Introduction; 1. Swaggering empires and defiant 'new provinces'; 2. Bittersweet replicas of foreign experiences and reform; 3. Toward reorganization and reorientation: Eritrean fragmentation and East Timorese near-defeat; 4. Victims of their own success: the revitalized nationalist movements and their challenges; 5. Eritrean and East Timorese diplomacy of liberation; 6. To Asmara through Addis Ababa and Dili via Jakarta; 7. Winning insurgencies and counterinsurgencies in a changing global order; 8. The promise and quandary of 'infusing fresh blood' and 'inaugurating new politics'; Conclusion.
This book shows how Eritrea and East Timor developed sophisticated strategies to liberate their countries from colonialism, and emphasizes that these insurgencies avoided terrorism.
Awet Tewelde Weldemichael is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Kentucky. He is also Fernand Braudel Fellow at the French Humanities Foundation, University of Paris Diderot. He has worked as a political affairs officer for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in East Timor and as a long-term election observer with the Carter Center mission in Sudan.
'In Third World Colonialism and Strategies of Liberation, Awet
Tewelde Weldemichael narrates the experiences of these remarkable
but often under-appreciated nationalist movements during struggles
against both primary (European) and secondary (regional) colonial
powers with a rare combination of laser-like precision and
contextual breadth and depth that brings them alive and renders
them comprehensible on their own terms. The unique strength of this
work lies in the details he has ferreted out from key actors and
informants, much of it available for the first time, that gives
them both texture and density. In doing so, he provides us with one
of the most clear and compelling accounts so far on not one but two
intensely complex but vitally important political events,
traditionally treated as isolated anomalies.' Dan Connell, author
of Against All Odds: A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revolution
'Awet Tewelde Weldemichael's Third World Colonialism and Strategies
of Liberation … is a well-conceived and brilliantly written
comparative analysis of the colonial resistance of two Third World
wars of national liberation that were fought not against powerful
European or Asian colonialists, but against hegemonic states in
their own regions. The book is based on extensive fieldwork and
careful historical-political analysis of a subject that is often
ignored, and is a welcome addition to the field of comparative
historical analysis.' Edmond J. Keller, University of California,
Los Angeles
'Awet Tewelde Weldemichael has written an excellent history of two
liberation struggles: Eritrea's and East Timor's. The two stories
make for absorbing and instructive reading by anyone interested in
twentieth-century liberation movements. The detailed discussion of
the similarities and differences between the Eritrean and East
Timorese liberation struggles provides fascinating case studies for
history and comparative study buffs. The study re-examines the
premise of previously held theories and views on the power tactics
and strategies of survival of local groups engaged in a
life-and-death struggle, as well as what kind of political system
emerges as a result, and to what extent the armed struggle shapes
these systems. In that sense, this study makes a significant
contribution to historical and political studies.' Bereket Habte
Selassie, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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