Third World Colonialism and Strategies of Liberation: Eritrea and East Timor Compared

By analyzing Ethiopia’s rule over Eritrea and Indonesia’s rule over East Timor, Third World Colonialism and Strategies of Liberation compares the colonialism of powerful Third World countries on their small, lesspowerful neighbors. Through a comparative study of Eritrean and East Timorese grand strategies of liberation, this book documents the inner workings of the nationalist movements and traces the sources of government types in these countries. It challenges existing notions of grand strategy as a unique prerogative of the West and opposes established understanding of colonialism as an exclusively Western project on the non-Western world. In addition to showing how Eritrea and East Timor developed sophisticated military and nonmilitary strategies, this book emphasizes that the insurgents avoided terrorist methods when their colonizers indiscriminately bombed their countries, tortured and executed civilians, held them hostage, starved them deliberately, and continuously threatened them with harsher measures.