A Genealogy of Decolonizing Resistance: Historical Waves of Repertoires, their Undercurrents and Exceptions

Like colonization, decolonization has shifted over its more than 500 years of history. Our paper is identifying some key shifts of both colonization and decolonization. The paper assumes that colonialism is a very real contemporary world order reality, not a historical period we “progressed” from. While dealing with shifting faces of the systemic extraction of “other” peoples’ resources, decolonization has undergone its own shifts, guided by counter-ideological and pragmatic experimentations with resistance. From the early 16 th century, we find scattered, practical and, over time, occasionally more organized resistance, primarily through (1) escape from slavery and colonial centers to remote margins, establishing local, self-governed communities as zones of liberation (“maroon” communities) (studied in a separate paper, Vinthagen and Chabot 2024), and, (2) particularly among Western educated “natives,” we find low-key, small-scale, reform- oriented, often hidden, intellectual dissidence among relatively free, yet colonized groups, forming “native” organizations, literary circles, professional associations, etc. Over time, this prepared a way for two major waves of anticolonial struggles that spanned a period of 200 years, from the 18 th century. Both of these waves focused on the takeover of state power via liberation armies and national mobilizations, firstly (1) by new generations of settler elites born in the colonies (creating new states throughout the Americas in the end of the 18 th and beginning of the 19 th century), and later on, (2) a similar anticolonial strategy by popular, national liberation movements by “native” people themselves (creating new states all over the colonized world, primarily in Africa and Asia, during the 20 th century). However, due to the persistence of colonialism, these “postcolonial” states were trapped in a world order that maintained a system of exploitation (dressed up in new forms and labels, such as “modernism” and “development”). This reality of “neocolonialism” gave birth to a third and still ongoing wave of anticolonialism of (3) transversal networks of local communities aiming to delink as much as possible from colonialism (including their “postcolonial” governments). Our main argument is that contemporary decolonizing resistance is like before primarily led by younger generations based in the “Global South” and draws from all of these historical experiences, while the difference today is a focus on community autonomy and networks beyond the nation state and capitalism.