This book looks at South Africa's freedom struggle in the years surrounding African decolonization, and it uses the global apartheid debate to explore the way new nation-states changed the international community during the mid-twentieth century.
At the highpoint of decolonization, South Africa's problems shaped a transnational conversation about nationhood. Arguments about racial justice, which crested as Europe relinquished imperial control of Africa and the Caribbean, elided a deeper contest over the meaning of sovereignty, territoriality, and development.
Based on research in African, American, and European archives,Gordian Knot advances a bold new interpretation about African decolonization's relationship to American power. The book promises to shed light on U.S. foreign relations with the Third World and recast our understanding of liberal internationalism's fate after World War II.
