ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the appearance and role of transregional formations during the period of the Cold War. Area studies was established in Euro-American academia during the Cold War period of global decolonization, when a former imperial geography was disappearing and a new international order was developing, specifically through the United Nations and an escalating great power rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The emergence of anti-colonial nationalism in Africa and Asia during the early to mid-twentieth century provided a key thrust for generating post-colonial geographies. Nationalism in Africa and Asia must be comprehended as a process that continues after political independence. In April 1955, delegations from 29 countries in Africa and Asia convened in Bandung, Indonesia, to confront pressing issues their continents faced during early Cold War period. The Bandung meeting reflected the transformation of anti-colonial nationalism from a strategy to achieve nation-state sovereignty to a post-colonial discourse that enabled building of transregional connections of political solidarity.
