Marx and Engels were first drawn into political militancy on the issue of the national unification of their native land, Germany, and the creation of a democratic republic there to replace monarchical autocracy. They had begun studying the colonial questions in diverse countries from Ireland to India and China, as well as the national question in several European countries such as Poland, in their youth. Then, the decade following the publication of the Communist Manifesto witnessed the national democratic revolutions of 1848 all across Europe and the uprisings in India during 1857-59. They participated actively in the European revolutions and thought deeply about British colonialism in India, writing thousands of pages on these developments. Their reflections in India and China were crucial in Marx’s later and more mature work, notably Capital, where colonialism is seen as notably Capital, within Europe. Similarly, the German experience made them deeply aware of the frequent counter revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie even in the national democratic revolutions. Their analyses of European nationalisms on the one hand, and of the colonial experience in Asia on the other, are usually seen as totally separate bodies of writing. This selection is unique in that it tries to see all of that work as part of a single political and theoretical project.
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