the agendas and structures of revolutionary groups like the Youth Organized for Black Unity and the Black Panthers. News reports and films from Portuguese Africa provided tangible evidence supporting more theoretical ideas of black consciousness and Pan-Africanism, effectively providing a kind of blueprint for black nationalist organizing in the 1970s.
The revolutionary leader Amílcar Cabral founded the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e ... more The revolutionary leader Amílcar Cabral founded the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) with the intention of liberating both his traditional home Cabo Verde and the mainland colony of Guinea-Bissau (where he was born) in order to create a single, unified nation. This ambitious project relied heavily on the interconnected but unequal relationship that imperial Portugal created between the two colonies. Cabo Verde served historically as a place of assimilation, creating a class of Europeanized Africans who filled leadership roles in the less thoroughly colonized mainland. Cabral’s theories as well as his political policies sought to make sense of this uneven relationship within the context of postcolonial socialist nationalism. Through an examination of his theoretical writings (notably his concept of the “return to the source” and the education of the masses), political communiques, and available papers, the article will demonstrate that Cabral drew heavily on his Cabo Verdean background to make sense of the African revolutionary project. This theory gained greater intricacy than the philosophies of other Lusophone movements because of the need to justify the continued relationship between the African mainland and the Europeanized island culture after the collapse of Lisbon’s empire. In working to bridge this gap, Cabral articulated the vision of a universal socialist state that underpinned the establishment of a revolutionary Lusophone internationalism without solving the historic divides between Cabo Verde and Guinea-Bissau.
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Books by R Joseph Parrott
Peer Reviewed Articles and Projects by R Joseph Parrott
Digital History and Short Pieces by R Joseph Parrott
Conference Presentations by R Joseph Parrott
The paper examines the ways that an American solidarity movement with Portuguese African liberation developed by using the framing device of the NATO alliance. They used the issue to co-opt a growing domestic frustration with Vietnam and other interventions in the developing world, channeling popular anger into action and legislation against Portugal. In doing so, the nationalists and their growing number of American allies helped extend popular criticism of the Cold War beyond the fall of South Vietnam, making NATO and other military alliances permanent symbols of American militarism and international overreach. That a number of constituencies – religious, radical, and African American – viewed classical colonialism as unquestionably immoral and regressive helped mainstream the heretofore radical Third World criticisms of the Cold War linked to the anti-Portuguese cause, contributing to new proactive domestic constraints on American military power.
This paper will focus specifically on the importance of the Portuguese African revolutions to the African American community in Boston. Leaders like FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) President Eduardo Mondlane and PAIGC (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) representative Gil Fernandes developed strong ties with black Americans, which they used to construct a network of sympathetic activists throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The contours of this relationship are especially clear in the city of Boston, where WGBH recorded Lusophone nationalist appeals and neighborhood reformulations of radical revolutionary goals. Using this virtually untapped resource, primary documents from archives and personal collections, and interviews with former supporters, I reconstruct the transnational solidarity movement in the birthplace of the American Revolution. The narrative reveals not only the innovative diplomacy of these stateless African actors, but the way African Americans actively incorporated foreign ideologies into their attempts to transform American society and foreign policy.
The Boston case study is especially valuable, as the city served as both headquarters and hub for larger national campaigns. Groups like Randall Robinson’s Pan-African Liberation Committee organized local disinvestment protests against Gulf Oil, the Portuguese empire’s single largest corporate sponsor, before taking the effort nationwide. The resulting boycott sought to isolate Portugal, while also providing participants with a concrete representation of transnational economic exploitation. The Boston chapter of the African Liberation Support Committee worked in conjunction with the PALC to push this message, holding informational sessions and coordinating solidarity rallies in the city and Washington, D.C. Throughout, Portuguese African revolutionaries provided guidance in the form of personal appearances and collaborative media projects. This network of activists and nationalists produced a mass solidarity movement, which united the African American community and demanded the attention of influential politicians. It laid the groundwork for the high tide of anti-Apartheid activism in the next decade along with wider domestic criticism of Cold War adventurism in places like Nicaragua. As such, my paper recovers the transnational exchange that sustained activist anti-colonial sentiment after its supposed peak in the 1950s. It also illustrates the direct, micro influence of Portuguese African struggles on American revolutionary thought, demonstrating the ways that individuals and ideas were able to bridge the ideological divide of the Cold War.
My paper examines the growth and activities of this trans-national movement as it developed in Europe, focusing on activities in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It recovers the specific national campaigns of a handful of key organizations, as well as the ways they cooperated across borders to support freedom in Africa. Importantly, African nationalists were central to this European activism, providing guidance through personal diplomacy and conferences. This intercontinental coalition helped empower the liberation groups and revitalized European social engagement with questions of African freedom. The result was a small contribution to independence in the countries of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau and a new popular momentum, which would inform the more famous Anti-Apartheid struggle of the 1980s.
The paper examines the ways that an American solidarity movement with Portuguese African liberation developed by using the framing device of the NATO alliance. They used the issue to co-opt a growing domestic frustration with Vietnam and other interventions in the developing world, channeling popular anger into action and legislation against Portugal. In doing so, the nationalists and their growing number of American allies helped extend popular criticism of the Cold War beyond the fall of South Vietnam, making NATO and other military alliances permanent symbols of American militarism and international overreach. That a number of constituencies – religious, radical, and African American – viewed classical colonialism as unquestionably immoral and regressive helped mainstream the heretofore radical Third World criticisms of the Cold War linked to the anti-Portuguese cause, contributing to new proactive domestic constraints on American military power.
This paper will focus specifically on the importance of the Portuguese African revolutions to the African American community in Boston. Leaders like FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) President Eduardo Mondlane and PAIGC (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) representative Gil Fernandes developed strong ties with black Americans, which they used to construct a network of sympathetic activists throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The contours of this relationship are especially clear in the city of Boston, where WGBH recorded Lusophone nationalist appeals and neighborhood reformulations of radical revolutionary goals. Using this virtually untapped resource, primary documents from archives and personal collections, and interviews with former supporters, I reconstruct the transnational solidarity movement in the birthplace of the American Revolution. The narrative reveals not only the innovative diplomacy of these stateless African actors, but the way African Americans actively incorporated foreign ideologies into their attempts to transform American society and foreign policy.
The Boston case study is especially valuable, as the city served as both headquarters and hub for larger national campaigns. Groups like Randall Robinson’s Pan-African Liberation Committee organized local disinvestment protests against Gulf Oil, the Portuguese empire’s single largest corporate sponsor, before taking the effort nationwide. The resulting boycott sought to isolate Portugal, while also providing participants with a concrete representation of transnational economic exploitation. The Boston chapter of the African Liberation Support Committee worked in conjunction with the PALC to push this message, holding informational sessions and coordinating solidarity rallies in the city and Washington, D.C. Throughout, Portuguese African revolutionaries provided guidance in the form of personal appearances and collaborative media projects. This network of activists and nationalists produced a mass solidarity movement, which united the African American community and demanded the attention of influential politicians. It laid the groundwork for the high tide of anti-Apartheid activism in the next decade along with wider domestic criticism of Cold War adventurism in places like Nicaragua. As such, my paper recovers the transnational exchange that sustained activist anti-colonial sentiment after its supposed peak in the 1950s. It also illustrates the direct, micro influence of Portuguese African struggles on American revolutionary thought, demonstrating the ways that individuals and ideas were able to bridge the ideological divide of the Cold War.
My paper examines the growth and activities of this trans-national movement as it developed in Europe, focusing on activities in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It recovers the specific national campaigns of a handful of key organizations, as well as the ways they cooperated across borders to support freedom in Africa. Importantly, African nationalists were central to this European activism, providing guidance through personal diplomacy and conferences. This intercontinental coalition helped empower the liberation groups and revitalized European social engagement with questions of African freedom. The result was a small contribution to independence in the countries of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau and a new popular momentum, which would inform the more famous Anti-Apartheid struggle of the 1980s.
The Angola case demonstrates that Vietnam had already produced a sea change in American perceptions of foreign policy by 1975. In the process of rejecting the war, activists had immersed themselves in wider discussions of anti-colonialism, Third World independence, and social justice. Alongside the North Vietnamese, Angolan and other Portuguese nationalists came to represent the militarized embodiment of these global trends. Disaffected youth and liberals critical of Cold war excess flocked to support the nationalist cause. Beginning in the early 1970s, national and local organizations including the American Committee on Africa, the African Liberation Committee, and the New World Resource Center in Chicago launched public relations campaigns to connect colonialism in Africa to the horrors of the Vietnam conflict. These organizations developed linkages with the Black Power Movement and the New Left and allied with anti-War activists such as the Committee of Returned Volunteers. By the time the Portuguese Empire began to collapse, there already existed a national network opposed to the prospect of intervention in southern Africa.
In 1975, these activists found in Congress a willing cohort of liberal lawmakers swept into power by the anti-Vietnam politics of the early 1970s. Among them was Senator Dick Clark, who publicized Angola through his position as chair of the Africa Subcommittee and eventually sponsored a bill blocking covert funding. Clark and other politicians unfamiliar with the nationalist struggles depended on the knowledge of veteran activist scholars and organizers to inform their successful legislation. Equally important, nationwide demonstrations communicated to Washington the popular discontent with existing policy, working against President Ford’s search for political support on Capitol Hill. The Congressional rejection of the Angolan policy helped the pro-communist MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola) consolidate its position in spite of a South African invasion. This victory provided the resurgent Anti-apartheid movement with a sense of momentum and a model of political success. The popular-congressional coalition it produced also established a precedent against covert interventionism that continued to constrain foreign policy into the Reagan Era.