My paper for the international conference “Visegrad countries and Africa: History and Contemporaneity” held online on 27 April 2022. I follow a world-systemic and decolonial approach to investigate Hungarian semiperipheral positioning strategies in global colonial history by looking at the interactions and converging interests of Hungary and Ghana in the early 1960s.
Szerző: Zoltán Ginelli
Zoltán Ginelli is a geographer and historian of science. His research is in the geographies of knowledge, the history of geography, and global and transnational history. His main focus is on the historical relations between Eastern Europe and the Global South/Third World in the 19th and 20th centuries, including topics such as development and regional planning, (post)colonialism and racism, Cold War foreign policy, and travel writing. He lectured at various universities and colleges, and worked as an assistant researcher in the 1989 After 1989 and Socialism Goes Global projects at the University of Exeter (2015–2019). His current project, Postcolonial Hungary explores Hungarian semiperipheral colonial history from a world-systemic perspective. He is curating the exhibition Transperiphery Movement: Global Eastern Europe and Global South, and finishing his book based on 7 years of research about the global history of the quantitative revolution in geography.
zginelli@gmail.com
‘Hungarian Indians’: Race, Colonialism and Memory Politics in Hungarian ‘Indian Play’
I talk about how semiperipheral “whiteness” should reconfigure our ideas of Eastern European racial and colonial history through the case of Hungarian ‘Indian play’. The “tradition” of whites playing out Native Americans in cultural and racial performances was often an antagonistic practice of anti-colonial solidarity and colonial appropriation. In the Eastern European case, it often became a way of contesting Western hegemony, but through mimicking Western colonial cultures of appropriation and “nativism”. Today, the Orbán government is building on this colonial and racial heritage through nationalist anti-communist memory politics.
Ali Baba
Decorative commercial poster by Sándor Lengyel who was a very sought-after graphic designer in the 1960s and 70s. He mostly designed commercial posters and he was famous for his cartoon-like style. Ali Baba was a brand which sold quality coffee in the socialist times.
In India
Movie poster by László Bánki for a Soviet film about India, 1953. According to the poster a performance by the famous Polish Mazowse dance company was presented as well.
The Return of the Colonial: Understanding the Role of Eastern Europe in Global Colonization Debates and Decolonial Struggles
I was honored to present my paper The Return of the Colonial: Understanding the Role of Eastern Europe in Global Colonization Debates and Decolonial Struggles at the opening event of the Decolonize Hellas project and research platform on 19 May, 2021. In my paper, I introduced my world-sytemic approach to conceptualizing semiperipheral Hungarian and Eastern European colonial histories and decolonialism from a global perspective.
Magyarország Globálban: Elfeledett Kapcsolataink Ghánával
Ghána 1957-ben elsőként vált független szubszaharai afrikai országgá, méghozzá a legígéretesebbek egyikévé. Azonban Európa- és nyugatközpontú történelmi emlékezetünk elfeledtette velünk, hogy nekünk magyaroknak milyen fontos szerepünk is volt Ghána fejlődésében. Vajon hogyan érthetjük meg Magyarország globális történelmét a dekolonizáció és a gyarmati múltú Ghána felől nézve?
Celebration of 60 Years of Ghana–Hungary Relations
It was my honor to hold a 1 hour lecture (starts after 1:35:00) at the important diplomatic event “Celebrating 60 Years of Diplomatic Relations Between Ghana and Hungary” about the history of the relations between […]
Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy Research Group
Our Ferenc Nagy Prime Minister Research Group was established in 2020 under the leadership of myself and Zoltán Kovács Kozári. My research focuses on the role of Ferenc Nagy and the Hungarian anti-communist émigré community in shaping the political discourse of “Soviet colonialism” in relation to Afro-Asian decolonisation. See our new website at nagyferenc.org.
János Fekete in Ghana
After President Nkrumah’s visit to Ghana in 1961, the president requested a wide range of expertise and investment projects from Hungary. Among them was the secret mission of János Fekete as a financial adviser in the summer of 1962 to work out currency management solutions for Ghana, which was heavily dependent on world market prices and loans from Western countries (USA, UK).
Fekete János Ghánában
Nkrumah ghánai elnök 1961-es látogatása után sokféle szakértői és beruházási megbízást kért Magyarországtól. Közéjük tartozott 1962 nyarán Fekete János titkos pénzügyi tanácsadói kiküldetése, hogy a nyugati országok hiteleitől (USA, Egyesült Királyság) és a világpiaci áraktól erősen függő Ghánának valutagazdálkodási megoldásokat dolgozzon ki.
Zoltán Ginelli 