Gordian Knot: Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order

by Ryan M. Irwin

Overview

Writing more than one hundred years ago, African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois speculated that the great dilemma of the twentieth century would be the problem of "the color line." Nowhere was the dilemma of racial discrimination more entrenched-and more complex-than South Africa.

Gordian Knot examines South Africa's freedom struggle in the years surrounding African decolonization, using 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. In so doing, it promises to shed light on U.S. foreign relations with the Third World and recast understandings of the fate of liberal internationalism after World War II.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199855612
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/07/2012
Series:	Oxford Studies in International History
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ryan M. Irwin is Assistant Professor of History at the University at Albany-SUNY and was previously Associate Director of International Security Studies at Yale University.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: Opening the Curtain
Part One · Winds of Change
1. Architects and Earthquakes
2. Defining the Debate
3. Africa for the Africans

Part Two · White Redoubt
4. Halls of Justice
5. The Status Quo
6. Looking Outward
Conclusion: Toward a New Order
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Irwin has been justly praised for adopting a more encompassing approach to defining the anti-apartheid movement Gordian Knot represent[s] significant advances in our understanding of the external struggle against apartheid."—Humanity

"Irwin's book offers insight into how apartheid struck at the root of the postcolonial narrative of justice and how it was used at the UN as the vehicle to challenge the liberal international order and the legitimacy of the nation state system."—Alanna O'Malley, Journal of African History

"Gordian Knot draws on impressive and exhaustive research from archives across three continents, including the little-used papers of the African National Congress. The writing is generally crisp and the stories compelling. Gordian Knot is an exemplary model of what innovative thinking, writing, and research can produce. It is an erudite and important international history that melds intellectual history, diplomacy, and a vast global tapestry of ideas, personalities, and struggle, weaving together a compelling story that situates both South Africa and the United States in the postcolonial world of the 1960s."—Eric J. Morgan, Passport

"Irwin provides us with a much-needed examination of the international side of the story that gives us a sense for the complex, non-linear history of apartheid and anti-apartheid movements."—Leslie Hadfield, Passport

"An outstanding book. It is well-researched, crisply written, and thought-provoking."—Carol Anderson, Diplomatic History

"Gordian Knot is strongest in its analysis of the role of the group of African countries in the United Nations."—Francis Njubi Nesbitt, The Journal of American History

"This sophisticated work complicates prevalent political dualisms inhabiting both anti-apartheid histories and Cold War narratives. Its diplomatic angle offers a refreshing challenge to a post-apartheid historiography that has continued to dwell in the genre of social history. Above all, the book underscores the significance of the new international history for rethinking historical assumptions found in area studies—by addressing the broader political geographies that fundamentally defined local social movements of the twentieth century."—American Historical Review

"Grounded in multinational archival research, the book offers a truly transnational perspective on apartheid-that of South Africans, both for and against it, of Africans across the rest of the continent, of the British and U.S. governments, and of India and other non-European nations."—Thomas Borstelmann, H-Diplo

"Makes a very important contribution to our understanding of how decolonization altered some of the most fundamental structures of global society. Additionally, and perhaps no less significantly, is also an innovative example of African international history with its use of rare archival sources, combination of state and transnational perspectives, and global concerns. Irwin's is that rare tale that is less concerned with the international system's effect on Africa than Africa's lasting imprint on our world."—H-Diplo

"Irwin's prose is elegant and energetic. His argument is clear and convincing. Gordian Knot is global history at its best."—Andy DeRoche, H-Diplo

"Gordian Knot is an outstanding contribution to international history. It helps us understand why the United States was seen as the defender of apartheid South Africa and shows the disastrous consequences of that position for U.S. African policy."—Odd Arne Westad, author of Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750

"From 1960, as more and more African countries gained their independence, the racial policies of South Africa became a matter of global concern. Ryan Irwin has spotted a gap in the literature and filled it admirably, showing the complexities and ambiguities in the ways in which the international community responded to the apartheid regime."—Christopher Saunders, University of Cape Town

"In this ambitious book, Ryan Irwin recounts the intersecting histories of decolonization and the international struggle against apartheid in South Africa, from its mid-century beginnings to its triumph in the last decade of the 20th century. The very length of the struggle is an indication of its complexity and the genius of Gordian Knot is that it is able to capture it all."—Marilyn Young, New York University

"Situating the debate over apartheid in its global context, Ryan Irwin offers us a new perspective on postwar international history, and particularly on the intersections of the cold war and decolonization. Through this prism, this book shows how the rise of new nations in Africa influenced the dynamics of the cold war, the nature of the United Nations, and the direction of U.S. policy, and how it reshaped international society in ways that continue to matter today."—Erez Manela, author of The Wilsonian Moment

"Irwin's informative and eloquent study is unique in its focus on U.S. foreign policy toward Africa during an era defined by nonalignment, decolonization, the cold war, and the U.S. civil rights movement. Just as Jim Crow segregation was the 'Achilles heel' of the United States at the height of the cold war, the immoral apartheid regime in South Africa violated the vision of a U.S.-led liberal international order committed to decolonization and development. Despite the efforts of the United Nations Afro-Asian bloc to end the regime, the imperatives of American hegemony permitted an accommodation with apartheid by U.S. officialdom. With the limits of decolonization apparent, apartheid was undone, finally, by the international human rights and solidarity campaigns orchestrated by the African National Congress."—Kevin K. Gaines, University of Michigan

From the Publisher