French President Charles de Gaulle (1958-1969) has consistently fascinated contemporaries and historians. His vision conceived out of national interest of uniting Europe under French leadership and overcoming the Cold War still remains relevant and appealing. De Gaulle's towering personality and his challenge to US hegemony in the Cold War have inspired a vast number of political biographies and analyses of the foreign policies of the Fifth Republic mostly from French or US angle. In contrast, this book serves to rediscover de Gaulle's global policies how they changed the Cold War. Offering truly global perspectives on France's approach to the world during de Gaulle's presidency, the 13 well-matched essays by leading experts in the field tap into newly available sources drawn from US, European, Asian, African and Latin American archives. Together, the contributions integrate previously neglected regions, actors and topics with more familiar and newly approached phenomena into a global picture of the General's international policy-making. The volume at hand is an example of how cutting-edge research benefits from multipolar and multi-archival approaches and from attention to big, middle and smaller powers as well as institutions.

Amid the burgeoning literature on the connections between the global north and the global south, Mecca of Revolution is a pure example of post-colonial, or "south-south," international history. Through an examination of Algeria's interactions with the wider world, from the beginning of its war of independence to the fall of its first post-colonial regime, the Third Worldist perspective on the twentieth century comes into view. Hitherto dominant historical paradigms such as the Cold War are situated in the larger context of decolonization and the re-inclusion of the large majority of humanity in international affairs. At the same time, groundbreaking research in the archives of Algeria and a half-dozen other countries enable Mecca of Revolution to advance beyond the focus on discourse analysis that has typified previous studies of Third World internationalism. It demystifies terms like Non-Alignment, Afro-Asianism, and Bandung, and sheds new light on the relationships between the emergent elites of Africa, the Middle East, Asian, and Latin America. As one of the most prominent sites of post-colonial socialist experimentation and an epicenter of transnational guerrilla activity, Algeria was at the heart of efforts to transform global political and economic structures. Yet, the book also 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. Ultimately, Mecca of Revolution shows the "post-colonial world" is all of our world.

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.

French President Charles de Gaulle (1958-1969) has consistently fascinated contemporaries and historians. His vision-conceived out of national interest-of uniting Europe under French leadership and overcoming the Cold War still remains relevant and appealing. De Gaulle's towering personality and his challenge to US hegemony in the Cold War have inspired a vast number of political biographies and analyses of the foreign policies of the Fifth Republic mostly from French or US angle. In contrast, this book serves to rediscover de Gaulle's global policies how they changed the Cold War. Offering truly global perspectives on France's approach to the world during de Gaulle's presidency, the 13 well-matched essays by leading experts in the field tap into newly available sources drawn from US, European, Asian, African and Latin American archives. Together, the contributions integrate previously neglected regions, actors and topics with more familiar and newly approached phenomena into a global picture of the General's international policy-making. The volume at hand is an example of how cutting-edge research benefits from multipolar and multi-archival approaches and from attention to big, middle and smaller powers as well as institutions.