Competing Socialisms and African Agency: The Sino-Soviet Rivalry in Tanzania during the ColdWar, 1950s–1990

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Kirsten Bönker
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 547515506

The aim of the project is to make a fundamental contribution to the global Cold War and African decolonisation and to promote understanding of processes that continue to affect global power relations today. It breaks new ground in the study of a little-studied aspect of the Cold War, namely the competition between the Soviet and Chinese models of socialism in Africa. Global and local factors as well as the interactions “on the ground” are analysed on the basis of Tanzania. The focus is on the agency of African actors and their ability to navigate between the two socialist powers and use their offers for their own purposes. We pay particular attention to the fact that the Soviet Union presented its Central Asian republics to African actors as models for successful socialist modernisation. In contrast, the PRC focused on its Han Chinese-majority areas and emphasised the similarities between the Chinese and African experiences in terms of imperial/colonial oppression, anti-imperialist resistance etc. The project draws on a wide range of unpublished and published documents from archives and libraries in China, Germany, Tanzania, the UK, the USA, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Relevant materials from the Soviet era are available in the two former Soviet republics. In addition, the project teams will conduct interviews in China, Kazakhstan, Tanzania and Uzbekistan. Due to the complexity of the topic and the necessary language skills, the project is based on a division of labour. The British sub-team will focus on the Chinese side, while the German sub-team will concentrate on the Soviet side. This will establish links between a British and a German university and generally interweave British and German research for mutual benefit. The Tanzanian ECR will be part of the German sub-team, but will co-operate closely with the British sub-team. In this way, he will expand the British-German expertise with an African, non-Eurocentric perspective. This will also extend British-German collaboration with partners in the Global South. In order to present results at an early stage, a workshop and a conference are planned, which will be open to potential stakeholders outside the academic world. The project results will be presented in an online edition of sources, conference proceedings and a monograph. Specific results will be published in eight journal articles and two dissertations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Partner Organisation: Arts and Humanities Research Council
• Cooperation Partner: Privatdozent Dr. Thoralf Klein