Mittwoch, 31. Jänner 2024, 18:00
Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Seminarraum 1
Spitalgasse 2-4/Hof 1, 1090 Wien


Jodie Yuzhou Sun (Fudan University/Stanford University)

Comments by Lisa Hoppel and Immanuel Harisch (University of Vienna), Moderated by Lucile Dreidemy (University of Vienna)

Africa has become a major platform from which to analyse and understand China's growing influence in the global South. Yet, the impact of their historical relationship has been largely overlooked. Through the triangulation of the global Cold War, African history, and Chinese history, this study provides a detailed analysis of China-Africa relations in the second half of the 20th century. Examining the encounters, conflicts, and dynamics of China-Kenya/Zambia relations from the 1950s until the present, as well as the basis on which historical narratives have been constructed, the book presents two contrasting state perspectives underlining the concept of 'African agency'.

Driven by a class-based analysis of world revolution, Communist China's foreign policy did not distinguish significantly between Kenya and Zambia. Both countries sought ideological and material support from China in the years after their independence. The Kenya African National Union under both Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Moi pursued a consistently pragmatic foreign agenda. Despite political tensions and ideological rifts with China since the mid-1960s, Sino-Kenyan trade has continued to grow steadily. In contrast, China-Zambia relations under Kenneth Kaunda were cordial despite their political differences. Zambian leaders maintained a relatively high consensus that any alleged Chinese Communist threat would not be allowed to fuel power struggles within their United National Independence Party. Challenging both the widely accepted role of China-Africa's historical lineage, as well as the tendency to assume uniformity in China's relationships across the continent, the author explains the development of these relationships and sheds light on the historical underpinnings - or lack thereof - on contemporary China-Africa relations.

Jodie Yuzhou SUN (孙遇洲) is Senior Lecturer in Modern African and Global History at the Department of History, Fudan University, China and a Research Fellow of the International Studies Group, University of the Free State, South Africa. She holds an MSc in African Studies and a DPhil in History from the University of Oxford. Her research interests are modern African history, Cold War history and China-Africa relations. As a Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center for African Studies in 2023-24, she will conduct research on ‘Third World Crossings’: Afro-Asian Networks, Decolonisation and the Cold War.

Lisa Hoppel is a PhD candidate (until recently DOC-fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, now University Assistant PreDoc) at the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna. In her project, she examines Afro-Asian networks and their significance for pan-African institutionalization and visions of postcolonial statehood during the 1950s and 1960s. Hoppel published on pan-Africanism, African conferences, and inter-African politics during decolonization. In 2021, her book about pan-Africanism between nationalism and internationalism (published in 2019) received the price of the "Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte" for best global historical book.

Immanuel R. Harisch is a historian with a special interest in labor, education, and economic relations. His dissertation focused on educational institutions, networks and mobilities of African trade unions and/within the international labor movement during the Cold War. He is currently the managing editor of the open-access journal Stichproben - Vienna Journal of African Studies. In addition to an edited volume he co-authored on GDR-Africa relations during the Cold War, he has published journal articles on organized labor in Africa and the international trade union movement, socialisms in Africa, and knowledge production in African universities. As part of yuworkzambia, an FWF project at the Research Platform Transformations and Eastern Europe, he is curious to unearth aspects of Yugoslav-Zambian relations and to deepen his knowledge of the history and languages of southern Africa.

This event is organised by the Research Group New Cold War Studies at the University of Vienna and sponsored by the Research Center for the History of Transformations.