Students of the World: Global 1968 and Decolonization in the Congo by Pedro Monaville (review)

Reviewed by: Students of the World: Global 1968 and Decolonization in the Congo by Pedro Monaville Sacha Hepburn Students of the World: Global 1968 and Decolonization in the Congo. By Pedro Monaville. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. ix + 341 pp. Hardcover 107. 95, paperback 29. 95, e-book 29. 95. In Students of the World, Pedro Monaville examines the history of the student movement in Congo from its inception under Belgian colonial rule through the first decade of independence. The book focuses particularly on the 1960s, tracing how Congolese students were radicalized by their experiences of political violence, government crisis, and Cold War politics. Students critiqued the political classes and the limits of independence and sought to fully decolonize their universities and Congolese society. The book successfully highlights the profound impacts of this activism on Congo's path to decolonization and reveals the global imaginations and networks of a generation reckoning with the devastating impacts of neocolonialism, foreign intervention, and authoritarianism. The study draws on a rich body of sources from across the globe, including diverse and rare written records, oral interviews, and ethnographic observations. The book's early chapters provide key context, examining the impacts of global communications, particularly postal correspondences, on Congolese education and politics. Chapter 1 focuses on the colonial period, exploring End Page 329 how young literate Congolese used the postal system to access books, pamphlets, and newspapers, communicate with the world, and circumvent colonial constraints. Future prime minister Patrice Lumumba's early work and education provides an interesting case study. Chapter 2 turns to the chaotic years of decolonization, considering the increased importance of international post to literate Congolese during this period of transformation, crisis, and neocolonial interventions. Monaville also uses letters to explore how young men understood their place in the world, their politics, and their masculinity. The theme of education runs through the book. Chapter 3 explores the tensions inherent in the colonial education system. The colonial state used schooling as a tool for social stratification and control, but education also provided students with the tools to challenge colonial power. The revolutionary and cosmopolitan potential of education was fully realized on university campuses. Chapter 4 considers the development of higher education and the particular history of Congo's first university, Lovanium. While Lovanium was established to train an elite class of colonial subjects to work within and uphold the colonial system, Lovanium's students gradually came to reject both these confines and the racism of white university staff and to engage in anti-colonial and nationalist politics. These chapters show the male gendered construction of education in late colonial and early postcolonial Congo. Female students couldn't access secondary education until the late 1950s, and women's entry to university was limited until after independence. The following chapters consider how student politics were radicalized during the Congo crisis of the 1960s, and particularly following the assassination of Lumumba in 1961. This period involved civil unrest, political violence, and an internationalization of Congolese politics. The Cold War loomed large, driving foreign intervention into Congolese affairs and shaping interactions between students and their interlocutors in the Western and Eastern blocs. Chapter 5 considers the ambiguities of student politics in this period, looking particularly at the formation of the General Union of Congolese Students and its relations with the American student movement. The following two chapters trace students' responses to Lumumbist armed rebellions, examining students' humanitarian activity in conflict areas, their championing of revolutionary and left-wing politics, participation as combatants, and work as propagandists. A theme of unfinished decolonization is woven throughout the narrative. This is stark in Chapters 5 to 7 and prominent too in Chapters 8 and 9, which cover Congo's descent into authoritarianism under General Mobutu. Chapter 8 shows how Mobutu initially cultivated a close relationship with students, an "unnatural alliance" that the students hoped to manipulate to achieve their End Page 330 nationalist and decolonizing goals. By the late 1960s, this alliance had broken down and the regime set out to crush student dissent with violence and forced conscription into the military. Interestingly, Monaville shows that it was during this period of repression that women began entering university in sizeable. . .