Jeffrey James Byrne. Mecca of Revolution

Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order is a powerful and sobering view of the Cold War as seen from the Global South. In response to the view of the Third World as the undaunted virtuous underdog nations struggling to carve out a third way, Jeffrey James Byrne underscores a much more pragmatic, even manipulative Third World that sought to perpetuate Cold War rivalries even at the expense of stoking further violence. Byrne takes the vantage point of the Algerian Nationalist Liberation Front (FLN), whose fractious and contentious search for ideological consistency made it a resolutely leftist yet programmatic vanguard of the Third World. The book begins with the rise of the FLN, and then traces the history from its consolidation during the Algerian War to the final year of the Ahmed Ben Bella presidency (1963–1965), situating the FLN squarely within the Third World’s rise since Bandung. The number of countries, political figures, and organizations introduced in the book is staggering. The author also presents new elements, such as the Yugoslavia-Algerian and Cuban-Algerian connection and the dilemmas the FLN faced in endorsing such figures as Patrice Émery Lumumba, Ahmed Sékou Touré, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, and leaders of Fatah.

Ancient history · Decolonization · Economic history · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Vanguard · World War II · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies