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

2018; The MIT Press; Volume: 20; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1162/jcws_r_00808

1531-3298

Radoslav Yordanov,

North African History and Literature

In late July 1969, Algiers hosted Le Festival panafricain d'Alger (Pan-African Cultural Festival), an event organized by the Organization of African Unity to mark a decade of anti-colonial struggle that brought independence across the continent, from Abidjan to Nairobi and from Kigali to Algiers. This melting pot, mixing hope, optimism, and resolve saw Nina Simone singing Ne me quitte pas (Don't leave me), Black Panther Party activists meeting their African counterparts, and Leopold Sengor discussing the continent's past, present, and future. The festive spirit, engulfing African revolutionaries, politicians, thinkers, and artists alike, prompted the leader of the liberation movement of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, Amilcar Cabral, to make a dramatic proclamation captured in William Klein's contemporary documentary: “Pick a pen and take note: the Muslims make the pilgrimage to Mecca, the Christians to the Vatican and the national liberation movements to Algiers!”Cabral's emotional assessment paid a fitting tribute to Algeria's elevated status across the continent for its nearly decade-long war against French colonialists, acting as an inspiration to a host of revolutionaries who were also searching for independence and emancipation from the European colonial empires. Chronologically, the hugely symbolic Pan African festival sat somewhat uncomfortably between the terminal point of Jeffrey James Byrne's Mecca of Revolution in 1965 and Algeria's Islamic revival two decades later, personified by the advent of the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut). It therefore signified the nadir of an era that started with the ecstatic exuberance of decolonization, arguably forgoing in the process the woes of the Post-Almohad Man by breaking loose the enslaving shackles of colonialism.The kernel of Byrne's narrative ranges from the rise of the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale, or FLN) in the mid-1950s to Houari Boumédiène's coup in June 1965, tracing Algeria's metamorphosis from a French department into an independent state with a strong internationalist tint. Byrne's account is chronologically defined by the heightened spirits of Bandung and the falling promise of the never materialized Bandung II, which, initially aimed as a showpiece of Ahmed Ben Bella's influential standing in the nonaligned world, crumbled into the crack opened between Third Worldist pull from above and the nation-state's drag from below. The thin line binding together the five chronologic chapters in Byrne's decade-long story is the way Third Worldism was transformed from an anticolonial “transnational mode of cooperation” into an international collaboration that “legitimized and zealously defended the authority of the postcolonial state” (p. 10).The narrative developed within the book conceptually extrapolates the experience of Byrne's Algerian lead actors by turning to two stylistically distinct but thematically linked accounts that have simultaneously played a vital role in reshaping the understanding of the Third World during the Cold War; namely, Vijay Prashad's The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New York: New Press, 2007) and Odd Arne Westad's The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). To this end, one cannot help but also refer back to Matthew Connelly's A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post–Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), which shows how the FLN defied nation-state sovereignty by extending its leverage onto the international stage. By means of departure from Prashad's seminal work, however, Byrne argues his book is not “a eulogy for the Third World” but is rather “motivated by the conviction that the tenets of Third Worldism and the normative framework of ‘South-South’ international relations at the height of the Cold War are more influential in the early twenty-first century than ever before” (p. 12).By attempting to address the above, Byrne seeks to contribute to two recent historiographic debates about the subject. On the one hand, he provides a lucid and convincing account of postcolonial transnationalism. On the other hand, he does not convincingly extrapolate his findings into the post–Cold War realm, apart from a hint in a couple of paragraphs on pp. 294 and 298. But in focusing on the complicated case of Algeria as a “laboratory of Third World socialism” (p. 153), Byrne deftly portrays the main features of the country's particular postcolonial setting; namely, traditional Islamic intellectual determinants and the aspirations of its outward-looking leaders. The Mecca of Revolution strikes the right cord exactly when needed and presents a comprehensively researched and analyzed history of Algeria's quest of advancing Third Worldist internationalism. The book benefits immensely from Byrne's thorough mining of documents and memoirs from Algeria, France, Great Britain, the United States, and Serbia. He offers an authoritative account and paints an engaging, nuanced picture of the ways diplomacy adds an additional facet to revolutionary praxis.Starting with a fast-paced historical overview of the drives behind the French-Algerian war, the narrative gradually builds up to chapter four, “The Allure of Globalism,” which is the most original thread in Byrne's complexly woven narrative. In this chapter, the fulcrum of Byrne's concept of Algeria's transnational networking, he builds a cogent case study of Ben Bella's Third Worldist aspirations by invoking Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia and Fidel Castro's Cuba. Each of the protagonists in this web of diplomatic exchanges was notable on his own merits, complementing the others and sometimes competing for the hearts and minds of the peoples of the newly independent countries. These small actors, as we learn, were bound together not through righteous espousal of ideological affinity but by the tactical assimilation of common interests unencumbered by fears of mutual interference. An apt admission by Algerian leader Ben Bella, skillfully embedded in Byrne's swiftly running prose, sums up the relationship with his nonaligned counterparts: “to me Castro is a brother, Nasser is a teacher, but Tito is an example” (p. 166).Moving on from this high point of transcontinental connectedness, however, Byrne leads his reader to an anti-climactic ending. In it, the primordial call, emulating the narrowly defined agendas of the nation-state rooted in traditional societal cleavages, superseded the transnationalist praxis and lofty international pledges by putting an end to Ben Bella's far-reaching visions of statesmanship and internationalism.Another aspect of the book that is likely to leave a lasting imprint on the historiography is the discussion of the dichotomous relationship between ideology and pragmatism in the deeds of Third World countries on the international scene during the Cold War. By tracing the evolution of Algeria's FLN, Byrne offers an elaborate example of this phenomenon. However, his depiction of this perennial opposition and the motivations behind the activity of the multitude of Algerian political formations, which he lays out in the opening chapter, might leave the reader wanting more. However, he backs his analysis with skillful interpretation of primary sources and further develops recent findings regarding other regions of the former Third World. The book pushes the interpretative envelope by boldly claiming that Algeria's nonalignment, hallmarked by its internationalism and proclivity not only to pit the great powers against one another but also to use the then mid-range international actors—such as France and China—to Algeria's own benefit, was the “neutrality of the insurgents: subversive, provocative, combative” (p. 174). He rightly points out, albeit with a touch of cynicism, that “the Third World and perhaps the twentieth-century world as a whole were less the product of ideologies than of methodologies” (p. 293).Although this logical exercise in induction may require further comparative elaboration for the sake of completeness, validation of Byrne's treatment will come from similar recent findings originating from the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, South Africa, and Indochina. Still, his other conclusion, suggesting that “the internationalist Islamist movement today is not so different from the preceding Marxist-nationalist hybrids it so frequently abhors” (p. 298), would apply equally well to any movement that transcends the boundaries of the nation-state, irrespective of religion and origin, and invokes strong ideological justification for its actions. We also learn from the case of the FLN that the distinction between thoughts and actions, ideas and methods, and episteme and techne, in general, becomes murkier when embraced by the national bureaucratic apparatus, in which routines and procedures rule the day.Mecca of Revolution delivers the most through its somewhat porous and lofty conceptualization, which allows Byrne the needed degree of freedom to see the picture from above and away. It is a very ambitious scholarly endeavor, whose microscopic sediments of dissertation-ese at times help readers find their bearings in the internationalist maze, while also hindering the potential page-turner it could be from completely revealing itself. Even so, this is a solid and insightful contribution to the literature.