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- Convenor:
-
Mélanie Torrent
(Université Paris Diderot)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- NB004
- Start time:
- 29 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Emphasising the impact of location on diplomatic cultures and practices, this panel investigates the relationship between African cities and liberation movements, from the struggle against European rule to contemporary fights for political, economic and social rights, in Africa and beyond.
Long Abstract:
Emphasising the impact of location on diplomatic cultures and practices, this panel investigates the relationship between African cities and liberation movements, from the struggle against European rule to contemporary fights for political, economic and social rights, in Africa and beyond. Historians have stressed the impact of Accra on Panafricanism, Cairo and Tunis on Algeria's war of independence, Algiers' Panafrican Festival on the Black Panther movement and Lusaka on Zimbabwe's independence negotiations. Development studies have also stressed the impact of large-scale international conferences on the African cities that hosted them and on the means to promote rights in the city - as urban space and as polis. Focusing on specific conferences, cities or issues, from streets and neighbourhoods to the global scene, this panel therefore invites papers on the following topics:
- The relevance of the African city, both as a space for diplomatic action and as an analytical category for academics
- The impact of liberation diplomacy on definitions and practices of African cities
- Comparisons between urban/rural sites of negotiations
- The impact of the diplomats' urban/rural roots on negotiations
- The influence of diplomatic conferences on how diplomats and NGOs include town and country in their agendas
- Africa and city diplomacy
- The use of public space and redefinition of cultural venues, as cause/outcome of international conferences
- Liberation diplomacy and the democratisation of African urban/rural space
Papers reflecting on global cities, migration, regionalism and transnationalism are also welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Mélanie Torrent (Université Paris Diderot)
Paper short abstract:
As shown by the FLN’s use of « city diplomacy » and African ruralities with its British interlocutors, the spatialisation of African independence movements structured European anticolonial activity, influencing both depictions of nationalist movements and policy decisions.
Paper long abstract:
During the war of Algerian independence, a number of committed British activists travelled to North Africa and Africa to meet FLN representatives : on their return, some lobbied the British government and administration in favour of the FLN, and most recounted their experiences in a number of public speeches (including in Parliament) and in a variety of publications and photographic reports, notably in the press. By 1957, several spaces had become the focus of attention of the government, the voluntary sector and anticolonial networks in Britain : North African cities, centres for refugees (sometimes rural, sometimes urban) and the Algerian maquis. In Algeria, parallel visits organised by the French government used the Algerian space (including the Sahara) to promote ideals of modernity and growth, in both urban and rural settings. This paper investigates the ways in which each space was used by the FLN to bring out particular strands of its liberation diplomacy to its British interlocutors, within the wider global context, and assesses the respective impact of these spaces on British anticolonial activists. Based on a variety of archives, this paper demonstrates that the spatialisation of independence movements in Africa, often underplayed, was in fact a structuring element of anticolonial activity in Europe, influencing not simply depictions of nationalist movements but policy decisions. It also shows that the « city diplomacy » of the major panafrican conferences, like Tunis in 1960 and Cairo in 1961, was rendered more effective by a wealth of other initiatives based on African ruralities.
Alba Martín Luque (University of Florence, Italy)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the first visual representations of the Liberated zones in FRELIMO's propaganda materials. In opposition to the urban imagery of Lourenço Marques (emblem of Portugal in Africa); I argue that in the rural Liberated zones FRELIMO found the ideal venue for its diplomatic activities
Paper long abstract:
As the armed struggle against Portugal advanced, FRELIMO employed the term "Liberated zones" to allude to the rural areas of northern Mozambique which were taken under its control. However, similarly to Algerian FLN or Guinean and Cape Verdean PAIGC, FRELIMO's "Liberated zones" were not just a territory. In FRELIMO's usually text-heavy information and propaganda materials, the "Liberated zones" were depicted as a sort of laboratory where "The people of Mozambique" were collectively experiencing the economic and social life that would govern the "New Mozambique." Based on archival research conducted in Portuguese, Dutch and North American archives, and on a vast collection of audiovisual materials raging from magazines, pictures, pamphlets, press releases, TV reports to films, this paper explores the visual emergence of the "Liberated zones" in FRELIMO's media diplomacy. To this effect, I will focus on the period from mid-1967 to mid-1969, as it is in this short time-frame that FRELIMO carried out the bulk of its diplomatic activity from Dar es Salaam (where its headquarters were) and Algiers (where its main Political Office was) to the "Liberated zones" of Niassa and Cabo Delgado. I argue that, in opposition to the urban imagery of the modern African capitals of Lourenço Marques and Luanda, which were the two emblems of the Portuguese "New State" in Africa, FRELIMO found in the rural site of the Mozambican "Liberated zones" its more iconic space of "Liberation." From 1969, foreign press, heads of states and international officials became frequent visitors to the carefully constructed space of FRELIMO's "Liberated zones."
George Roberts (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
Through the political geography of postcolonial Dar es Salaam, this paper explores the interaction between liberation movements, Tanzanian politicians, Cold War diplomats, and the media, demonstrating the destabilising urban consequences of Julius Nyerere’s support for African liberation.
Paper long abstract:
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam housed the headquarters of many exiled African liberation movements. Grouped together in offices along Nkrumah Street, their representatives moved in cosmopolitan circles that formed around favoured bars, cafés, and restaurants, as well as at more official events, like diplomatic receptions. There they associated with journalists, local elites, diplomats, and the subversive operatives of white minority rule. Through both their rent-seeking behaviour and their ideological or ethnic affinities with local elites, the liberation movements became embedded in Tanzanian political affairs. The Tanzanian government became alarmed by the destabilising potential of the presence of these leaders, especially given their constant need for financial support and therefore assumed venality. In response, the authorities placed limits on the numbers of liberation movement representatives permitted in Dar es Salaam, rusticating or imprisoning those who contravened such regulations. This was apiece with the anti-urban animus of ujamaa socialism, which portrayed the city as a site of rumour and moral corruption. In particular, this paper highlights the role played by Potlako Leballo, the leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress of South Africa, in undermining a coup plot against led by dissident Tanzanians. By contextualising the diplomatic activities of multiple exiled leaders in the political geography of Dar es Salaam, this paper complicates existing branches of liberation movement historiography, which tend to focus either on Cold War diplomacy or a particular national(ist) case-study, often at the exclusion of the political 'noise' which surrounded their exile experience.