The Emergence of Global Maoism - by Matthew Galway (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This book takes a genealogical approach to uncovering the processes whereby Maoism came into existence, how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) actively exported it outside China, and the conditions of its emergence in Cambodian intellectual circles where it inspired the future leaders of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK)"--

Book Synopsis

The Emergence of Global Maoism examines the spread of Mao Zedong's writings, ideology, and institutions when they traveled outside of China. Matthew Galway links Chinese Communist Party efforts to globalize Maoism to the dialectical engagement of exported Maoism by Cambodian Maoist intellectuals.

How do ideas manifest outside of their place of origin? Galway analyzes how universal ideological systems became localized, both in Mao's indigenization of Marxism-Leninism and in the Communist Party of Kampuchea's indigenization of Maoism into its own revolutionary ideology. By examining the intellectual journeys of CPK leaders who, during their studies in Paris in the 1950s, became progressive activist-intellectuals and full-fledged Communists, he shows that they responded to political and socioeconomic crises by speaking back to Maoism--adapting it through practice, without abandoning its universality. Among Mao's greatest achievements, the Sinification of Marxism enabled the CCP to canonize Mao's thought and export it to a progressive audience of international intellectuals. These intellectuals would come to embrace the ideology as they set a course for social change.

The Emergence of Global Maoism illuminates the process through which China moved its goal from class revolution to a larger anticolonial project that sought to cast out European and American imperialism from Asia.

Review Quotes

[The Emergence of Global Maoism] overcomes some of those challenges to shed new empirical and theoretical light on how revolutionary thought "travelled."

-- "China Quarterly"

About the Author

Matthew Galway is Lecturer in Chinese History at The Australian National University. He has published in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, China Information, and Cross Currents, among others.