1968—a post-colonial phenomenon?

The most recent contributions to the historiography of May 1968 have attempted to situate the events that unfolded in France in the more general context of the “1968 years.” ¹ On the one hand, the focus has been on interpreting France’s May in a global perspective, ² in a more or less comparativist approach. On the other hand, historians have begun to show interest in what was known at the time as the “Third World,” which was officially born at the Bandung Conference, and which—in the “West”—was a politically charged term during these years. One book, The Third World in the Global 1960s, ³ classifies China’s Cultural Revolution as part of the worldwide revolt. ⁴ This same text gives a place to the Naxalites in India, the student movements in Brazil, Zimbabwe, and Congo (Zaire), and the struggles against Apartheid, arguing for their relationship with the global protests of the 1960s. ⁵ More recently, a multiauthor book endeavored to analyze the movements of the “1968 years” across all of French-speaking Africa and, more marginally, English-speaking Africa. ⁶