LAUSR

established secondary sources. Apart from occasional references to archival newspaper reports, the book offers little by way of new primary evidence. The book’s originality lies in its synthesis of extant secondary sources and the author’s bold interpretations of these sources. One example of the book’s analytical contributions is Nault’s answer to a lingering question for historians of Africa: If Africans and African events have been so decisive in shaping global human rights, why hasn’t this been adequately acknowledged in human rights historiography? One reason, Nault offers, is Western authors’ tendency to emphasise first-generation rights at the expense of ‘third-generation’ rights that were shaped by Africans. Another reason why Africa’s influence on contemporary human rights has largely gone unrecognised is the tendency of Western scholars to question the motives and integrity of Third World actors employing human rights discourses. If such actors are portrayed as being motivated solely by personal, political, or economic gain, then the Global South’s influence on contemporary human rights concepts can be conveniently dismissed or overlooked (p. 131). In the emphasis by Western scholars on the instrumentalist use of human rights discourse by African leaders, they tend to gloss over how Western actors themselves have also wielded human rights rhetoric for self-interested purposes. This is a book that needed to be written. It joins a small but growing list of historical studies of human rights from the perspective of the non-Western world. It offers a bold new interpretative perspective on human rights history and unique insights into our understanding of the place of Africa and the ‘Third World’ in the development of modern human rights.