The 'Rhodesian crisis' of the 1960s and 1970s, and the early-1980s crisis of independent Zimbabwe, can be understood against the background of Cold War historical transformations brought on by, among other things, African decolonization in the 1960s; the failure of American power in Vietnam and the rise of Third World political power. In this history of the diplomacy of decolonization in Zimbabwe, Timothy Scarnecchia examines the rivalry between Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, and shows how both leaders took advantage of Cold War racialized thinking about what Zimbabwe should be. Based on a wealth of archival source materials, Scarnecchia uncovers how foreign relations bureaucracies in the US, UK, and South Africa created a Cold War 'race state' notion of Zimbabwe that permitted them to rationalize Mugabe's state crimes in return for Cold War loyalty to Western powers. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

"This book is about southern Africa's long walk to freedom, about the overturning of colonial rule in the northern territories and the dissolution of backs-to-the-wall white settler suzerainty first in what became Zimbabwe and then in South Africa. Chapters on the individual countries detail the stages along their sometimes complicated and tortuous struggle to attain the political New Zion. We learn how and why the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland failed, how and why apartheid eventually collapsed, and exactly how the various components of this heavily white conquered and later white oppressed domain transitioned via diverse fits and starts into today's assemblage of proud, politically-charged, and still mostly fragmented nation-states. But what did the new republics make of their hard won freedoms? That is the subject of more than half of this book. Having liberated themselves successfully, several soon dismantled democratic safeguards, established effective single-party states, closed their economies, deprived citizens of human rights and civil liberties, and exchanged economic progress for varieties of central planning experiments and stunted forms of protected economic endeavors. Only Botswana, of the new entities, embraced full democracy and good governance. The others, even South Africa, at first tightly regimented their economies and attempted severely to limit the degrees of economic freedom and social progress that citizens could enjoy. Corruption prevailed everywhere except Botswana. Today, as the chapters on contemporary southern Africa reveal, most of the southern half of the African continent is returning, if sometimes struggling, to return to the patterns probity and good governance that many countries abandoned in the decades after independence. Now there is a resurgence of high performance, which this book celebrates"--

This book takes the transnational history of southern Africa’s liberation struggles in an innovative direction. It provides one of the first targeted studies of the manner in which the wider process of African decolonisation shaped the political struggle for control of Southern Rhodesia (colonial Zimbabwe). It offers an in-depth survey of the repercussions of pan-African developments on national-level political thought amidst one of the most seminal moments of the continent’s history. The book draws on over a year of fieldwork in southern Africa as well as archival collections in the USA and UK to explore the seismic re-alignments that occurred in the white settler dominated territory in southern Africa as self-determination became a widely accepted international principle virtually overnight. In particular, it focuses on the impact of decolonisation struggles and/or independence in Ghana, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Malawi on Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. In so doing, it also offers new context on the roots of contemporary repression in Zimbabwe.

The National Political Science Review is the official publication of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. The Review's purpose, as described by Matthew Holden in his introduction, is to "lead to new information, insights, and findings" into the social and political status of African Americans. The volume is not exclusionist or narrow. It integrates essays that could stand alone, as they initially were written, according to the method and theory of the author in question. As presented here, however, they also lend themselves to a broader treatment of race and the political order. The present volume combines essays expressly focused on African Americans, Africa, and the African diaspora. At the same tune, it contains essays about broad generic subjects such as budgeting and interest groups, written with no explicit racial relevance. Holden integrates these essays under the theme of the changing racial regime. The integrating concept is the old word "regime," which political scientists have used in many situations before to define such more or less persistent, though not necessarily permanent, orders of precedence. If no significant benefits and no significant burdens could be forecast by knowledge of the social identity called race, then the regime could be seen as non-racial. In American experience, the regime was, at one time, purposeful and sustained white advantage. The "white race" and its preferential standing, was central to virtually all institutional practice public and private. The significant contemporary question is the degree of change hi the racial regime. Some proceed with the assumption that a large degree of change has occurred in the American political system. The view of other contributors is that the system still sustains racial stratification. In its very internal dialogue, this volume presents a panorama of current work by political scientists, African American and other, on the character of the American political system. Contributors include: Cedric Robinson, Charles Henry, Edward J. Muller, Marjorie Lewis, Katherine A. Hinckley and Bette S. Hill, Nancy Haggard-Gilson, and Vernon Johnson. The Changing Racial Regime is an essential resource for political scientists, black studies specialists, and scholars and policy analysts of race relations in the United States.

The author is from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Zimbabwe. He examines the paradox ensuing from the Lancaster House Settlement at Zimbabwe's independence, that whilst colonial rule was ended, the framework was provided for continued white privilege, on the basis of control of the economy by this elite - and through them, transnational capital. He analyses the responses of the ruling (including official) elite, the black petty bourgeoisie, and the group associated with the former Rhodesian Front.

The post-2000 period in Zimbabwe saw the launch of a fast track land reform programme, resulting in a flurry of accounts from white Zimbabweans about how they saw the land, the land invasions, and their own sense of belonging and identity. In White Narratives, Irikidzayi Manase engages with this fervent output of texts seeking definition of experiences, conflicts and ambiguities arising from the land invasions. He takes us through his study of texts selected from the memoirs, fictional and non-fictional accounts of white farmers and other displaced white narrators on the post-2000 Zimbabwe land invasions, scrutinising divisions between white and black in terms of both current and historical ideology, society and spatial relationships. He examines how the revisionist politics of the Zimbabwean government influenced the politics of identities and race categories during the period 2000–2008, and posits some solutions to the contestations for land and belonging.

Robb Thomas draws upon a wealth of previously classified documents to reveal that relations between Britain and the United States of America during Carter's presidency were riven with antagonism and disagreement. Contrary to existing interpretations, even the most 'special' aspects of intelligence and nuclear cooperation were not immune to high-level political tension. Robb exposes the true competitive nature of the relationship during Carter's presidency, as well as providing an original understanding to how both countries approached the breakdown of superpower detente; the subject of international human rights promotion; the tackling of common economic and energy challenges and to the Anglo-American nuclear and intelligence relationship.

•Entries written by renowned diplomatic and military historians as well as key scholars in international relations •Provides assessments and analyses of key episodes, issues and actors in the military and diplomatic history of the United States •Based on the award-winning Oxford Companion to United States History •Comprehensive collection of entries that span the founding of the U.S. to its present state •Offers a wide range of perspectives to provide an encompassing context of the United States' military and diplomatic legacies •Expansive bibliographies and suggested readings for each article to aid in research The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History, a two-volume set, will offer both assessment and analysis of the key episodes, issues and actors in the military and diplomatic history of the United States. At a time of war, in which ongoing efforts to recalibrate American diplomacy are as imperative as they are perilous, the Oxford Encyclopedia will present itself as the first recourse for scholars wishing to deepen their understanding of the crucial features of the historical and contemporary foreign policy landscape and its perennially martial components. Entries will be written by the top diplomatic and military historians and key scholars of international relations from within the American academy, supplemented, as is appropriate for an encyclopedia of diplomacy, with entries from foreign-based academics, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The crucial importance of the subject is reflected in the popularity of university courses dedicated to diplomatic and military history and the enduring appeal of international relations (IR) as a political science discipline drawing on both. The Oxford Encyclopedia will be a basic reference tool across both disciplines - a potentially very significant market. Readership: University-level undergraduate and graduate students in History