Susan Williams is a historian and author based in London. She is best known for her more recent works on how Britain, the United States, and the rest of the Western World influenced or interfered in modern 20th century autonomy in African countries.

Career

Williams is a senior research fellow at the

Institute of Commonwealth Studies The Institute of Commonwealth Studies, founded in 1949, is the sole postgraduate academic institution in the United Kingdom devoted to the study of the Commonwealth. It is also home to the longest-running interdisciplinary and practice-oriente ...

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

. Her publications include ''The People's King: The True Story of the Abdication'', a book about the

abdication of Edward VIII In early December 1936, a constitutional crisis in the British Empire arose when King Edward VIII proposed to marry Wallis Simpson, an American socialite who was divorced from her first husband and was in the process of divorcing her second. ...

, published in 2003; and ''Colour Bar: The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation'', published in 2006, on which the 2016 film ''

A United Kingdom ''A United Kingdom'' is a 2016 biographical romantic drama film directed by Amma Asante and written by Guy Hibbert, based on the true-life romance of Seretse Khama, heir to the throne of the Bangwato Tribe in Serowe – one of many tribes fo ...

'' is based. The film was directed by Amma Asante, and stars

David Oyelowo David Oyetokunbo Oyelowo ( ; ; born 1 April 1976) is a British actor, director and producer. His accolades include a Critics' Choice Award and two NAACP Image Awards as well as nominations for three Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awar ...

as Seretse Khama and

Rosamund Pike Rosamund Mary Ellen Pike (born 1979) is an English actress and producer. Known for psychological thrillers and dramas, she is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Rosamund Pike, numerous accolades, including a Primetime Em ...

as Ruth Khama. Her book ''Who Killed Hammarskjold?'' (2011), about the 1961 death of the then-

Secretary-General of the United Nations The secretary-general of the United Nations (UNSG or UNSECGEN) is the chief administrative officer of the United Nations and head of the United Nations Secretariat, one of the United Nations System#Six principal organs, six principal organs of ...

, Dag Hammarskjöld, triggered a new UN investigation in 2015. In ''Spies in the Congo: America's Atomic Mission in World War II'' she tells an intricate tale regarding the formation of special unit of the US

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the first intelligence agency of the United States, formed during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines ...

(OSS), a forerunner of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

, to purchase and secretly extract all the

uranium Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...

from

Shinkolobwe Shinkolobwe, or Kasolo, or Chinkolobew, or Shainkolobwe, was a radium and uranium mine in the Haut-Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), located west of Likasi (formerly Jadotville), south of Kambove, and about northwe ...

Katanga Province Katanga was one of the four large provinces created in the Belgian Congo in 1914. It was one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1966 and 2015, when it was split into the Tanganyika Province, Tanganyika, Hau ...

Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (, ; ) was a Belgian colonial empire, Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960 and became the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville). The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Repu ...

. The purpose of this was to obtain the radioactive material and keep it out of the hands of the

Axis powers The Axis powers, originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis and also Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis, was the military coalition which initiated World War II and fought against the Allies of World War II, Allies. Its principal members were Nazi Ge ...

. The uranium was used in the bombing of

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has b ...

and

Nagasaki , officially , is the capital and the largest Cities of Japan, city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Founded by the Portuguese, the port of Portuguese_Nagasaki, Nagasaki became the sole Nanban trade, port used for tr ...

. Her latest book is ''White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa'', published in 2021.

Awards

She was the recipient of a 2023 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction. The Windham Campbell judges noted that: 'Susan Williams chronicles imperial legacies with a forensic eye, a historical mind, and a decolonial sensibility for African agency; her findings are as stunning as they are transformative.'

Books

* * * * * *

Notes

: on the abdication of Edward VIII : on the founding president of Botswana

References

External links

Official website
Living people 21st-century British historians 21st-century British women writers Academics of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London British women biographers British women historians Historians of the Democratic Republic of the Congo {{UK-historian-stub