Kalgan consulate, the establishment of informant networks, military reports, the Yalta Conference and negotiations in Tokyo. It includes the roles played along the
way to eventual diplomatic relations by Samuel Sokobin,
Owen Lattimore, Edgar Snow and Mike Mansfield,
among others.
Alicia Campi, a former FSO, is president of the
Mongolia Society and the U.S.-Mongolia Advisory
Group, and heads the Chinggis Khan Foundation. She
is on the staff of the American Foreign Service Association. A career diplomat, Ragchaa Baasan served as
first secretary in the Mongolian Embassy in Washington, D.C., with dual accreditation to Mexico, from 1997
to 2000. After retirement in 2001, she was a special researcher in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University. She is now a freelance
consultant in Ulaanbaatar.
Negritude Agonistes: Assimilation
Against Nationality in the French-
Speaking Caribbean and Guyane
Christian Filostrat, Africana
Homestead Legacy Publishers,
2008, $36.00, paperback,
240 pages.
This account of the consequences of the French colonization of the Caribbean and Guyana gives a general
overview of the history and an analysis of the relation of
forces and people in Haiti, Guyana, Guadeloupe and
Martinique. According to Filostrat, it is an effort to
come to grips with the differences between “
Haitian-ism” and “Negritude” in terms of the historical, sociopolitical and literary roots from which both arose.
While Negritude Agonistes is certainly an accessible
and informative primer on French colonialism and reactions to French policies in the West Indies from the
16th century to the 20th, the real meat of Filostrat’s work
comes from his scholarship on the Negritude literary
and political movement of the 1930s. In particular, the
book includes excerpts from a previously missing issue of
L’Etudiant Noir Journal Mensuel de l’Association des
Etudiants Martiniquais en France ( The Black Student
Journal), in which Aimé Césaire first used the term
Negritude. For years, scholars had doubted that the
issue — Volume 1, Number 3 (May-June) — still existed. Filostrat also identifies some of the overlooked or
forgotten platforms of the movement in its early days,
and presents previously unpublished poetry by Léon
Damas and an interview with Frantz Fanon’s widow.
Christian Filostrat, a retired FSO, served overseas in
Senegal, Congo, Romania and Haiti. His last posting
was as diplomat-in-residence at Howard University from
1999 to 2002. Currently living in Paris, where he works
to support the rights of minorites around the world,
Filostrat is also the author of a novel, The Beggars’ Pursuit (see p. 32).
South Carolina 1775 —
A Crucible Year
Edmund Alexander Bator,
American History Imprints,
2009, $26.95, hardcover,
352 pages.
“This is a book that every
American interested in the real
story of the nation’s history should
read,” says historian Thomas Fleming in his foreword to
South Carolina 1775. “With careful attention to seemingly minor details and the role that personality and self-interest play in unfolding events, Edmund Bator has told
us in this account of the first year of the American Revolution in South Carolina just how fragile and tentative
the enterprise was, beyond the borders of New England.”
Bator’s account chronicles the reaction in South Carolina to the call of the First Continental Congress for
the colonies to unite against Great Britain. “
Low-coun-try” leaders tended to lean toward the rebels, while
“back-country” leaders were less sure of the utility of
breaking ties with the motherland. Based primarily on
original sources, including letters and diaries of the individuals involved, the book affords unique insights into
the difficult and turbulent political process in South Carolina as the Revolutionary War got under way.
Edmund Alexander Bator is a retired FSO, whose
25-year diplomatic career took him to Finland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Kuwait and Washington, D.C. After retiring,
he became a guest lecturer on the Middle East at
Oglethorpe University while continuing to pursue research in early American history and genealogy.
Cold War Confrontations: U.S. Exhibitions
and their Role in the Cultural Cold War
Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan, Lars Muller
Publishers, 2008, $49.95, hardcover, 424 pages.
In this book, Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan
demonstrate the importance of world fairs and international exhibitions to the political, cultural and commercial battles of the Cold War.
