Abstract
In recent years, scholars have benefited from a number of works detailing the interconnectedness of protest movements, decolonization, and national liberation struggles around the world during the Global 1960s. Decolonizing 1968 is a welcome addition to this growing canon. In it, Burleigh Hendrickson argues that student militancy at Francophone universities in three cities on two continents – Paris, Dakar, and Tunis – within three months of one another in 1968 represented not just a case of transnational activism but a postcolonial moment in history as well. The structures of French-style universities, the relationships forged by students and professors travelling to and from France and their respective homelands, and the failure of postcolonial governments and university administrations to adapt and change combined to create almost simultaneous moments of upheaval in France, Senegal, and Tunisia in 1968.
Far from being simply influenced in derivative fashion by what was occurring in Paris in that fateful year, student militancy in Dakar and Tunis in 1968 constituted a site of rebellion in each city independent of yet integrally linked to past and present realities forged by French colonialism and the educational system it imposed throughout its empire. Hendrickson therefore seeks to decolonize the study of 1968 so that ‘“1968” henceforth [will] come to englobe action beyond the dominant French case’ (p. 5) – what he calls a ‘global and postcolonial moment of contestation’ (p. 10) – and allow us to understand things such as the vicissitudes of the 2011 Arab Spring that began in Tunisia as springing from more distant origins than merely the frustrations of the Arab public in the new millennium.
Decolonizing 1968 approaches its topic both transnationally and comparatively (p. 8). To accomplish this, the author delves deeply into what happened in each of the three cities, noting how ‘[i]nstitutions rooted in imperial projects, especially the French university system, shaped postcolonial protest and linked activists across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East’ (p. 9). In this regard, Hendrickson argues that colonization, decolonization, and the reality of the postcolonial moment in France, Senegal, and Tunisia were key ingredients in what transpired in each of those countries in 1968.
The book details the issues and actors central to the 1968 experience in each city. Of vital importance in this regard was the constant flow of people and ideas between the former metropole in Paris and the universities in Dakar and Tunis. Beyond that, international currents also affected student activism in the cities under study, notably opposition to the American war in Vietnam. Hendrickson also points out how the importance assigned to universities as factories that would produce the future leaders of independent Senegal and Tunisia made them key sites for rising popular discontent with the heavy-handed paternalism and authoritarianism of the postcolonial regimes in those countries.
Decolonizing 1968 skillfully analyses both what occurred in each of the three cities in 1968 by devoting a chapter to each both during and after that fateful year. In Tunis, the ‘Ben Jennet Affair’ was a key touchstone in the student revolt that broke out, which so rattled the government of the ‘Supreme Combatant,’ Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba. In Paris, Hendrickson notes how the lingering ghost of France's imperial past in Vietnam and Algeria and the presence of immigrants from its former colonies factored into the famous events of May 1968 in the City of Light. Dakar, where what happened was called ‘the “other” May ‘68,’ saw student frustrations widen into the expression of grievances against the ‘incomplete independence’ brought to Senegal by the government of the country's first postcolonial leader, President Léopold Sédar Senghor.
Thereafter, the book traces the longer-term impact of those moments of activism as it moves the analysis into the post-1968 years with a chapter examining each country. For example, a new period of student revolt broke out in Tunisia in 1972, and the country also experienced worker strikes and protests in 1978. Post-1968 Paris witnessed growing activism among postcolonial immigrants as well as action on behalf of impoverished and marginalized immigrant communities in France by French activists. Finally, post-1968 Senegal saw renewed student protest in the 1970s, including demonstrations over the 1971 visit of French President Georges Pompidou and the mysterious 1973 death of student activist Omar Blondin Diop.
Combined with the study of published material, Hendrickson's thorough research took him to archives in Senegal, France, and Tunisia. A particularly welcome feature of Decolonizing 1968 is Hendrickson's highlighting of the subaltern voices from the Global South that he has gathered from his sources. Another positive feature is the attention paid to pro-Palestinian student activism in Francophone universities, which will add to the growing corpus of literature focusing on this dimension of the Global 1960s (e.g., Sorcha Thomson and Pelle Valentin Olsen's edited volume Palestine in the World: International Solidarity with the Palestinian Liberation Movement).
Decolonizing 1968 goes far in centring colonization and decolonization as key ingredients in the myriad experiences that make up the Global 1960s, and makes a welcome addition to the fields of history, political science, and postcolonial theory.