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Blue Helmet Bureaucrats

United Nations Peacekeeping and the Reinvention of Colonialism, 1945–1971

Margot Tudor (University of Exeter)

$160.95

Hardback

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English
Cambridge University Press
27 April 2023
This history of colonial legacies in UN peacekeeping operations from 1945–1971 reveals how United Nations peacekeeping staff reconfigured the functions of global governance and sites of diplomatic power in the post-war world. Despite peacekeeping operations being criticised for their colonial underpinnings, our understanding of the ways in which colonial actors and ideas influenced peacekeeping practices on the ground has been limited and imprecise. In this multi-archival history, Margot Tudor investigates the UN's formative armed missions and uncovers the officials that orchestrated a reinvention of colonial-era hierarchies for Global South populations on the front lines of post-colonial statehood. She demonstrates how these officials exploited their field-based access to perpetuate racial

prejudices, plot political interference, and foster protracted inter-communal divisions in post-colonial conflict contexts. Bringing together histories of humanitarianism, decolonisation, and the Cold War, Blue Helmet Bureaucrats sheds new light on the mechanisms through which sovereignty was negotiated and re-negotiated after 1945.

By:  
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 235mm,  Width: 158mm,  Spine: 24mm
Weight:   630g
ISBN:   9781009264921
ISBN 10:   1009264923
Series:   Human Rights in History
Pages:   310
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Margot Tudor is a postdoctoral research fellow at University of Exeter. She won the BISA Michael Nicolson Thesis Prize in 2021 and her article, 'Gatekeepers to Decolonisation', won the ISA History Section's Merze Tate Award in 2022.

Reviews for Blue Helmet Bureaucrats: United Nations Peacekeeping and the Reinvention of Colonialism, 1945–1971

'From the Sinai to Gaza, from the Congo to West Papua, Margot Tudor's Blue Helmet Bureaucrats exposes how United Nations peacekeepers inherited the practices and mindsets of colonial administration. Tudor's crisp account of the reality of liberal internationalism is revelatory for students of the United Nations and decolonization.' Timothy Nunan, University of Regensburg 'Margot Tudor is among the brightest of a new generation of historians illuminating a lost international past - in Blue Helmet Bureaucrats she sets her clear eyed vision on the problematic politics of UN peacekeeping in the post-Second World War. This thick history sets the complex truth above all else; we see the legacies of colonialism, the limits of good intentions, and the real humans involved.' Glenda Sluga, European University Institute 'Margot Tudor's account of the early years of UN peacekeeping reveals the power of mid-level UN intermediaries to limit the sovereignty of smaller postcolonial states, thus ensuring their alliance with a liberal internationalist order. Blue Helmet Bureaucrats provides a meticulously researched historical reckoning with the imperial origins of liberal internationalism.' Meredith Terretta, University of Ottawa


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