Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

The Third World today faces Europe like a colossal mass whose projects should be to try to resolve the problems to which Europe has not been able to find the answers.

– Frantz Fannon, 1961

I would add to Fannon’s words that in this pivotal point in time, the Third World-The Darker Nations not only faces Europe but it faces the West and the North with the power and hope to be able to find the solutions that not only Europe never found, but also the solutions to the many problems caused by hundreds of years of occupation and colonialism by Europe and USA.

Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New Press People’s Histories) (Vijay Prashad, The New Press) is a compilation of events seeing from the perspective of the people from the Third World. It is said that there is no history but only interpretation of events. So called historical events do not have significance on themselves, their importance and meaning is given one. Same with the authority of such historical event. For centuries history have been viewed as a the world meta-narrative through the skewed lenses of Europe and the U.S.A. at the center of humanity. The events in this book shift the narrative to the see life through experience of people of color and their fight for liberation, land, work and their right to live with dignity. This is history (the interpretation of past events) in the light of creating a new alternative world – The Third World. While a full of hopeful accounts, Prashad is no fanatic, he presents the painful reality of power struggles and distorted patriotism and the atrocities of some political regimes. 

This is a good “history” primer for people interested in issues of multiculturalism, post-colonialism and missions.