The Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism: Spectacles of Suffering

2017/09/06 by Lasse Heerten · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Global Peace and Security Dynamics #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #Human Rights and Development #International Law and Human Rights

paper · doi:10.1017/9781316282243

openalex publication_date 2017/09/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15

Abstract

The emergences of Biafra -- The end of empire and the coming of postcolonial conflict -- The Biafran campaign for self-determination in a postcolonial world of states -- The transnational internationalization of the Biafran campaign -- Biafra on a global stage -- Creating "Biafra": the discovery of a civil war as humanitarian crisis -- "Biafran babies": humanitarian visions of postcolonial disaster -- Auschwitz in Africa? Biafra, Holocaust memory, and the language of rights -- Distant suffering and close concerns: Biafra and the Third World in the global sixties -- The ends and afterlives of Biafra -- Biafra, the internationalism of states and the question of genocide -- The end of Biafra, the end of the lobby -- The afterlives of Biafra

Cited by

• James Roland Walter Parker [wikipedia]

Related

• ‘And starvation is the grim reaper’: the American Committee to Keep Biafra Alive and the genocide question during the Nigerian civil war, 1968–70
• ‘Ours is a war of survival’: Biafra, Nigeria and arguments about genocide, 1966–70
• The Nigeria–Biafra war: postcolonial conflict and the question of genocide
• Humanitarian encounters: Biafra, NGOs and imaginings of the Third World in Britain and Ireland, 1967–70
• A history of the Republic of Biafra law, crime, and the Nigerian Civil War