Pedro Monaville traces a generation of Congolese student activists whose work following the Congo's independence became central to national politics and broader decolonization movements during the global 1960s.
On June 30, 1960-the day of the Congo's independence-Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba gave a fiery speech in which he conjured a definitive shift away from a past of colonial oppression toward a future of sovereignty, dignity, and justice. His assassination a few months later showed how much neocolonial forces and the Cold War jeopardized African movements for liberation. In Students of the World, Pedro Monaville traces a generation of Congolese student activists who refused to accept the foreclosure of the future Lumumba envisioned. These students sought to decolonize university campuses, but the projects of emancipation they articulated went well beyond transforming higher education. Monaville explores the modes of being and thinking that shaped their politics. He outlines a trajectory of radicalization in which gender constructions, cosmopolitan dispositions, and the influence of a dissident popular culture mattered as much as access to various networks of activism and revolutionary thinking. By illuminating the many worlds inhabited by Congolese students at the time of decolonization, Monaville charts new ways of writing histories of the global 1960s from Africa.
“"With his well-researched and meticulously wrought study, Monaville has conjured up a bygone world of possibilities that clashed with the realities of Africa's postcolonial hubris, a world that ended up crushed in the vortex of global politics. Students of the World possesses all the trappings of the kind of seminal works that pave the way for a historiographical renewal."”
"Students of the World is richly referenced in the endnotes and stands as an example of the creative possibilities of scholarly monographs. Students of the World will prove an enduring reference point for global histories of Cold War-era activism." - Ismay Milford (H-Soz-Kult) "With his well-researched and meticulously wrought study, Monaville has conjured up a bygone world of possibilities that clashed with the realities of Africa’s postcolonial hubris, a world that ended up crushed in the vortex of global politics. Students of the World possesses all the trappings of the kind of seminal works that pave the way for a historiographical renewal." - Didier Gondola (The Global Sixties) "This study is a significant, well-written contribution to the history of youth movements in the late 20th century. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals." - J. M. Rich (Choice) "The beauty of this book lies in both its content and form. . . . . Monaville’s book exemplifies an approach that integrates ‘theory and form’, thereby offering a valuable contribution to the historiography of student activism, decolonization, the Cold War, and the Global Sixties." - Emery Kalema (Journal of African History) "Pedro Monaville has written an eloquent, well-documented, and persuasive social, political, and intellectual history of how Congolese university students decolonized higher education and navigated authoritarianism during the 1950s and 1960s." - Joshua Castillo (International Journal of African Historical Studies) "There is no denying that Students of the World is a highly original and beautifully crafted book. Its portrayal of a lost political generation that was once a significant force in post-independence Congo attests to the sophistication and diversity of contemporary Congolese historiography. Congo and decolonisation specialists will ignore it at their peril." - Giacomo Macola (BMGN: Low Countries Historical Review) "[Students of the World] is a rigorous piece of scholarship, but it is not only Monaville's academic rigor that makes him a worthy steward of such a rich mosaic of Congolese letters and interview. It is equally his commitment to the care so obviously at the center of his intellectual labor in presenting an alternative history to the present that contributes to the ongoing detangling and generative effort of decolonization." - Madden Gilhooly (African Studies Quarterly) "Students of the World leaves its reader with a distinct sense of the many imagined alternatives to independent Congo's future that were fore closed on by Mobutu's ascension. These are stories often left out of Congolese history. This book fills in this scholarly chasm with an engaging, fluid narrative." - Emily Hardick (Africa Today) "... Students of the World is a significant contribution to student activism in the 1960s that deserves a wide audience as much for its methodology as for its moving elegy for a lost generation of Congolese intellectuals." - Jason Tatlock (Journal of Global South Studies) "Pedro Monaville has produced an exceedingly well-written study of Congolese student politics. The book brilliantly examines contests between students, colonial officials, nationalist politicians, university rectors, Catholic priests, and foreign agents jockeying for influence in what for nearly a decade was a key fulcrum of the Cold War. The author does an excellent job of reconstructing the often-fraught relations between Congolese students and powerful figures such as Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu." - G. Thomas Burgess (Commonwealth and Comparative Politics)
Pedro Monaville is Assistant Professor of History at New York University Abu Dhabi.
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