The diplomacy of decolonisation : America, Britain and the United Nations during the Congo crisis 1960-64

Author / Creator

O'Malley, Alanna, author

Available as

Online

Summary

The book reinterprets the role of the UN during the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, presenting a multidimensional view of the organisation. Through an examination of the Anglo-American relationship...

The book reinterprets the role of the UN during the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, presenting a multidimensional view of the organisation. Through an examination of the Anglo-American relationship, the book reveals how the UN helped position this event as a lightning rod in debates about how decolonisation interacted with the Cold War. By examining the ways in which the various dimensions of the UN came into play in Anglo-American considerations of how to handle the Congo crisis, the book reveals how the Congo debate reverberated in wider ideological struggles about how decolonisation evolved and what the role of the UN would be in managing this process. The UN became a central battle ground for ideas and visions of world order; as the newly-independent African and Asian states sought to redress the inequalities created by colonialism, the US and UK sought to maintain the status quo, while the Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld tried to reconcile these two contrasting views.

'This book views the Congo crisis as a moment which changed the way America, Britain and the UN approached the process of decolonisation as it exploded tensions in North-South relations. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources from Accra, Brussels, Delhi, London, New York and Washington D.C., the book argues that the Congo crisis was not just another episode of the Cold War but a conflict of multiple dimensions which, as it evolved, demonstrated the potential and the limitations of UN agency and Afro-Asian solidarity. It highlights the role of African and Asian actors in shaping UN Congo policy by utilising their authority in the UN and traces their efforts to position the crisis as a lightning rod in the broader interaction of the process of decolonisation with the Cold War. Attempts to direct the UN mission led to the creation of permanent mechanisms through which the Afro-Asian bloc used the Congo as a paradigm to determine the course and the pace of decolonisation. For the first time, the crisis should be considered as a moment which consolidated the impact of decolonisation as not just a process that transformed the world of empires into nation-states, but one which elucidated a wider Third World critique of imperial internationalism. This book will be of interest to students and enthusiasts of the UN, the Cold War and the history of decolonisation' --Back cover.

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