Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order

Oxford Studies in International History

by Jeffrey James Byrne

Mecca of Revolution traces the ideological and methodological evolution of the Algerian Revolution, showing how an anticolonial nationalist struggle culminated in independent Algeria's ambitious agenda to reshape not only its own society, but international society too. In this work, Jeffrey James Byrne first examines the changing politics and international strategies of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) during its war with France, including the embrace of more encompassing visions of "decolonization" that necessitated socio-economic transformation on a global scale along Marxist/Leninist/Fanonist/Maoist/Guevarian lines. After independence, the Algerians played a leading role in Arab-African affairs as well as the far-reaching Third World project that challenged structural inequalities in the international system and the world economy, including initiatives such as the Non-Aligned Movement, the G77, and the Afro-Asian movement. At the same time, Algiers, nicknamed the "Mecca of Revolution," became a key nexus in an intercontinental transnational network of liberation movements, revolutionaries, and radical groups of various kinds.

Drawing on unprecedented access to archival materials from the FLN, the independent Algerian state, and half a dozen other countries, Byrne narrates a postcolonial, or "South-South," international history. He situates dominant paradigms such as the Cold War in the larger context of decolonization and sheds new light on the relationships between the emergent elites of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America.

Mecca of Revolution shows how Third Worldism evolved from a subversive transnational phenomenon into a mode of elite cooperation that reinforced the authority of the post-colonial state. In so doing, the Third World movement played a key role in the construction of the totalizing international order of the late-twentieth century.

Genres: History, Algeria, Africa, Nonfiction, Politics, Northern Africa, Political Science

408 pages, Hardcover

First published April 12, 2016

Reviews

[Rob M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books so packed to the seams with information you can almost feel the author's determination to tell you everything bursting from the pages. Luckily, considering how dense and long this text actually is, he doesn't tell us everything but limits himself to what is apparently a good haul of brand new scholarship, mostly focused on Algerian foreign policy and international relations in the 1950s and 60s.

For a more in depth military history of the war of independence, make sure you also read A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne. For a wider look at the Cold War in the Third World make sure to also check out The Global Cold War and The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World.

All told, Mecca of Revolution sits well in a still expanding field of scholarship, doing a good job of synthesising the particulars of this period of Algerian history within a wider historical narrative of decolonisation and Third World politics.

[Adel · Rating 5 out of 5]

important book

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate Byrne's shift in perspective: not the cold war in the third world, but the third world's cold war. he also keeps the relationship between domestic/international in mind throughout the work.

[Yasmine Flodin-Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skimmed, would like to come back to.

[Joshua]

read the intro might come back to it idk

[Bilal Yassine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight, Algeria is such a fascinating case study. Author is a good writer but can be repetitive