Qualla: The Week the Third World Found Its Voice

The Week the Third World Found Its Voice: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit IPPHOS, Public domain. Zhou Enlai almost did not make it. On the way to the conference, the Chinese premier's chartered plane -- a Kashmir Princess operated by Air India -- was sabotaged by a bomb planted by Kuomintang agents. Zhou survived only because he had switched to a different flight at the last minute. When he arrived in Bandung in April 1955, he carried with him not just the diplomatic ambitions of the People's Republic of China, but the visible proof that this gathering mattered enough for someone to try to kill a delegate en route. Twenty-nine nations had come to this highland city in West Java, and between them they represented 1.5 billion people -- fifty-four percent of the world's population. Most of them had won their independence within the previous decade. None of them had been invited to shape the postwar order.

Image: IPPHOS | Public domain

The Week the Third World Found Its Voice: Architects of a Third Path

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ErwinFCG, CC BY-SA 4.0. The idea had been gestating since the late 1940s. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru first glimpsed it at the Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi in March 1947, months before India itself was free. Indonesian President Sukarno saw it from the other side -- as a leader of ...

Image: ErwinFCG | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Week the Third World Found Its Voice: Diplomacy as Theater

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ron4, Public domain. The conference opened on April 18, 1955, at the Gedung Merdeka -- the Freedom Building -- on Jalan Asia-Afrika in central Bandung. For six days, the delegates debated the shape of a world that the great powers assumed they would define on their own. The central question was wheth...

Image: Ron4 | Public domain

The Week the Third World Found Its Voice: Ten Principles and a Shifting World

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The conference's most enduring product was the Dasasila Bandung -- the Ten Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, styled after Indonesia's own Pancasila. The principles read like a charter for a world the delegates wanted but did not yet have: respect for sovereignty, recognition of...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

The Week the Third World Found Its Voice: The Americans Who Came Anyway

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Indonesia, Public domain. The United States officially shunned the conference, at the urging of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. The administration feared it would expand China's influence and complicate Washington's relationships with its European colonial allies -- allies whose empires were precis...

Image: Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Indonesia | Public domain

The Week the Third World Found Its Voice: Echoes Along Jalan Asia-Afrika

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Indonesia, Public domain. The Gedung Merdeka still stands on the street that was renamed in the conference's honor. In 2005, on the fiftieth anniversary, leaders from Asian and African countries returned to Bandung to launch the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership, pledging continued cooperation acros...

Image: Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Indonesia | Public domain