The Colombo Powers: crafting diplomacy in the Third World and launching Afro-Asia at Bandung

Using documentary evidence from China, France, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this paper develops a history of the Third World through historical inquiry into the origins and activities of the Colombo Powers. As the five host nations of the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, the Colombo Powers worked to realise a new vision of Asia that integrated the outer reaches of the mainland on the basis of ancient geographical ties and a cosmopolitan international order. Most importantly, they sought to reclaim Asian agency in the international negotiations on the Korean and Indochina conflict and spread resistance to collective security pacts in Asia.