Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order by Jeffrey James Byrne (review)

The study of decolonization has boomed in recent decades, even if scholars have often struggled to identify the importance of the term itself. Was decolonization the moment at which official sovereignty was handed over to a formerly colonized population, or a process by which economic, political, and social structures were reoriented to reflect the desires of the autochthone population? Is the term merely a veneer that obscures the establishment of neocolonial relationships? These issues are related to a second tendency in the field, which is a prevailing concern with the relationship between colony and metropole, or between the global south and the global north more broadly. Byrne’s work addresses both of these lacunae successfully, documenting not only how Algeria’s experience of decolonization reconstituted the global political order but also interrogating the very meaning of the term “Third World.”

Byrne’s argument that the modes of international collaboration ultimately “legitimized and zealously defended the authority of the post-colonial state” is convincing (10). His use of post-independence Algerian archives (specifically those of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) allows him to reorient the discussion of the “Cold War in the Third World” to a study of “the Third World’s Cold War” (8). His firm grounding in international and diplomatic history helps to uncover the ideological and pragmatic choices made by the National Liberation Front (fln). His conclusion that the Algerian revolutionaries preferred actions to ideas is compelling, though it posits a dichotomy between theory and praxis that would have benefited from an engagement with other disciplinary methods such as anthropology and sociology. Indeed, despite this argument, the multiple ideological discussions of the fln is one of the most fascinating aspects of this book. Students of revolutionary movements will hardly be surprised by the fact that these nuances were often sacrificed for the ultimate goal of achieving national sovereignty.

The first chapter of the book details how Algerian nationalists channeled the revolutionary methods of Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Min, and even the Irish war of independence. The second chapter, about Algeria’s Cuban inspiration and role in the Belgian Congo, shows how the Third World project was shaped as much by the dynamics among countries in the global south as by these countries’ individual relationships with the global north. Byrne does an admirable job of elucidating how Algerians pitted the Soviets against the American and Chinese super-powers, but the real success of the chapter is in documenting how Algeria found itself at the crossroads of various diplomatic crises in the Third World. For example, a wonderful anecdote recounts how Houari Boumedienne’s army went to meetings wearing combat fatigues, smoking cigars, and even carrying revolvers, highlighting the Third World as a rich terrain of experimentation and cultural exchange (77).

The economic doctrines of non-alignment discussed in the third chapter show that the fln borrowed from French modes of analysis, suggesting that Charles de Gaulle may have supported Ahmed Ben Bella in the fratricidal tensions that followed independence. Ben Bella’s notion of an Algerian socialism that was sprinkled with Islamic principles ultimately sat uneasily with the Soviet’s industrialized socialism, helping to push the fln toward China as well as smaller countries such as Yugoslavia.

The second half of the book turns its attention to Africa and the Middle East. Byrne argues that no enduring, stable political links were possible between Algeria and either the Maghreb or Mashreq precisely because of the depth of the connections that bound Algeria to these two regions. At the same time, the fln continued to be a “gateway” between Africa and Latin America and had a nuanced strategy in Sub-Saharan Africa. The question of race is also fascinating, in regard not only to black Africa but also Chinese attempts to portray itself as a “colored” race (213). Byrne largely takes these racial categories as given; an engagement with critical race theory might have...