-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Anna Belogurova, Matthew Galway. The Emergence of Global Maoism: China’s Red Evangelism and the Cambodian Communist Movement, 1949–1979., The American Historical Review, Volume 129, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 1219–1220, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae190
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
In The Emergence of Global Maoism, Matthew Galway presents a balanced analysis of the intellectual origins of a political experiment that cost Cambodia one-third of its population (158). He analyzes Cambodian communism as an adaptation of Maoism in a non-Chinese context by examining “social experiences, networks, and dialectical engagement [of Cambodian intellectuals] with Maoist works” (13). Through Edward Said’s “traveling theory,” the author illustrates the stages in which the Cambodian communists adapted “Maoism” in its ideology as well as how Maoism itself was a route for the Sinification or indigenization of Marxism-Leninism in a Chinese context and for its globalization (33, 5). Galway shows that when ideas “travel” they must remain universalist while maintaining local relevance (31). When the CCP “exported Maoism” through the Bandung initiative and Mao’s “Little Red Book” and welcomed foreign communist leaders such as Pol Pot in Beijing, the Maoist vision of the Cultural Revolution became for Cambodian communists “a global model for waging national revolution and socialist transformation” whereby the role of national and “natural” characteristics was stressed (2, 58, 147, 177).
