Although Germany has been a major international player in Africa ever since West Germany's readmission to international politics after 1955, surprisingly little has been written about this topic, and even less reliable knowledge has been established. This study poses the need for a review of Germany's relations with the African continent over the past decades. It challenges scholars to fill the factual gaps that characterize the state of research so far. Ulf Engel is associate professor of politics in Africa at the Institute of African Studies, University of Leipzig. Robert Kappel is professor of politics and economics at the Institute of African Studies, University of Leipzig.
West Germany and the Portuguese Dictatorship 1968-1974 examines West Germany's ambiguous policy towards the Portuguese dictatorship of Marcelo Caetano. Lopes sheds new light on the social, economic, military, and diplomatic dimensions of the awkward relationship between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Caetano regime.
The essays presented in this collection set out to explore various aspects of the issue of governance and to reflect on how governance in Africa can be made to be more responsible. All the contributors exhibit clear awareness of the stupendous problems confronting governance in Africa, and make different suggestions aimed at obviating the difficulties. The volume is a timely and welcome contribution to the never-ending discussions about Africa, its problems, its leaders and managers, and the possible ways of drawing it out of the quagmire into which decades of bad governance, in addition to many other factors, have thrown most countries of the continent.
An analytical study of Portuguese decolonization, dealing with all the Portuguese territories in Africa. It is equally concerned with metropolitan Portugal itself, and refers to key theoretical debates on imperialism, modernization and international relations.
1968: The World Transformed presents a global perspective on the tumultuous events of the most crucial year in the era of the Cold War. By interpreting 1968 as a transnational phenomenon, authors from Europe and the United States explain why the crises of 1968 erupted almost simultaneously throughout the world. Together, the eighteen chapters provide an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the rise and fall of protest movements worldwide. The book represents an effort to integrate international relations, the role of media, and the cross-cultural exchange of people and ideas into the history of that year. 1968 emerges as a global phenomenon because of the linkages between domestic and international affairs, the powerful influence of the media, the networks of communication among activists, and the shared opposition to the domestic and international status quo in the name of freedom and self-determination.
The problems investigated in this collection had lasting consequences not only in the field of colonialism but in international politics as well. Decolonization and the Cold War, which brought about the most significant changes to global policits after 1945, are treated together.
In this authoritative book, the only work to cover the full sweep of German foreign policy since the end of World War II, noted scholar Helga Haftendorn explores Germany's remarkable recovery from wartime defeat and destruction. Offspring of the Cold War, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic entered the international arena in 1949 under three crippling constraints: they were held accountable for the crimes of the Third Reich, they were fully dependent on the occupation powers, and their international room for maneuver was limited by an East-West conflict that placed Bonn and East Berlin on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. Tracing the FRG's strategy of multilateralism, Haftendorn convincingly demonstrates how these liabilities transformed into opportunities as Germany found a security guarantee in NATO membership and economic and political rewards in the system of European integration. The author's overview of past half-century shows a high degree of continuity and consistency in German foreign policy despite the tumultuous events of the era. However, Haftendorn argues that Germany's traditional policy of self-restraint was increasingly counterbalanced by a more assertive stance after reunification and the rise of a post-war generation to power. Although the country's leaders continued to value international institutions, the benefits were increasingly weighed against Germany's enlightened self-interest. Scholars and students of contemporary Germany, Europe, and East-West relations will find this nuanced and knowledgeable study invaluable.
Engaging Africa: Washington and the Fall of Portugal's Colonial Empire tells the story of how successive administrations--Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford--tried to maintain the confidence of their NATO ally, Portugal, while facilitating the process of decolonization in Angola and Mozambique. Ultimately becoming an epic battle of democracy versus dictatorship, African nationalism versus geo-strategic pre-eminence, and East versus West, this book, largely based on primary sources, tells the story of one of the Cold War's most intense confrontations.
Since the cold war ended, it has become an international field of study, with new material from China, the former Soviet Union and Europe. This volume takes stock of where these new materials have taken us in our understanding of what the cold war was about and how we should study it.
