The Union des Populations du Cameroun and Third World Internationalism: Solidarity, Cooperation, and Abandonment, 1955-1970
Beginning in the early 20 century, and culminating at the Bandung conference in 1955, the Third World began to consolidate itself as an international bloc around a philosophy of self rule and international solidarity. Cameroon’s Union des Populations the Cameroun (UPC) embraced this project from its inception, and maintained a strong internationalist agenda throughout its existence as it struggled for Cameroon’s independence, first from French trusteeship, and then from what was, in its view, an illegitimate neo-colonial government. International solidarity was not merely a rhetorical tool for the UPC, but was rather an essential part of their strategy to achieve their national goals. The party attempted to put the objectives of Third World solidarity in to practice through a number of projects, most notably in the cultivation of personal and political relationships between the party’s elite and emerging Third World Leaders, and educational and military exchange. This work is intended to provide a body of historical evidence of the participation of the UPC in the Third World Internationalist Movement. Contacts: Dr. Willibroad Dze NgwaA professor of History and International Relations at the University of Yaounde I, as well as the director of the secondary school at Mario Academic Complex and the founder and head of a Peace and Conflict NGO, Willibroad conducts research on the UPC, and is also knowledgeable on a number of other historical subjects. He is a great resource for anyone interested in studying history, or any of the contemporary conflicts going on in Cameroon today. Tel: 77 65 93 65; e-mail: dzewing@yahoo.com Jacob TatsitsaJacob is currently writing his dissertation on the relationship between Bamileke migration and the UPC’s armed conflict. He has been researching the UPC for well over ten years, has UPC contacts all over the country, and has worked on several international projects concerning the party’s history. He is another great resource for anyone interested in the UPC. Tel: 75 66 75 90; e-mail: tatsitsa@yahoo.fr
DISASTER RISK IN THE LAKE NYOS AREA, CAMEROON: EFFECTS OF THE GAS HAZARD AND SOCIALLY PRODUCED VULNERABILITY
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W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line
This groundbreaking study of W.E.B. DuBois simultaneously analyses the political thought of one of the leading black American intellectuals and activists of this century, provides a model for the study of the history of political thought, and by examining recent DuBois scholarship, offers a penetrating interpretation of contemporary black thought. The book departs from existing DuBois scholarship by locating the sources of DuBois's thinking in the cauldron of reform-oriented American intellectual life at the end of the nineteenth century, and follows through the course of his career the ways that his early commitments persisted in his basic views regarding such pivotal issues as the relation of science and progress, social stratification among black Americans and in general, and rational social organization. While DuBois's substantive political programmes changed over time, for example in his support for defensive organizing behind the walls of segregation during the 1930s and his rapprochement with the Communist left in his last two decades, Reed argues that those changes do not reflect fundamental shifts in the structure of his thinking but were pragmatic responses to concrete political circumstances. When situated within their own constitutive contexts, these changing responses reveal their compatibility, if not coherence, with DuBois's basic, essentially Fabian socialist world view as first elaborated in The Philadelphia Negro. W.E.B. DuBois and American Political Thought's interpretation of DuBois is also an argument about the fundamental connections between Afro-American political debate and broader patterns of political discourse. This argument is linked to a path-breaking critique of dominant tendencies in Afro-American intellectual historiography and their ideological foundations, as well as to a sophisticated argument in support of an alternative, historically generativist approach to the study of the history of political thought.