“No Colonial Baggage”
Imagining a Decolonised Australia‐Africa Relations
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20596244 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Muhammad Dan Suleiman (0000-0002-7664-844X, Curtin University, corresponding author), Christopher Isike (0000-0002-5528-8078, University of Pretoria), David Mickler (0000-0003-1482-9226, Curtin University) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 69 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 522-541 |
| Publication date | 2023-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Australian Journal of Politics & History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0004-9522 • E-ISSN: 1467-8497 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ajph.12948 |
| OpenAlex | W4386480515 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 27 |
As part of its strategy to win African votes for election to the UN Security Council (2008–12), Canberra sought to leverage its soft power potential by presenting Australia as having “no colonial baggage” in Africa while framing Australia as “a country from the Global North, located in the Global South,” and one that would “work with other small and middle powers.” Ultimately, the campaign was successful, including up to 50 of Africa's 54 countries voting for Australia. This paper considers this framing in the context of a shared but differentiated colonial history, including its contradictions, given that Australians fought several wars on African soil on behalf of the British Empire, supported white minority regimes and anti‐communist movements on the continent, and maintained the white Australia policy until the 1970s. The paper deploys decoloniality theory to engage Australia's lack of a neat fit within a historicised articulation of a “coloniser‐colonised” relationship between Europe and Africa. We show that, despite this lack of fit, Australia's relations with the countries of Africa reinforce long‐standing of patterns of knowledge, power, and being associated with colonialism. Accordingly, the paper makes three recommendations for cooperation and innovative thinking in foreign policy and diaspora diplomacy between Africa and a more independent and multicultural Australia based on the “equality of being.”
Colonialism · Decoloniality · Diaspora · Diplomacy · Foreign policy · Framing (construction) · Geography · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Australian History and Society · Commonwealth, Australian Politics and Federalism · Law
Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity
Are Africans in Australia a Diaspora
The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa
The Political Discourse of Anarchy
White World Order, Black Power Politics
Pedagogy or “trauma porn”? Racial literacy as a prerequisite for teaching racially dignifying content in the Australian social work context
Security, the War on Terror, and official development assistance
Early Australian–South African Connections up to the Establishment of Official Relations in 1945
Australian foreign policy
Reading and Writing International Relations
Drawing the Global Colour Line
In Apartheid’s Shadow
The empire's new clothes
Eclecticism as an Ideological Alternative
Hyper‐self‐reflexive development? Spivak on representing the Third World ‘Other’
Accumulation by Dispossession and Its Limits
The Commonwealth in the 21st Century
How Much Is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations
Australian Foreign Policy
The Curse of Berlin
Fighting for Britain
Worldmaking after Empire
Against War
Introduction
Corporate social responsibility and the reproduction of (neo)colonialism in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Blackness as Burden? The Lived Experience of Black Africans in Australia
Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |