This book, first published in 1989, examines the creation and implementation of Communist policy in Vietnam during the crucial period between the 1954 Geneva Conference and the establishment of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam in December 1960. This study challenges long-held views about the origins and nature of the Viet Cong. It carefully examines the various stages in the struggle for ‘national liberation’ during this period, reviews the consequences of the failure of purely political means to achieve reunification and then focuses on the struggle between the Diem regime and the Communists.
Cold War Liberation examines the African revolutionaries who led armed struggles in three Portuguese colonies—Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau—and their liaisons in Moscow, Prague, East Berlin, and Sofia. By reconstructing a multidimensional story that focuses on both the impact of the Soviet Union on the end of the Portuguese Empire in Africa and the effect of the anticolonial struggles on the Soviet Union, Natalia Telepneva bridges the gap between the narratives of individual anticolonial movements and those of superpower rivalry in sub-Saharan Africa during the Cold War. Drawing on newly available archival sources from Russia and Eastern Europe and interviews with key participants, Telepneva emphasizes the agency of African liberation leaders who enlisted the superpower into their movements via their relationships with middle-ranking members of the Soviet bureaucracy. These administrators had considerable scope to shape policies in the Portuguese colonies which in turn increased the Soviet commitment to decolonization in the wider region. An innovative reinterpretation of the relationships forged between African revolutionaries and the countries of the Warsaw Pact, Cold War Liberation is a bold addition to debates about policy-making in the Global South during the Cold War. We are proud to offer this book in our usual print and ebook formats, plus as an open-access edition available through the Sustainable History Monograph Project.
Beginning with an explanation of the traditional tenets of international laws of armed conflict, this book explores the idea that national liberation movements may legitimately resort to the use of force, and examines the application of the humanitarian law of armed conflict in wars of national liberation.
Africa is well known for the production of national liberation movements (NLMs), stemming from a history of exploitation, colonisation and slavery. NLMs are generally characterised by a struggle carried out by or in the name of suppressed people for political, social, cultural, economic, territorial liberation and decolonisation. Dozens of NLMs have ascended to state power in Africa following a successful violent popular struggle either as an outright military victory or a negotiated settlement. National Liberation Movements as Government in Africa analyses the performance of NLMs after they gain state power. The book tracks the initial promises and guiding principles of NLMs against their actual record in achieving socio-economic development goals such as peace, stability, state building and democratisation. The book explores the various different struggles for liberation, whether against European colonialism, white minority rule, neighbouring countries, or for internal reform or regime change. Bringing together case studies from Somalia, Somaliland, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Algeria, the book builds a comprehensive analysis of the challenges NLMs face when ascending to state power, and why so many ultimately end in failure. This is an ideal resource for scholars, policy makers and students with an interest in African development, politics, and security studies.
“This book is an incredibly clear presentation of why the Algerian War mattered, what happened, the key contexts which produced this conflict and those that shaped it, as well as offering a brilliant entry point to teach or demonstrate how historiography works, how historians do history.”- Todd Shepard, Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of History, John Hopkins University, USA “This is a fantastic book which fills an important gap in the historical scholarship. Natalya Vince has managed the seemingly impossible task of presenting a nuanced history of the Algerian War / Algerian Revolution in clear, concise terms.” - Sarah Frank, Associate Lecturer of History, St Andrews University, UK "This brilliant and beautifully written book achieves the seemingly impossible task of offering a lucid and nuanced guide to the massive body of historical writing on the Algerian war. The book will immediately become essential and indispensable reading not only for students at all levels but also for teachers and historians."- Julian Jackson, Professor of Modern French History, Queen Mary University of London, UK This book provides a new analysis of the contested history of one of the most violent wars of decolonisation of the twentieth century – the Algerian War/ the Algerian Revolution between 1954 and 1962. It brings together an engaging account of its origins, course and legacies with an incisive examination of how interpretations of the conflict have shifted and why it continues to provoke intense debate. Locating the war in a century-long timeframe stretching from 1914 to the present, it multiplies the perspectives from which events can be seen. The pronouncements of politicians are explored alongside the testimony of rural women who provided logistical support for guerrillas in the National Liberation Front. The broader context of decolonisation and the Cold War is considered alongside the experiences of colonised men serving in the French army. Unpacking the historiography of the end of a colonial empire, the rise of anti-colonial nationalism and their post-colonial aftermaths, it provides an accessible insight into how history is written.
Transnational Histories of Southern Africa’s Liberation Movements offers new perspectives on southern Africa’s wars of national liberation, drawing on extensive oral historical and archival research. Assuming neither the primacy of nationalist loyalties as they exist today nor any single path to liberation, the book unpicks any notion of a straightforward imposition of Cold War ideologies or strategic interests on liberation wars. This approach adds new dimensions to the rich literatures on the Global Cold War and on solidarity movements. The contributors trace the ways that ideas and practices were made, adopted, and circulated through time and space through a focus on African soldiers, politicians and diplomats. The book also asks what motivated the men and women who crossed borders to join liberation movements, how Cold War influences were acted upon, interpreted and used, and why certain moments, venues and relations took on exaggerated importance. The connections among liberation movements, between them and their hosts, and across an extraordinarily diverse set of external actors reveal surprising exchanges and lasting legacies that have too often been obscured by the assertion of monolithic national histories. Tracing an extraordinarily diverse set of interactions and exchanges, Transnational Histories of Southern Africa’s Liberation Movements will be of great interest to scholars of Southern Africa, Transnational History, the Cold War and African Politics. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies.
Finland's special characteristics as a Nordic, non-aligned welfare state gave it the resources and motivation to support liberation movements - in spite of restrictions arising from trade interests and a reluctance to jeopardise the country's neutral image. The study shows that, although it is not an easy task, in a democracy ordinary, dedicated people can, over time, influence political decision making at its most closed and guarded area, foreign politics.
Many of the successful campaigns for national liberation in the years following World War II were initially based on democratic and secular ideals. Once established, however, the newly independent nations had to deal with entirely unexpected religious fierceness. Michael Walzer, one of America’s foremost political thinkers, examines this perplexing trend by studying India, Israel, and Algeria, three nations whose founding principles and institutions have been sharply attacked by three completely different groups of religious revivalists: Hindu militants, ultra-Orthodox Jews and messianic Zionists, and Islamic radicals. In his provocative, well-reasoned discussion, Walzer asks why these secular democratic movements have failed to sustain their hegemony: Why have they been unable to reproduce their political culture beyond one or two generations? In a postscript, he compares the difficulties of contemporary secularism to the successful establishment of secular politics in the early American republic—thereby making an argument for American exceptionalism but gravely noting that we may be less exceptional today.
China’s mid-twentieth-century wars pose extraordinary interpretive challenges. The issue is not just that the Chinese fought for such a long time—from the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 1937 until the close of the Korean War in 1953—across such vast territory. As Hans van de Ven explains, the greatest puzzles lie in understanding China’s simultaneous external and internal wars. Much is at stake, politically, in how this story is told. Today in its official history and public commemorations, the People’s Republic asserts Chinese unity against Japan during World War II. But this overwrites the era’s stark divisions between Communists and Nationalists, increasingly erasing the civil war from memory. Van de Ven argues that the war with Japan, the civil war, and its aftermath were in fact of a piece—a singular process of conflict and political change. Reintegrating the Communist uprising with the Sino-Japanese War, he shows how the Communists took advantage of wartime to increase their appeal, how fissures between the Nationalists and Communists affected anti-Japanese resistance, and how the fractious coalition fostered conditions for revolution. In the process, the Chinese invented an influential paradigm of war, wherein the Clausewitzian model of total war between well-defined interstate enemies gave way to murky campaigns of national liberation involving diverse domestic and outside belligerents. This history disappears when the realities of China’s mid-century conflicts are stripped from public view. China at War recovers them.
