"The Secret Lives of Dennis Phombeah: Decolonization, the Cold War, and African Political Intelligence, 1953–1974". Issue 1 (2nd January 2021)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- "The Secret Lives of Dennis Phombeah: Decolonization, the Cold War, and African Political Intelligence, 1953–1974". Issue 1 (2nd January 2021)
- Main Title:
- "The Secret Lives of Dennis Phombeah: Decolonization, the Cold War, and African Political Intelligence, 1953–1974"
- Authors:
- Brennan, James R.
- Abstract:
- Abstract: Processes of decolonization in the context of the Cold War provided enormous opportunities for nationalist figures to parlay insider nationalist knowledge into significant metropolitan influence. This article offers an 'agent-focused' rather than 'agency-focused' approach to the study of Cold War intelligence competition in Africa's decolonization through a study of the career of Dennis Phombeah, a Nyasalander by birth and Tanganyikan nationalist figure who came to work for multiple foreign intelligence agencies. While itself a single case study, this article suggest that multiple intelligence agencies placed a high premium on acquiring a basic understanding of the internal politics of newly-independent African countries, which were otherwise rendered deliberately opaque by the states themselves as a common sovereignty-preserving device. Using intelligence records from Britain, Czechoslovakia and Portugal, a picture emerges of cross-rival institutional dependency on informants from the peripheries who were empowered by their years at metropolitan centers, offering a challenging perspective to institutional-focused studies of Cold War intelligence.
- Is Part Of:
- International history review. Volume 43:Issue 1(2021)
- Journal:
- International history review
- Issue:
- Volume 43:Issue 1(2021)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 43, Issue 1 (2021)
- Year:
- 2021
- Volume:
- 43
- Issue:
- 1
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2021-0043-0001-0000
- Page Start:
- 153
- Page End:
- 169
- Publication Date:
- 2021-01-02
- Subjects:
- Tanzania -- MI5 -- Czechoslovakia -- Portugal -- Intelligence
History -- Periodicals
Histoire
History
Internationale politiek
Periodicals
Electronic journals
905 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.tandfonline.com/ ↗
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rinh20/current ↗
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rinh20 ↗
http://jstor.org/journals/07075332.html ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1080/07075332.2020.1776750 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0707-5332
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 15703.xml