From Lumumba to Gbagbo

In recent years, the Euro-American powers have made multiple armed incursions into Africa. The election of President Obama, greeted by most Africans as providential for their centuries-old troubled relations with the West, instead inaugurated a destructive coalition against Africa. In places like Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt and Libya, the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have supported military intrusions, arbitrary imprisonments, deportations and political assassinations under the guise of bringing freedom and democracy to benighted Africa.
The destabilization of Africa, the division of the continent into lawless zones controlled by thuggish warlords, the displacement of millions of refugees and the systematic sacking of Africa’s resources are telling: In Africa, the West was not on a goodwill mission. This book examines the West’s policy of aggression in Africa over the last 50 years as a legacy of colonialism, with human and economic costs that are radicalizing African nationalists.

K. Martial Frindéthié is a professor of Francophone studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. His research interests include literature and film and the intersection of literature and political-ideological imagination.

K. Martial Frindéthié
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 288
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2016
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9404-0
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2318-4
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Preface 1

Introduction 3

1. Why Are We So Blest? The ­Euro-American Anxiety with Exceptionalism 11

2. Africa Caught in the Eddy of the ­Euro-American Quest for Exceptionalism 27

3. The ­Euro-American War on Algeria: Could a Mother So Yearn for Freedom but Keep Her Children in Bondage? 47

4. The ­Sarkozy-Obama Epic African Adventure 67

5. Hunting Laurent Gbagbo 85

6. Côte d’Ivoire: The International Community Hiding No More 127

7. Côte d’Ivoire: The International Community’s Panglossism 168

8. We Shall Remember as Far Back as Lumumba 197

9. The Congo’s Bumpy Road to Independence 213

10. There Shall Be Wars of Liberation 233

Conclusion 247

Chapter Notes 251

Bibliography 263

Index 271