Bandung Conference 1955: Asia-Africa Summit

Bandung Conference 1955: what happened and where to see it

The Bandung Conference of 1955 was a meeting of 29 Asian and African countries in Bandung, West Java, from 18 to 24 April. It brought questions of sovereignty, colonial rule, racial equality and cooperation into a shared diplomatic forum. Its best-known outcome was Dasasila Bandung, ten principles for international relations. The sessions took place at today’s Gedung Merdeka on Jalan Asia Afrika, where the Museum Konferensi Asia Afrika interprets the gathering through documents, photographs and objects.

For a visitor, the most direct way to understand the event is to connect the meeting’s ideas with its setting: the conference building, the street outside and the museum displays that trace how an Indonesian proposal became a wider Asian-African undertaking. The story is not simply that the Non-Aligned Movement began here. Bandung was an earlier, broader conference whose participants had different political systems and did not agree on every international question.

Why the conference was called

The idea emerged from regional diplomacy among five governments: Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. In April 1954, their prime ministers met in Colombo, Ceylon. There Indonesia proposed a wider gathering that would bring in Asian countries beyond the five and also countries in Africa. The idea was taken forward over the following months.

The five prime ministers met again in Bogor, West Java, in December 1954 and agreed to convene the conference, setting out its aims and the countries to invite. They became the conference’s joint sponsors, Indonesia became host, and Bandung was chosen as the venue. These steps matter because the conference did not appear suddenly as a spontaneous gathering: it required diplomatic canvassing, agreement on the invitation list and practical preparation across several levels of government.

The setting also reflects the period’s unsettled politics. Some Asian states had recently gained independence; other peoples were still under colonial rule. Questions left by colonial boundaries and rule remained active, while the Cold War sharpened divisions between the United States-led and Soviet-led blocs. The conference gave Asian and African governments a place to discuss their own shared concerns without the colonial powers participating as conference members.

The final list of participants also shows the limits of representation. Twenty-four governments joined the five sponsors, making 29 in all. The conference could therefore give a collective voice to independent states and speak about people still subject to colonial rule, but it could not claim that every affected community was represented by its own government.

Who met in Bandung

The 29 participants were Afghanistan, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Gold Coast, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Nepal, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and Yemen, alongside the five sponsors: Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. Some names now differ: Burma is Myanmar, Ceylon is Sri Lanka, and the Gold Coast became Ghana. North and South Vietnam were separate participants in 1955.

The group was diverse in political outlook, recent history and relationship to the Cold War. That diversity shaped the task in the meeting room. Participants could agree on the importance of sovereignty or oppose colonial rule while disagreeing about ideology, security and the meaning of neutrality. Bandung’s achievement was not the creation of a single political programme; it was the decision to seek common ground despite those differences.

Among the prominent leaders were India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, China’s Premier Zhou Enlai, Burma’s U Nu and Ceylon’s John Kotelawala. Indonesia’s prime minister, Ali Sastroamidjojo, chaired the conference, and President Sukarno gave the opening address. Their roles were distinct: the opening speech gave the meeting a public frame, while the chair presided over its formal work.

Zhou Enlai’s participation illustrates how the conference handled friction. Delegates made sharply different statements during the first plenary sessions, including criticism of China’s political system and suspicion about its intentions. Zhou chose not to deliver his prepared speech as planned; he had it distributed in writing and made a supplementary speech saying his delegation had come to seek unity and common ground, not to quarrel. This episode is useful context when viewing Bandung as diplomacy: the meeting’s unity was negotiated, not automatic.

What the delegates worked on

The final communiqué, issued on 24 April, reflected a wide range of work. It addressed economic cooperation and cultural exchange, human rights and self-determination, dependent peoples, other matters of shared concern, and the promotion of world peace and international cooperation.

These subjects were connected. Political independence could be fragile when a country lacked the ability to set its own policies; economic cooperation was one way to broaden choices. Cultural exchange, in turn, placed the meeting beyond military and diplomatic alignment alone. The conference’s programme treated the new states as participants in international life with interests extending from material development to the right to define their own future.

The political discussions included colonialism and racial discrimination, alongside sovereignty and international peace. Delegates did not erase their differences by adopting common language. Instead, the communiqué offered principles broad enough to hold a coalition together while setting out conduct that states could invoke in later disputes. This balance between an expansive purpose and carefully negotiated rules is part of why the meeting remains associated with diplomacy among states that did not share one ideology.

The conference’s language of self-determination also reached beyond the governments present. Several African territories had not yet become independent states, so their interests were discussed through delegates from independent countries. That gave the meeting international weight, while leaving a real representational limit: people living under colonial administration were not all able to speak through sovereign delegations of their own.

Dasasila Bandung and its ten principles

Dasasila Bandung is the Indonesian name for the ten principles included in the final declaration on world peace and cooperation. The principles combine respect for human rights and the United Nations Charter with rules about sovereignty, equality, non-interference, defence, restraint and peaceful settlement. They were adopted as a common framework, not as a treaty that made the participating countries identical or ended their disagreements.

Respect human rights and the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter.
Respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of every country.
Recognise equality among races and among nations, large and small.
Refrain from intervention or interference in another country’s internal affairs.
Respect each country’s right to defend itself, alone or collectively, in line with the Charter.
Do not use collective defence arrangements to serve the particular interests of great powers, and do not pressure other countries.
Refrain from aggression, threats of aggression and force against another country’s territory or political independence.
Settle international disputes peacefully, through methods such as negotiation, conciliation, arbitration or legal settlement chosen by the parties.
Advance mutual interests and cooperation.
Uphold justice and international obligations.

Read as a group, the principles do more than call for peace in general terms. They address the ways powerful states might constrain weaker ones: through pressure, intervention, unequal treatment or the threat of force. They also recognise a state’s right to defend itself, while placing that right within the United Nations framework. The declaration therefore links independence with reciprocal obligations.

The principles did not settle every question. “Non-alignment” did not mean that all participants held the same view of the two Cold War blocs, nor did it remove their security concerns. The wording offered a diplomatic basis for cooperation across different positions. It is this combination of shared standards and retained national choice that helps explain why Dasasila became a reference point for later diplomacy.

How Bandung connects to the Non-Aligned Movement

Bandung helped prepare the ground for the Non-Aligned Movement, but the two events are not interchangeable. The Asian-African Conference was held in 1955; the Movement was formally established at its first summit in Belgrade in 1961. That summit drew on Bandung’s principles, while adding a later organisation and a broader political setting. Describing Bandung as the Movement’s direct founding summit would blur this six-year distinction.

The conference is often remembered as a moment when states emerging from colonial rule asserted that international decisions should not be made only by the established powers. Its influence lay partly in the example of convening and negotiating together. Bandung demonstrated that countries with sharply different systems could find a limited but meaningful platform on sovereignty, colonialism, racial equality and peaceful relations.

Its legacy was not a permanent unity. The governments involved changed, their interests diverged, and the solidarity associated with Bandung weakened later in the 1960s. The significance is more precise when expressed as a diplomatic opening: the meeting widened who could set terms in world politics and left a vocabulary that later non-aligned cooperation could use.

Bandung has kept returning to this story. For the sixtieth anniversary in 2015, Asian and African leaders came back to the city and walked together, many in national dress, along Jalan Asia Afrika into Gedung Merdeka. The value of the Bandung story is in seeing how sovereignty was argued for in a particular historical moment, and how the city still marks that moment in public.

Gedung Merdeka and the streets around it

The main sessions took place in the building of the Societeit Concordia, a colonial-era social club where Dutch residents and plantation owners once gathered for entertainment. The government took it over for the conference, and President Sukarno renamed it Gedung Merdeka, meaning “Freedom Building”, aligning the city’s public setting with the event’s aims. The building stands on Jalan Asia Afrika, so the street itself carries the conference’s name rather than serving only as an approach to the building.

The anniversary walk of 2015, known as the Bandung Historical Walk, ran from the old hotel quarter along Jalan Asia Afrika and ended with the delegates entering Gedung Merdeka together. Walking the street today can help make the event’s geography legible: the conference was not isolated in a distant compound but staged along a central urban corridor, among civic buildings and public space.

The museum occupies Gedung Merdeka and presents the conference through a permanent exhibition of documentary photographs and three-dimensional objects, together with written panels and documentary film about what happened during the conference week. The display follows a storyline of the 1955 events, which makes the museum useful for tracing a sequence, not only for looking at summit photographs.

To get more from the visit, follow that sequence in order: the background explains how an idea became an invitation; the conference material shows the delegates and their work; the Dasasila principles bring the outcome into focus. Then look at the building and the street as parts of the same story. The names Merdeka and Asia Afrika connect the diplomatic language of independence and solidarity to the location where it was spoken.

The museum was opened by President Soeharto on 24 April 1980, at the height of the twenty-fifth anniversary commemorations of the conference. It also has a library and an audio-visual room that support research on the conference and on the countries of Asia and Africa. Exhibition arrangements can change, so a visitor planning around a particular display or event should confirm current access before setting out. The historical location remains the key point: the museum is inside Gedung Merdeka on Jalan Asia Afrika in central Bandung.

Planning a Bandung history visit

Allow the conference site to anchor a wider history walk rather than treating it as a detached museum stop. Begin at Gedung Merdeka, then spend time on Jalan Asia Afrika to understand the public route and the names attached to it. The strongest context for this short urban visit is the relationship between meeting room, street and museum interpretation; adding unrelated attractions can make the central question less clear.

If you are studying the conference, the museum’s sequence of displays gives you a useful set of questions: which countries had recently become independent, which remained under colonial rule, and how did the participants state shared principles without having identical political positions? Keep a note of the difference between the conference’s broad communiqué and the ten principles specifically called Dasasila Bandung. That distinction makes the outcome easier to explain afterwards.

For a visit with limited time, prioritise the permanent exhibition’s account of the background, the opening and the principles. The background shows the practical diplomacy behind the summit; the photographs and objects place the event in Bandung; the final declaration gives the clearest account of what the delegates agreed. If you have longer, use the library or audio-visual material where available to explore the wider Asian-African context.

Bandung’s conference history fits into Indonesia’s longer story of sovereignty. Read it alongside Indonesia’s independence and the struggle for sovereignty to see the national context, then use the Indonesia history timeline to place 1955 among the country’s other turning points. For the cultural frame of the city and region, continue with Indonesia’s cultural traditions and regional identities.

Questions visitors often ask

Was Bandung where the Non-Aligned Movement began?

Bandung was a major precursor, not the Movement’s first summit. The Asian-African Conference met in 1955; the Non-Aligned Movement was formally established at its first summit in Belgrade in 1961, drawing on principles agreed at Bandung.

Can I see the original conference venue?

Yes. Gedung Merdeka, the building used for the main sessions, is in central Bandung and houses the Museum Konferensi Asia Afrika. Check current museum access arrangements before making a timed plan, as public access can change.

What is the difference between the communiqué and Dasasila Bandung?

The final communiqué recorded several areas of agreement, including economic and cultural cooperation, human rights, self-determination and international peace. Dasasila Bandung is the ten-principle declaration within that broader outcome.

Why were North and South Vietnam both listed?

They were separate political entities at the time of the 1955 conference and participated separately. Naming them as they existed then avoids projecting a later political map onto the meeting.

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Bandung Conference 1955: The Asian-African Summit