Explaining geopolitical inventiveness: Late colonialism, decolonization, and the Cold War (1945–1970)
Journal: Social Science History
Year: 2025

Abstract This article tries to explain the flourishing of geopolitical alternatives to the nation-state form and foreign policies organized around giant militarized power blocs during the two decades after World War II. The first section presents these new approaches to organizing the world. The first set of alternatives consisted of ideas and practices of the federation and the amalgamation of states into larger political units. These included Senghor’s vision of a postcolonial federation in wh