Description: In the summer of 1968, audiences around the globe were shocked when newspapers and television stations confronted them with photographs of starving children in the secessionist Republic of Biafra. This global concern fundamentally changed how the Nigerian Civil War was perceived: an African civil war that had been fought for one year without fostering any substantial interest from international publics became 'Biafra' - the epitome of humanitarian crisis. Based on archival research from North America, Western Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, this book is the first comprehensive study of the global history of the conflict. A major addition to the flourishing history of human rights and humanitarianism, it argues that the global moment 'Biafra' is closely linked to the ascendance of human rights, humanitarianism, and Holocaust memory in a postcolonial world. The conflict was a key episode for the re-structuring of the relations between the West and the Third World.
Brief description: Lasse Heerten is currently head of the 'Imperial Gateway: Hamburg, the German Empire, and the Making of a Global Port' project, funded by the DFG (German Research Council) at the Freie Universität Berlin. He has previously served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Human Rights at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds graduate degrees from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, University of Oxford and the Freie Universität Berlin. His graduate studies were supported by a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes).