The task of this workshop is to bring together researchers who are working on the perception of the South African apartheid in Western Europe. The aim of the workshop is to explore the poly-valences in the self-understanding of European societies in the second half of the 20th century in some exemplary fields of the postcolonial situation, focusing on the intensely debated Apartheid problem. By connecting Western European countries’ transformation from industrial to post-industrial societies with the simultaneous “Shock of the Global”, starting already in the 1960s and peaking in the 1980s, the common goal is to understand how European societies adjusted to what they perceived as the challenge of ‘globalization’ at its early stage. The European countries’ reactions to the Apartheid regime varied significantly according to their particular historical relationship to South Africa, the current and on-going cultural and economic exchanges, their self-perception and sensitivity to internal and external pressure. Whereas the Scandinavian countries were the first to boycott the regime and to advocate strong sanctions at an international level, there was significant support for Apartheid in countries such as the United Kingdom and West Germany. A more detailed investigation of these disparate perceptions and reactions to Apartheid provides a reference point for highlighting similarities and differences between European societies along a path towards a global civil society. Because it was so widely and intensely discussed, simultaneously developing from the early 1960s onward and peaking in the 1980s, Apartheid is a brilliant case for the analysis of the correlation between societal change and the impact of the global.