This week marks the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference, when 29 nations from Asia and Africa gathered in Indonesia for a historic anti-colonial conference that was meant to chart a new path for developing countries amid a tide of decolonization sweeping the globe. The 1955 Bandung Conference announced the arrival on the world stage of peoples from the Global South, and it marked the birth of what would later become the Non-Aligned Movement at the height of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Key nations participating included China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Burma and Vietnam. The conference was hosted by Indonesian President Sukarno, a major anti-imperialist figure who would later be overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup.
“They all gathered together because they understood their unity was very important, not only to create a new trade and development order — that was not the only part — but also to fight for peace,” says author and journalist Vijay Prashad, director of the Tricontinental think tank. “Bandung represented hope for hundreds of millions of people around the planet in 1955.”
