Book Talk

In her new book, The Diplomacy of Decolonisation: America, Britain and the United Nations during the Congo Crisis, 1960-64 (Manchester University Press, 2018), Dr Alanna O’Malley reinterprets the role of the UN during the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, presenting a multidimensional view of the organisation. Through an examination of the Anglo-American relationship, she reveals how the UN helped position this event as a lightning rod in debates about how decolonisation interacted with the Cold War. By examining the ways in which the various dimensions of the UN came into play in Anglo-American considerations of how to handle the Congo crisis, the book reveals how the Congo debate reverberated in wider ideological struggles about how decolonisation evolved and what the role of the UN would be in managing this process. The UN became a central battle ground for ideas and visions of world order; as the newly-independent African and Asian states sought to redress the inequalities created by colonialism, the US and UK sought to maintain the status quo, while the Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld tried to reconcile these two contrasting views.

Alanna O'Malley is Assistant Professor of History and International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands. She has a PhD in History from the European University Institute and has been a Fulbright Scholar at George Washington University and a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Fellow at Sydney University. She is currently working on a second book project entitled: 'Challenging the Liberal World Order, The United Nations and the Global South, 1950-1981.'

Roham Alvandi is Associate Professor of International History and Director of the LSE IDEAS Cold War Studies Project.

The Department of International History (@lsehistory) teaches and conducts research on the international history of Britain, Europe and the world from the early modern era up to the present day.