Blue Helmet Bureaucrats
Book description
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…
Why read it?
1 author picked Blue Helmet Bureaucrats as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Even after Europe’s colonies became independent, this book reveals earlier political hierarchies were preserved through a surprising channel: the United Nations and its peacekeeping forces.
I loved this book for multiple reasons, but above all, because it shows how practices we consider “humanitarian,” in fact, perpetuated power imbalances between former empires and their former colonies. It also helped me to think about the United Nations and its global role in new ways. Perhaps most importantly, it changed my understanding of international peacekeeping, showing that its history was often more violent than the name might imply.
While focused on the decades…
From Julia's list on the origins of modern humanitarianism and its consequences for the contemporary world.
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