She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, The Diplomacy of Decolonisation: America, Britain and the United Nations during the Congo Crisis 1960-64, and reported the following:From page 99:Learn more about The Diplomacy of Decolonisation at the Manchester University Press website.…on 27 November Lumumba decided to make a break for the northern city of Stanleyville in the Orientale province, his home base where the majority of his supporters were gathered. The reasons for his decision to leave the protection of the UN at this precise moment are unclear.Page 99 of my book outlines the escape of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba from the protective custody of the United Nations in November 1960, a high point in the political crisis into which the Congo was plunged following its independence from Belgium on 30 June. Lumumba’s escape, an attempt to relocate to the northern city of Stanleyville (now Kisangani) in order to rally his supporters and reassert his political authority, having been removed as Prime Minister by his rival President Joseph Kasavubu, was an ill-fated effort. In a matter of days, he was captured by the Belgian secret police working with the Congolese army, and transported to prison, where he was later assassinated by his political rivals, at the urging of Belgium, Britain and the United States.
The Congo crisis from 1960-1964 was a period of high-drama in international affairs, combining internal Congolese politics with the overarching process of decolonisation against the backdrop of the Cold War which drew the super-powers into Africa. The assassination of Lumumba was one of the most important turning points of the conflict as it led to widespread outrage among his supporters, not just in the Congo but among oppressed peoples around the world, for whom he quickly became a martyr for freedom. The role of Belgium, Britain and the United States in his assassination, widely believed by many to be a plot to ‘recolonise’ the Congo in order to control its vast supplies of natural resources, was publicly criticised from Cairo to Moscow. At the United Nations, an angry mob broke into the headquarters in New York, threatening the Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold for not protecting Lumumba.
My book argues that the Congo crisis was not just a Cold War conflict but was the key turning point in the process of decolonisation. Through the example of the fractious and violent early years of independence in the Congo, many other newly-independent states in Africa and Asia began to assert their authority. Believing their hard-fought freedoms may be transient and holding up the Congo as the worst-case scenario for decolonisation, they utilised their solidarity to shape UN Congo policy and position the crisis as a lightning rod in the broader interaction of decolonisation with the Cold War, exploding North-South tensions. 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. 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.
--Marshal Zeringue
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