Colonialism in Africa collapsed after World War II, opening the door to political and military intervention by Cold War powers that competed with the former imperial powers to control the decolonization process.  African nationalists courted, accommodated, and opposed external powers and limited their ability to impose solutions.  However, external support for African regimes that served outside interests led to decades of corruption and misrule that laid the foundations for many post-Cold War conflicts, which in turn attracted new waves of foreign intervention.  After the Cold War, the rationale for political and military intervention was no longer the “communist threat” or African liberation, but rather the “responsibility to protect” or the “war on terror.”  During both periods, humanitarian justifications frequently masked parochial interests, external remedies often failed to address underlying grievances, and African civil society was generally excluded from negotiations for a new order.  As a result, foreign political and military intervention often harmed the people they were officially intended to help.

Copies of Foreign Intervention in Africa will be available for purchase and signing.

Elizabeth Schmidt is professor of history at Loyola University Maryland.  She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Her books include: Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (2013); Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946-1958 (2007); Mobilizing the Masses: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Nationalist Movement in Guinea, 1939-1958 (2005); Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939 (1992); and Decoding Corporate Camouflage: U.S. Business Support for Apartheid (1980).  Her next book, Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War: Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the War on Terror, will be published by Ohio University Press.