Mecca of Revolution traces the ideological and methodological evolution of the Algerian Revolution, showing how an anticolonial nationalist struggle culminated in independent Algeria's ambitious agenda to reshape not only its own society, but international society too. In this work, Jeffrey James Byrne first examines the changing politics and international strategies of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) during its war with France, including the embrace of more encompassing visions of "decolonization" that necessitated socio-economic transformation on a global scale along Marxist/Leninist/Fanonist/Maoist/Guevarian lines. After independence, the Algerians played a leading role in Arab-African affairs as well as the far-reaching Third World project that challenged structural inequalities in the international system and the world economy, including initiatives such as the Non-Aligned Movement, the G77, and the Afro-Asian movement. At the same time, Algiers, nicknamed the "Mecca of Revolution," became a key nexus in an intercontinental transnational network of liberation movements, revolutionaries, and radical groups of various kinds.

Drawing on unprecedented access to archival materials from the FLN, the independent Algerian state, and half a dozen other countries, Byrne narrates a postcolonial, or "South-South," international history. He situates dominant paradigms such as the Cold War in the larger context of decolonization and sheds new light on the relationships between the emergent elites of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America.

Mecca of Revolution shows how Third Worldism evolved from a subversive transnational phenomenon into a mode of elite cooperation that reinforced the authority of the post-colonial state. In so doing, the Third World movement played a key role in the construction of the totalizing international order of the late-twentieth century.

Jeffrey James Byrne's profile page

Jeffrey James Byrne is Assistant Professor of History at the University of British Columbia.

"[S]tands out in how clearly the author demonstrates both the vibrancy of post-imperial possibilities and the process by which this openness to transnational possibilities disappeared into a single state-centred vision....[O]ffers insights to African, Cold War and International historians, as well as scholars of internationalism."

--Elizabeth Banks, Centre for the Study of Internationalism

"Jeffrey Byrne has written a book that definitively places Algeria at the center of the Third World Project. His sources are as wide as his geographical reach, bringing this remarkable experiment in national liberation to life in an age when distress is the mode of discourse about the Global South."

--Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South

"Byrne's study is an important contribution to our understanding of the realpolitik of lesser sovereign states whose liberation thrust them into Cold War battlefronts. It gets us closer to a more analytic view of this world, the ideological battle lines of which still enshroud our thinking Mecca of Revolution will remain indispensable reading for anyone wishing to understand Global South-South relations after colonial liberation."

--American Historical Review

"A conceptually-refreshing narrative that refocuses attention on the statist, regional, and global politics of liberation movements and South-South diplomacy in the mid-twentieth century...Byrne offers a corrective to the dominant narrative of the Cold War"

--Dina Matar, Diplomatic History

"Recommended."

--CHOICE

"[T]his book offers a fascinating glimpse of how North-South questions often came into conflict with East-West logics, foregrounding the multilateral nature of non-alignment. In a field that has often studied Algeria's policies through the prism of France, this book is a groundbreaking intervention."

--Muriam Haleh Davis, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"Innovative and thought-provoking...This book...will certainly become a standard in discussions on the global Cold War, decolonization and Third World politics...An important intervention in several ongoing debates in international relations and diplomatic history."

--Moritz Feichtinger, H-Soz-Kult

"[A]n expansive and excellent history of Third World internationalism detailing the era from the Bandung Conference of 1955 to the overthrow of President Ahmed Ben Bella ten years later...It is a welcomed and valuable addition to the histories of Algeria, France, the Third World, the Cold War, and North-South and South-South relations. Its breadth is admirable...Professor Byrne's international archival research is impressive. He not only locates Algeria at multiple diplomatic 'interstices' bridging countries and continents (p. 251), but also himself--a courageous, ambitious endeavor resulting in a considerable, erudite achievement."

--Phillip C. Naylor, The International Journal of African Historical Studies

"This is an important book, a substantial contribution to scholarship both in terms of the archival sources which it brings to light and the framework of analysis which it sets up to be applied and tested in other cases."

--Natalya Vince, Reviews in History

"Mecca of Revolution should make a lasting impact in fields including the study of mid-century decolonization movements, Third World internationalism, and the global Cold War, among others."

--Jeffrey S. Ahlman, African Studies Quarterly