Corresponding author mail id: [email protected] Rethinking the Legacies of Bandung Conference: Global Decolonization and the Making of Modern International Order ABSTRACT This article aims to investigate the extent to which the Bandung Conference affected the international order after the Second World War. By locating the Bandung Conference in the international order transition between 1945 until 1970, I argue that the Bandung Conference should not be treated as merely a milestone of historic anti-colonial struggles but also a site for the emergence of a modern international order. The Bandung Conference played a key role in shaping the Westphalian interstate system that acknowledges equal sovereignty among states in world politics. From this viewpoint, this article argues that the legacy of the Bandung Conference lies in its role to mediate the transition from colonial order before the Second World War to the modern international order, which is based on sovereignty and equal status among states as the primary members. It does so by putting forward an agenda for global decolonization and delegitimizes the practices of colonialism. The diplomatic struggle after the Bandung Conference continued until the UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 that called for decolonization in world politics, which locates the contribution of the Bandung Conference to the making of the modern international order as we know it in the present day. Keywords: Bandung Conference, Decolonization, International Order, Self- Determination, Transition This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has not beenAuthor Manuscript through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1111/ASPP.12473 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved The Bandung Legacy ACKNOWLEDGEMENT An earlier version of this article was presented at the 5th Symposium of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Oxford, in April 2016. I would like to thank Jonathan Joseph, Simon Rushton, Kevin W. Fogg, Henk Schulte Nordholt, Wildan Sena Utama, Jacinta O’Hagan, Rajni Gamage, Christian Reus-Smit and Oxford Conference participants for helpful discussions, questions, and feedback. AUTHOR BIO Ahmad Rizky Mardhatillah Umar is a PhD student at the School of Political Sciences and International Studies, University of Queensland, Australia. He was previously the Executive Secretary of ASEAN Studies Center, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia (2016-2017). His current research focuses on the rise of Asia in world politics. 1. Introduction The significance of the the 1955 Asian And African Conference (referred to in the article as “ the Bandung Conference”) in International Relations has been discussed by many International Relations scholars (see, for example, Acharya & Tan, 2008; Acharya & Buzan, 2010; Phillips, 2016; Acharya, 2016; Pham & Shilliam, 2016; Eslava, Fakhri, & Nesiah, 2017; Lay, 2016). The conference was held in Bandung, Indonesia, from 18-24 April 2019 and was attended by 29 countries from Asia and Africa. It was organised by five countries –Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, and Burma, as a result of a series of prior meetings in Colombo and Bogor. Recent literature in International Relations and Global History has appreciated the importance of Bandung Conference in shaping the current international order. However, despite some referenceAuthor Manuscript to Bandung as the precursor of Asian internationalism (Amrith, 2005) or its contribution to regionalism (Reid, 2008), scholars appear to be skeptical on the question of what the legacy of Bandung is in the contemporary international order. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved 2 The Bandung Legacy For example, the study of Bandung has been trapped in an impulse of post-coloniality, which constrained the fulfilment of its emancipatory premises (Pasha, 2013). From a more critical perspective, Guan (2008: 42), albeit acknowledging its emancipatory spirit, argues that “the success of Bandung was more apparent than real”, referring to some limitations that the aftermath of the Bandung Conference brought. Another group of scholars argues that even though Bandung failed to establish concrete and long- lasting global governance institutions to continue the project, it undoubtedly transformed how states in the “Third World” interact with each other, particularly when the wave of decolonization occurred in the region after the 1960s. (Tan & Acharya, 2008; Weatherbee, 2014). For example, in 1960 Bandung inspired the United Nations to issue The Declaration on Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples through the UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 (Al-Ayouty, 1972). It also inspired the introduction of the G-77 grouping and the subsequent calls for a New International Economic Order (Gilman, 2015; Geldart & Lyon, 1989). Against this backdrop, this article aims to understand how the basic ideas discussed in the Bandung Conference, namely sovereignty and ‘self-determination’, affected the international order in the 1950s and the 1960s, and why the international order was transformed during the political changes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. My central argument is that the Bandung Conference was successful in bringing about the transition from the international colonial order—which was in decline but did not totally disappear since the end of Second World War — to a modern international order based on equal sovereignty among nations. Drawing upon recent literature and a postcolonial analysis of international order , I argue that the Bandung Conference produced a decolonial vision to transform the international order. This vision challenged not only the remaining colonial world order after the Second World War, but also the new postcolonial order that pushed third world countries into the Cold War. In this regard, I argue that Bandung Conference attempted to challenge the primacy of colonial order in the region, where remaining British and French colonies were seeking to declare their independence after the Second World War However, in the 1960s, it was also evident Author Manuscript that the ‘Bandung spirit’ had declined along with domestic political changes, especially in Indonesia and Burma, resulting in the formation of a new regional order through the This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved 3 The Bandung Legacy establishment of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In this context, even though the Bandung Conference had not continued as a more rigid institutional platform in world politics and was ‘bookended’ with the calls for a New International Economic Order in the region (Benjamin, 2015; Guan, 2008), it contributed in delivering order-transition after the second World War The argument proceeds in four parts. The first part will situate the Bandung Conference in the study of international order and the study of decolonization in world politics. The second part will trace the historical roots of the Bandung Conference and its relevance to the formation of the global decolonization movement in the early 20th century, particularly the League Against Imperialism (1927-1933) and the Pan-Asian movement, both in Japan and -- in a different form -- India. This era paved the way for further consolidation of newly-independent countries after the Second Worlld War, with several new states declaring independence. The third part will look closer at how the Bandung Conference played an important role in the international order transition from 1945 until 1970. Moreover, this part will investigate how domestic political changes, as well as the beginnings of the Cold War, constrained the global reach of Bandung Conference and its legacies in world politics, . It is within this context that Bandung finds its relevance in the making of modern international order. The final part will provide a new understanding of the Bandung Conference in the study of International Relations. 2. Reconceptualizing the Legacies of Bandung Conference in the Study of International Relations Revisiting Bandung Legacies: Contending Perspectives There has been an emerging scholarly interest in the study of International Relations to re-examine the Bandung Conference and its impacts for world politics (see Tan & Acharya, 2008;Author Manuscript Hardt, 2002; Pasha, 2013; Chakrabarty, 2005; Gettig, 2015; Utama, 2017; Phillips, 2016; Shilliam, 2016; Pham & Shilliam, 2016; Shimazu, 2014). While historians are interested to see how Bandung shaped the formation of ‘newly- This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved 4 The Bandung Legacy independent’ states after the Second World War, many international relations scholars were interested in understanding how the it shaped the present global order. A number of scholars argued that the Bandung Conference served as a constitutive moment to the formation of the ‘Third World’ in world politics, seeing the conference as a successful one (Tan & Acharya, 2008; Hardt, 2002; Phillips, 2016; Acharya, 2016). Another strand of scholars appears to be more skeptical about the continuing legacies of Bandung Conference and counter-argue that there are still some gaps related to the process of decolonization in world politics (Patel & McMichael, 2004; Chakrabarty, 2005; Guan, 2008; Pasha, 2013; Shilliam, 2016). Two contending explanations aim to make sense