The Asian continent was the epicentre of momentous geopolitical changes in the aftermath of the Second World War – the independence of India and Pakistan, Ceylon and Burma, the setting up of the Malayan federation (and the eruption of a guerrilla war lasting from 1948 to 1960), the complete extinction of the “unequal treaties” in China and the victory of the communists there in 1949, as well as the Netherlands’ recognition of Indonesia’s independence in that same year, being some of the milestones of this process.

Significant vestiges of imperial rule (formal and informal) still lingered on well into the mid-1950s, but a decade after the end of hostilities in Europe and the Pacific and the rise of a new world order symbolised by the United Nations Charter, it was evident that the colonial system that had been implemented by the European powers in that part of the world was now seen as unacceptable, with calls for its complete abolition being widely heard across the region.

Indeed, when the Afro-Asian Conference of Bandung was assembled in 1955, a sense of exhilaration concerning the dismissal of the cultural and racial hierarchies brought forth by Western imperialism was perceptible in many of the speeches delivered in the Indonesian city. Afro-Asian leaders in Bandung may have been divided over many issues, but their public rhetoric was fairly homogenous when it came to repudiating racism and colonialism.