Revue d'histoire contemporaine de l'Afrique

Special issue edited by Élisabeth Dikizeko (Imaf, Paris) and Karine Ramondy (Sirice, Paris).

Editorial coordination within RHCA by Romain Tiquet.

This new issue of RHCA is not intended as a biography of Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961), the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo. Indeed, this issue seeks less to draw up a historiographical account of the rise and fall of the Congolese leader, or of the Congolese crisis (1960-1965), than to understand the genealogy of a global phenomenon based on the "Lumumba" object of study. As such, this dossier seeks to grasp the scope and significance of Lumumba's name around the world through a variety of materials, in order to understand the mechanisms of the international construction of an African political figure, known worldwide not least because of his assassination.