Category: World Affairs

“Their book is one of the most important to come out of South Africa in this decade. The authors pose the fascinating question: why did a privileged ethnic minority, which could have dominated into the twenty-first century if it had wished so, negotiate itself out of power?…The sting of the book is in the tail, where the authors discuss the escalating conflict between the ANC and its alliance partners, the SACP (SA Communist Party) and the COSATU (Congress of SA Trade Unions) over the government’s macro-economic policy document GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution). This concluding section of the book is a study in irony.”

( Courtesy of Times Literary Supplement, paperback 240 pages )

The book is relevant, timely and innovative. It addresses an important historic topic and synthesises the existing literature. The authors give empirical body to some of the questions that have been raised in recent years by the theorists of post colonial history and of global history while at the same time staying on firm ground by not neglecting the ‘old fashioned’ fields of diplomatic and economic history. Crises of Empire is essential reading for students of imperialism and comparative decolonization. It also offers new perspectives for those interested in contemporary European history, international politics, and the legacies of colonialism across the developing world. Written by subject specialists, it analyses the forces that precipitated the twentieth century collapse of all Europes late colonial empires. The fate of the British, French, and Dutch colonial empires is investigated individually and comparatively. So, too, is the bloody end to Belgian and Portuguese colonialism in black Africa. Ranging from the wave of European imperial expansion in the aftermath of World War I to the collapse of the last settler colonies in Africa during the 1960s and 1970s, the authors assess decolonization as a long-term process whose roots and outcomes transcended the Cold War. They draw attention to significant changes to the international system during the twentieth century as well as to shifting popular attitudes towards colonialism both within Europes imperial nation states and within individual colonies. They also discuss the economics of empire, focusing on such factors as changing global markets, colonial urbanization, and the growth of colonial organized labour. Above all, they consider the role of Africans and Asians as agents of colonial change, highlighting the parts played by anti-colonial movements, popular protest, and armed insurgency as catalysts of Europes imperial collapse.

( Courtesy of Bloomsbury.com, paperback 457 pages )

From the vantage point of the United States or Western Europe, the 1970s was a time of troubles: economic “stagflation,” political scandal, and global turmoil. Yet from an international perspective it was a seminal decade, one that brought the reintegration of the world after the great divisions of the mid-twentieth century. It was the 1970s that introduced the world to the phenomenon of “globalization,” as networks of interdependence bound peoples and societies in new and original ways.The 1970s saw the breakdown of the postwar economic order and the advent of floating currencies and free capital movements. Non-state actors rose to prominence while the authority of the superpowers diminished. Transnational issues such as environmental protection, population control, and human rights attracted unprecedented attention. The decade transformed international politics, ending the era of bipolarity and launching two great revolutions that would have repercussions in the twenty-first century: the Iranian theocratic revolution and the Chinese market revolution.The Shock of the Global examines the large-scale structural upheaval of the 1970s by transcending the standard frameworks of national borders and superpower relations. It reveals for the first time an international system in the throes of enduring transformations.

( Courtesy of Harvard University Press, paperback 434 pages )

Aryeh Neier, human rights activist and former executive director of Human Rights Watch, has created a work that is both a comprehensive history and a forward-looking treatise on the institution of war tribunals. Shedding an especially penetrating light on the genocidal actions that took place in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, War Crimes catalogs and addresses the many issues surrounding the prosecution of war crimes, including accusations of “victor’s justice,” international jurisprudence, and the accountability of lower-ranking officers. Many times, Neier reveals, the parties responsible for war crimes manage to escape retribution for want of a favorable transition of political power. As a possible remedy, Neier argues for the creation of a permanent international war crimes tribunal. Without melodrama or hyperbole, Neier draws the reader into reasoned discourse on the conduct of soldiers and the appalling consequences of war.

( courtesy of  Brendan J. LaSalle, 286 pages )

In 1996, the fighting in Rwanda spilled over the Congolese border, sparking a conflict that would eventually claim more lives than any other since the Second World War. Based on Mealer’s three years in Congo, All Things Must Fight to Live is an unforgettable tour through the aftermath of war and colonialism, in a country that is still the site of the greatest humanitarian catastrophe on earth. It is nonfiction at its finest: harrowing, lyrical, timely and necessary.

( from the sleeve, 310 pages )