Death in the Congo: Murdering Patrice Lumumba - Rilegato

Gerard, Emmanuel; Kuklick, Bruce

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0674725271 ISBN 13: 9780674725270

Casa editrice: Harvard Univ Pr, 2015

Riassunto

Death in the Congo is a gripping account of a murder that became one of the defining events in postcolonial African history. It is no less the story of the untimely death of a national dream, a hope-filled vision very different from what the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo became in the second half of the twentieth century.

When Belgium relinquished colonial control in June 1960, a charismatic thirty-five-year-old African nationalist, Patrice Lumumba, became prime minister of the new republic. Yet stability immediately broke down. A mutinous Congolese Army spread havoc, while Katanga Province in southeast Congo seceded altogether. Belgium dispatched its military to protect its citizens, and the United Nations soon intervened with its own peacekeeping troops. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, both the Soviet Union and the United States maneuvered to turn the crisis to their Cold War advantage. A coup in September, secretly aided by the UN, toppled Lumumba’s government. In January 1961, armed men drove Lumumba to a secluded corner of the Katanga bush, stood him up beside a hastily dug grave, and shot him. His rule as Africa’s first democratically elected leader had lasted ten weeks.

More than fifty years later, the murky circumstances and tragic symbolism of Lumumba’s assassination still trouble many people around the world. Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick pursue events through a web of international politics, revealing a tangled history in which many people—black and white, well-meaning and ruthless, African, European, and American—bear responsibility for this crime.

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Recensione:

Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick shed light on an important episode in the annals of decolonization, the Cold War, and African nationalism, as well as on significant aspects of the domestic politics of Belgium and the United States. "Death in the Congo "is a welcome contribution to our understanding of the darker side of decision-making in ostensibly open and democratic political systems. --Edouard Bustin, Boston University, Emeritus (10/08/2014)

To this day no one has been prosecuted for Lumumba s death. And this is where a book as calm, clear and authoritative as Emmanuel Gerard s and Bruce Kuklick s Death in the Congo adds true value. Novelists and filmmakers have all had a go at the Lumumba story, but here at last is history-writing at its most powerful: a work that reads in part like a charge sheet for a war-crimes prosecution and in part like a Shakespearian tragedy with farce thrown in [...] The drama of Lumumba s death makes a grand finale. But the book s true importance lies in spelling out the roles of the various powers involved, notably America and Belgium. Individual prosecutions are now unrealistic, but Death in the Congo demonstrates (something Tony Blair and George W. Bush might ponder) that it is never too late to investigate political decisions that lead to manipulation and murder. --Sepctator

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Harvard Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0674725271
• ISBN 13: 9780674725270
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 276