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‘The Dark Millions in the Colonies are Unavenged’: Anti-Fascism and Anti-Imperialism in the 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2016

TOM BUCHANAN Open the ORCID record for TOM BUCHANAN [Opens in a new window]
TOM BUCHANAN*
Affiliation:
Oxford University Department for Continuing Education, Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford, OX1 2JA, United Kingdom; tom.buchanan@conted.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

The quotation in this title expresses a dilemma, as the ‘dark millions’ were likely to remain ‘unavenged’ so long as authors were asked to take sides on the Spanish Civil War rather than colonial oppression. Indeed, anti-fascism might well be thought of as, in a sense, antithetical to anti-imperialism. This article explores the relationship between anti-fascism and anti-imperialism, focusing on Britain and France. The first part looks at anti-imperialism in the era of the Popular Front; the second looks at how the tensions between anti-fascism and anti-imperialism were played out in the case of the major conflicts of the later 1930s in Abyssinia, Spain and China; the third discusses the imperialist assumptions of many anti-fascists. The article concludes by looking at the early phase of the Second World War.

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Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 25 , Special Issue 4: Transnational Anti-Fascism: Agents, Networks, Circulations , November 2016 , pp. 645 - 665
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

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