On the Scale of the World: The Formation of Black Anticolonial Thought

This expansive history of Black political thought shows us the origins-and the echoes-of anticolonial liberation on a global scale.

On the Scale of the World examines the reverberations of the transnational struggle for Black anticolonial liberation. Between the 1920s and 1940s, Black intellectuals established theories of colonialism and racism as world-spanning structures that must be understood, and resisted, on a global scale. In this book, Musab Younis gathers the work of writers and poets, journalists and editors, historians and political theorists whose anticolonial insights speak urgently to contemporary movements for liberation.

Bringing together literary and political texts from Black writers in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, France, the United States, and elsewhere, Younis excavates this vibrant and understudied tradition of international political thought. From the hypocrisy of French colonial assimilation to the economic crisis in West Africa and the attacks on Haiti, Liberia, and Ethiopia, On the Scale of the World shows how counternarratives of global order enabled original ways of thinking about race, nation, and empire.