Includes bibliographical references and index

The Early 1970s -- Liberation Struggles in Southern Africa -- “We Don’t Give a Damn about Rhodesia” -- Negotiating Independence -- Negotiating Independently -- The Big Gamble

Available to OhioLINK libraries

Open access. Unrestricted online access star

The 'Rhodesian crisis' of the 1960s and 1970s, and the early 1980s crisis of independent Zimbabwe, can be understood against the background of Cold War historical transformations brought on by, among other things, African decolonization in the 1960s; the failure of American power in Vietnam and the rise of Third World political power at the UN and elsewhere. In this African history of the diplomacy of decolonization in Zimbabwe, Timothy Lewis Scarnecchia examines the relationship and rivalry between Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe over many years of diplomacy, and how both leaders took advantage of Cold War racialized thinking about what Zimbabwe should be, including Anglo-American preoccupations with keeping whites from leaving after Independence

Specialized