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Far from having only marginal significance and generating a ‘subdued’ response among African Americans, as some historians have argued, the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) collided at full velocity with the conflicting discourses and ideas by which black Americans sought to understand their place in the United States and the world in the late 1960s. Black liberal civil rights leaders leapt to offer their service as agents of direct diplomacy during the conflict, seeking to preserve Nigerian unity; grassroots activists from New York to Kansas organised food-drives, concerts and awareness campaigns in support of humanitarian aid for Biafran victims of starvation; while other pro-Biafran black activists warned of links between black ‘genocide’ in Biafra and the US alike. This thesis is the first to recover and analyse at length the extent, complexity and character of such African American responses to the Nigerian Civil War. Drawing on extensive use of private papers, activist literature, government records and especially the black press, it charts the way African Americans conceptualised, over time and in complex ways, their varied understandings of issues such as black internationalist solidarities, territorial sovereignty and political viability, humanitarian compassion and great power realpolitik, as well as colonial and neo-colonial influence in Africa. The thesis initially explores the longer twentieth century history of African American engagement with Nigeria by way of establishing context, before providing in-depth analysis of the key initiatives and events that comprised African American engagement with the civil war. Chapters move chronologically and thematically to discuss direct diplomatic efforts to broker peace, African American responses to alleged genocide in Biafra, the rise and fall of pro-Biafran political support, and the latter’s loss to what emerged as a stronger political bloc of those supporting Nigerian political unity. Situated methodologically and historiographically at the intersection of scholarship on black internationalism and the international history of the Nigerian Civil War, this thesis demonstrates the way the civil war not only provoked intense activism, but did so in ways that fundamentally connected with the central ideas, themes and concerns of the black freedom struggle in the United States.

The permeability of various volcanic materials is an essential parameter governing the explosive behaviour of volcanic systems, as well as being important in many other scientific and industrial applications in environments where fluid flow is a major concern. Combining experimental rock deformation methods with field measurements, numerical modelling, and systematic analyses of rock microstructure, this work explores the complexities involved in the formation and destruction of porous networks in magma and volcanic rocks, addressing how permeability can evolve in volcanic systems. Competition between dilatant processes (which increase porosity) and compactant processes (which decrease porosity) influences the fluid transport properties both in the conduit-dwelling magma and in solidified edifice rock. These processes include (but are not limited to) vesiculation and bubble growth in the conduit, fracture and compaction of magma, post-emplacement thermal or mechanical fracturing, strain-induced deformation, and viscous sintering.; La perméabilité est une propriété essentielle notamment pour déterminer la nature explosive des volcans, ainsi que pour de nombreuses autres applications scientifiques et industrielles dans les environnements où l'écoulement du fluide est une préoccupation majeure. Combinant des méthodes expérimentales de déformation des roches en laboratoire, des approches de terrain, de la modélisation numérique, et des analyses systématiques de microstructure, ce travail a mis en évidence le caractère complexe de la formation et la destruction des réseaux poreux dans le magma et des roches volcaniques. La compétition entre les processus dilatants (qui augmentent la porosité) et compactants (qui la diminuent) exerce une influence sur les propriétés de transport des fluides à la fois dans le magma et dans la roche volcanique solidifiée. Ces processus incluent la vésiculation et la croissance des bulles dans le conduit, la rupture et la compression du magma, la fracturation issue du refroidissement et fracturation induite par le transport, ainsi que la déformation pendant ou après la mise en place des matériaux, et la densification par frittage.