Awards

• Winner of 2002 American Historical Association George Louis Beer Prize and the Paul Birdsall Prize in European military and strategic history.

Overview

Algeria sits at the crossroads of the Atlantic, European, Arab, and African worlds. Yet, unlike the wars in Korea and Vietnam, Algeria's fight for independence has rarely been viewed as an international conflict. Even forty years later, it is remembered as the scene of a national drama that culminated with Charles de Gaulle's decision to ""grant"" Algerians their independence despite assassination attempts, mutinies, and settler insurrection. Yet, as Matthew Connelly demonstrates, the war the Algerians fought occupied a world stage, one in which the U.S. and the USSR, Israel and Egypt, Great Britain, Germany, and China all played key roles. Recognizing the futility of confronting France in a purely military struggle, the Front de Libération Nationale instead sought to exploit the Cold War competition and regional rivalries, the spread of mass communications and emigrant communities, and the proliferation of international and non-governmental organizations. By harnessing the forces of nascent globalization they divided France internally and isolated it from the world community. And, by winning rights and recognition as Algeria's legitimate rulers without actually liberating the national territory, they rewrote the rules of international relations. Based on research spanning three continents and including, for the first time, the rebels' own archives, this study offers a landmark reevaluation of one of the great anti-colonial struggles as well as a model of the new international history. It will appeal to historians of post-colonial studies, twentieth-century diplomacy, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. A Diplomatic Revolution was winner of the 2003 Stuart L. Bernath Prize of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Akira Iriye International History Book Award, The Foundation for Pacific Quest.

Full Product Details

9780195145137

Table of Contents

Reviews

This extensively researched study will provide extremely valuable information to scholars of decolonization, and represents a major contribution to the history of what one of the belligerent parties, France, only officially recognized as a war in October 1999. --Journal of Military History Beyond its scope as a history of Algeria, France, and the Cold War, it is essential reading for anyone interested in the development of Franco-American relations and attitudes toward the Arab world. -- American Historical Review In concentrating on the international dimension, Connelly weaves into his story the changing roles of the United States, Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia; the ebb and flow of FLN relations with the soviet bloc; and much more. --Foreign Affairs This extensively researched study will provide extremely valuable information to scholars of decolonization, and represents a major contribution to the history of what one of the belligerent parties, France, only officially recognized as a war in October 1999. --Journal of Military History

... indispensable for any detailed study of the Algerian war. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History This book must rate as one of the most important works not only on Algeria but also on decolonisation that has appeared in recent years. It is fully and meticulously researched, the chapter sequence admirably structured, and the writing, despite the complexities of the argument, clear and effective. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History The book is well-written, thought provoking, thoroughly documented (67 pages of notes, 25 of bibliography), and altogether a welcome contribution to the literature on the Algerian war. Coming at a moment of re-examination of the war in France, with the recent confirmations of the practice of torture put forward by General Aussaresses and other participants in this great human drama, it is timely as well. The Journal of North African Studies ... a well-researched and provocatively fresh account of one of the great episodes of twentieth-century decolonisation. The Journal of North African Studies Connelly offers a novel interpretation of the struggle between France and the Algerian nationalists, seeing it as a harbinger of the post-Cold War international system. The Journal of North African Studies [Connelly's] multiarchival research is impressive, especially his pioneering work in the recently available Algerian records. Above all, he has taken an innovative analytical approach, and engaging alternative to traditional diplomatic historiography. The International History Review

Author Information

Matthew Connelly is an Associate Professor of History at Columbia University.

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