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Du Bois, Dark Princess, and the Afro-Asian International

Du Bois, Dark Princess, and the Afro-Asian International positions 11:1 Spring 2003 W. E. B. Du Bois’s lifelong advocacy for the liberation and independence of Asian countries is both the least appreciated aspect of his political career and the one perhaps most central to its leftist trajectory. Between his support for Japan in its 1904 war with Russia and his second and final trip to Maoist China in 1959, Asia was for Du Bois a literal and figurative site of his intellectual evolution from “fabian socialist” (Adolph Reed) to revolutionary Marxist.1 Asia was the twin pole of Du Bois’s black intellectual world: after 1900, he imagined the U.S. “color line” as the “world color line,” extending into China, Japan, and India, and he considered Pan-Africanism and PanAsianism as mutually constituting global struggles. Du Bois’s attention to and support for radical Indian political movements near the turn of the century was likewise his first serious intellectual identification with Marxian politics. Thus it is not surprising that during and after World War I, Du Bois found himself in the midst of a national, and international, debate over the relationship of Asia and Asian national movements to the West, including Africa. Indeed by 1921 Du Bois had become the http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions asia critique Duke University Press

Du Bois, Dark Princess, and the Afro-Asian International

Mullen, Bill V.
positions asia critique , Volume 11 (1) – Mar 1, 2003
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2003 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1527-8271
DOI
10.1215/10679847-11-1-217
Publisher site
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Abstract

positions 11:1 Spring 2003 W. E. B. Du Bois’s lifelong advocacy for the liberation and independence of Asian countries is both the least appreciated aspect of his political career and the one perhaps most central to its leftist trajectory. Between his support for Japan in its 1904 war with Russia and his second and final trip to Maoist China in 1959, Asia was for Du Bois a literal and figurative site of his intellectual evolution from “fabian socialist” (Adolph Reed) to revolutionary Marxist.1 Asia was the twin pole of Du Bois’s black intellectual world: after 1900, he imagined the U.S. “color line” as the “world color line,” extending into China, Japan, and India, and he considered Pan-Africanism and PanAsianism as mutually constituting global struggles. Du Bois’s attention to and support for radical Indian political movements near the turn of the century was likewise his first serious intellectual identification with Marxian politics. Thus it is not surprising that during and after World War I, Du Bois found himself in the midst of a national, and international, debate over the relationship of Asia and Asian national movements to the West, including Africa. Indeed by 1921 Du Bois had become the

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positions asia critique – Duke University Press

Published: Mar 1, 2003

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