“The First/Third World go-between city: revisiting linkages between globalization and decolonization from Beirut, Dakar and Singapore, 1940s-1970s” is a global history, but grounded in specific places. It’s underlying hypothesis is that from the 1940s/50s to the 1970s, Beirut, Dakar and Singapore were what one could call First/Third World go-between cities: rather laissez-faire trade, finance, consumer, and sea&air&tele-communication hubs. Here two groups met: Western economic and Cold War state actors, and early post-colonial Arab, African, and (South) East Asian state and private actors. This had three reasons. First, the 3 cities had by the late 19th century become cultural-economic centers for their respective imperial region, the Arab East, West Africa and South East Asia. Moreover, at and following the end of empire, by the mid-20th century, Western state and corporate actors kept various interests in those regions (e.g. raw materials, trade, geo-strategy). And last, the numerous new, fledgling nation-states and peoples of the Arab East/Arabia, West Africa, and South East Asia for a limited time still needed knowledge expertise concentrated in Beirut, Dakar and Singapore and these cities’ linkages to Western finance markets and to global trade circuits and transport&communication networks. In sum, these cities were important bundlers and facilitators of interactions, for entire regions, between Western and multiple early post-colonial state and private actors.
Cyrus Schayegh, Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Director, Program in Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University