Garveyism was carried across the globe following the First World War, generating the largest mass movement in the history of the African diaspora. Throughout Africa and Europe, the Americas and Oceania, the ideas and praxis of Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey and his followers sparked anti-colonial and anti-racist mobilizations, both within Garvey’s organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, and without. This volume—the first edited collection devoted to Garveyism studies in three decades—showcases original essays by scholars working in Africa, the West Indies, the Hispanic Cari ... More

Garveyism was carried across the globe following the First World War, generating the largest mass movement in the history of the African diaspora. Throughout Africa and Europe, the Americas and Oceania, the ideas and praxis of Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey and his followers sparked anti-colonial and anti-racist mobilizations, both within Garvey’s organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, and without. This volume—the first edited collection devoted to Garveyism studies in three decades—showcases original essays by scholars working in Africa, the West Indies, the Hispanic Caribbean, North America, and Australia. The work in this volume and elsewhere has rendered untenable the longstanding idea that Garveyism was a brief and misguided phenomenon, or that it was a sideshow to the normative political trajectories of African American, Caribbean, African, and global history. The essays in this volume instead encourage students and scholars to rethink the emergence of black nationalism and modern black politics in a manner that moves Garveyism from the margins of analysis to the center. They suggest the need to revisit local, regional, national, and global histories in light of what Garveyism scholars have uncovered.