Introduction

Important shifts took place in Western thinking about colonialism and relationships with colonized peoples. Britain experienced milder versions of the turmoil and division seen in the United States. In April 1968, riots in the United States following Martin Luther King’s assassination led the Conservative Party’s Enoch Powell to warn about immigrants of color in the so-called “rivers of blood” speech. The protestors had sharply varying agendas and outlooks. With France having recently expanded its university population, conditions in places such as Nanterre were poor, and a glut of graduates in fields such as sociology worried students about employment prospects. Third Worldism also entails perceptions of a basic commonality among the peoples of the Third World – including people of color in the West – based on shared historical experiences with Western colonization, unjust conditions in the present, and aspirations for equality. Third Worldism spread among students and others attentive to world politics by the late 1960s.