Overview

Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of colonialism across the African continent and the world's first Black socialist state. Utilising materials from Ghanaian, Russian, English, and American archives, Nana Osei-Opare offers a provocative and new reading of this defining moment in world history through the eyes of workers, writers, students, technical-experts, ministers, and diplomats. Osei-Opare shows how race and Ghana-Soviet spaces influenced, enabled, and disrupted Ghana's transformational socialist, Cold War, and decolonization projects to achieve Black freedom. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

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9781009601436

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Reviews

'In Socialist De-Colony, Nana Osei-Opare centers race in the history of Ghana-Soviet economic and diplomatic relations. In doing so, he challenges other scholars to expand our archives and extend our horizons to do the same.' David C. Engerman, Yale University 'Socialist De-Colony constitutes an important and timely re-examination of Soviet-Ghanaian relations by centering Kwame Nkrumah and everyday Ghanaians in their efforts to realize the nation. Utilizing extensive multilingual sources, Osei-Opare authoritatively features the postcolonial archive and African experiences at home and abroad to emphasize the perennial struggle for Black liberation.' Sunnie Rucker-Chang, The Ohio State University 'Drawing on an impressive range of sources, Nana Osei-Opare analyses the Ghana-Soviet space as a dynamic site of intellectual, diplomatic, and popular engagement. This book will reignite debate on the meanings and significance of socialism in Ghana.' Kate Skinner, University of Bristol

Author Information

Nana Osei-Opare is Assistant Professor of History at Rice University. He was a National Endowment for the Humanities/Ford Foundation Fellow at the Schomburg Center (2023–2024) and an Andrew J. Mellon Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies (2022–2023). He coedited Socialism, Internationalism, and Development in the Third World (Bloomsburg, 2024).

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