ABSTRACT
As many of the previous chapters in this collection have made clear, there is a long history of conflict and collaboration in relations between specific parts of Asia and Africa, much of it elite-driven and self-initiated, but a good portion of it resulting from Occidental imperial and colonial practices over time. From the Portuguese–Spanish division of the world at the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, to the post-1945 Cold War era, to neoliberal globalization today, Africa and Asia have long been a battleground for competing alien interests. Metaphorically, they have often found themselves together ‘in the soup’, in a pot not of their own making. A shared predicament, generally combined with elite-defined national interests, has led to various forms of collaboration, much of it symbolic – such as membership in the Group of 77 (G-77) – but some of it concrete – such as the Tazara Railway built between Zambia and Tanzania by the Chinese in support of southern African states’ struggle for liberation from colonial and racial oppression. This is not to say that all contact has been peaceful. The Asian diaspora reaches into all parts of the African continent, primarily in the form of small trading communities. At best, these groups have been tolerated by their host communities. During moments of political unrest, these groups have often been the target of xenophobic attacks: South Korean shopkeepers in Lesotho; their Chinese counterparts in South Africa; and, perhaps the best known extreme case, Indians of all social classes in Idi Amin’s Uganda.
