“As Proud as Lucifer”: A Tunisian Diplomat in Thomas Jefferson’s America*
Jason Zeledon
Diplomatic History published 8 October 2015, 10.1093/dh/dhv052
Raging Rivers and Propaganda Weevils: Transnational Disaster Relief, Cold War Politics, and the 1954 Danube and Elbe Floods
Julia F. Irwin
Diplomatic History published 8 October 2015, 10.1093/dh/dhv053
Jason Zeledon
Diplomatic History published 8 October 2015, 10.1093/dh/dhv052
Raging Rivers and Propaganda Weevils: Transnational Disaster Relief, Cold War Politics, and the 1954 Danube and Elbe Floods
Julia F. Irwin
Diplomatic History published 8 October 2015, 10.1093/dh/dhv053
Imperial Standards: Colonial Currencies, Racial Capacities, and Economic Knowledge during the Philippine-American War
Lumba, A. E. S., 2015-10-09 11:55:05 AM
Recent historical work has illustrated the importance of the Philippine-American War in the twentieth-century formation of American empire. These studies, however, tend to efface important tensions between political and economic forms of imperialism, seeing capital as merely another instrument of sovereign rule. In response, this article illustrates that wartime imperial encounters in the colonial Philippines from 1898 to 1903 troubled the capacity of American empire to hold authority over the disorder caused by a seemingly autonomous capitalist market. Indeed, the market appeared to the military colonial government as a force that could not only limit American authority, but could also upturn racial and labor hierarchies. Tensions over the market surfaced especially in and through: the fiscal policies of the occupying military government, the mundane daily interactions between Americans and local retailers in the cities, suspicions over foreign banks, and the disbursement of wages to soldiers. As a response to this threatening political and economic disorder, one of the first steps of the American colonial state was to employ publically renowned financial expert, Charles Conant, to institute a new Philippine currency system. Racial capacities of colonial subjects—both ethnically Chinese and "native" Filipinos—to understand the truths of the capitalist market and obey colonial authority consequently shaped Conant’s design for a new currency system.American Asylum: The United States and the Campaign to Transplant the Technical League, 1939-1940
Ekbladh, D., 2015-10-09 11:55:05 AM
In 1939–1940, internationalists, with the approval of the Roosevelt administration, campaigned to transplant key technical organs of the League of Nations to the United States to aid in postwar planning and prevent fascist forces in Europe from co-opting the institution.American-Iranian Alliances: International Education, Modernization, and Human Rights during the Pahlavi Era
Shannon, M. K., 2015-10-09 11:55:05 AM
The tension between "modernization" and "rights" defined the relationship between Americans and Iranians from the 1950s through the 1970s. The dynamic interplay between these two transnational currents is best understood through the lens of international education. U.S. policy makers envisaged Western-educated Iranians as the bastion of pro-Americanism required to provide the cultural underpinnings of the Washington–Tehran alliance. But the influx of Iranian students to American campuses globalized U.S. institutions of higher education and, in the process, produced an alternate alliance of Iranian youths and progressive Americans that rejected Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s authoritarian model of development, called for the realization of human rights in Iran, and revealed the contradictions inherent in a U.S. strategy that promoted student exchange while at the same time supporting the shah as an agent of modernization and anti-Communism.To Support a "Brother in Christ": Evangelical Groups and U.S.-Guatemalan Relations during the Rios Montt Regime
Turek, L. F., 2015-10-09 11:55:05 AM
After Ríos Montt, an evangelical Christian, seized power in Guatemala in a 1982 military coup, U.S. evangelical missionaries and parachurch organizations supported his regime through public outreach, fundraising, and congressional lobbying. Despite mounting evidence that Ríos Montt’s campaign against Guatemala’s "communist insurgency" involved the mass killing of indigenous Mayans, conservative evangelical groups in the United States argued that the dictator’s Christian faith would compel him to improve the country’s human rights situation. This essay explores the theological beliefs underpinning evangelical support for Ríos Montt and contends that backing from U.S. and Guatemalan evangelicals for his regime and for Reagan administration’s efforts to extend military aid to Guatemala became significant factors shaping relations between the two countries. By placing evangelical involvement in Guatemala in an international context as part of a global evangelistic campaign, this essay reveals how religious nonstate actors shaped U.S. relations with Central America in this period.The Quest against Detente: Eugene Rostow, the October War, and the Origins of the Anti-Detente Movement, 1969-1976
Rosenberg, J., 2015-10-09 11:55:05 AM
This article argues that the October War of 1973 between Egypt, Syria, and Israel had a profound impact on the right wing campaign against détente in the United States. It focuses on Eugene Rostow’s leading role in the anti-détente movement of the 1970s, revealing how Rostow, who had previously supported détente, interpreted the October War as a Soviet plot to destroy Israel and separate Europe from the United States. Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, he concluded, were deceiving the American people to maintain the "myth" of détente. Race profoundly influenced Rostow’s reasoning. He rendered Arab peoples irrational, emotional, and childlike, wholly under the control of Soviet leaders. Rostow launched what one historian has referred to as the "first head-on assault of détente," through his leadership of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and later his founding of the Committee on the Present Danger. While the article highlights the conflicting views between Rostow and Kissinger, it emphasizes that the two men shared a Cold War worldview.Industrial-Grade Generosity: British Warship Repair and Lend-Lease in 1941
Williamson, C., 2015-10-09 11:55:05 AM
The conventional view of Lend-Lease holds that the program provided little aid to Britain in 1941, was inefficiently administered, and lacked support in the U.S. military. An examination of the repairs performed on British warships in U.S. shipyards in 1941 under Lend-Lease demonstrates that these repairs materially contributed to the Royal Navy’s ability to sustain the global war at sea. Repair work in American shipyards played a significant role in ending a growing repair crisis within the Royal Navy. Furthermore, careful bureaucratic coordination between the two navies maximized the impact of American repair work. The repair work was accelerated by the U.S. Navy’s diversion of industrial resources from American shipbuilding to repair British warships.
Raging Rivers and Propaganda Weevils: Transnational Disaster Relief, Cold War Politics, and the 1954 Danube and Elbe Floods
Irwin, J. F., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
This article analyzes disaster relief efforts for the 1954 Danube and Elbe River floods. Carried out jointly by the U.S. government and the Geneva-based League of Red Cross Societies, this food aid program affected Western and Eastern Europe, and marked an important moment in Cold War political and humanitarian history."As Proud as Lucifer": A Tunisian Diplomat in Thomas Jefferson's America
Zeledon, J., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Thomas Jefferson’s decision to use federal government funds to cover the expenses of the Tunisian Ambassador during his nearly year-long visit created a political firestorm. Federalist and Democratic-Republican newspaper editors and politicians deemed the diplomat a racially inferior barbarian, while the public (and some elites) treated him like a celebrity.China's Intervention in the Korean War Revisited
Kim, D., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
The outbreak of the Korean War and the announcement of dispatching the 7th fleet to the Taiwan Strait seriously shook the political and economic foundations of the newly established Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime. Mao Zedong, taking advantage of North Korea’s ascendancy at the beginning of the war, wanted to dispatch troops to assist in a quick North Korean victory. That desire, however, was not realized due to opposition of Stalin.With the landing of United Nation (UN) forces at Incheon in September 1950, China’s determination for intervention gradually weakened, informing Stalin and Kim Il-sung that it would not intervene even on being invited. Under a security threat and Stalin’s pressure, Mao decided on October 5 to send troops, but that decision was cancelled on October 12 due to Stalin’s refusal to provide air cover and weaponry promptly. On the following day, however, Mao again decided to send troops after Peng Dehuai argued that US forces should stop their northward advance at the Pyongyang-Wonsan line. Securing the northern part of North Korea without bloodshed, thus extending China’s defensive line was a crucial factor in the final calculation. In conclusion, China’s Korean War intervention was made based on practical considerations, with maximum profit at minimum cost.Asserting African Agency: Kenneth Kaunda and the USA, 1964-1980
DeRoche, A., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
During the first two decades of Kenneth Kaunda’s presidency, he attempted on several occasions to acquire modern weaponry from the United States. Kaunda’s requests for such equipment even included a 1967 letter to Lyndon Johnson asking for nuclear missiles. This request (and for that matter every other request by Kaunda to the United States) was declined. In early 1980, Kaunda decided that he would cease asking for weapons from Washington, and instead purchase sixteen MiG-21 jets from the Soviet Union for $100 million, bringing condemnation from President Jimmy Carter. The effort by Kenneth Kaunda to attain high-tech U.S. weaponry from 1964 to 1980 reflected not only his desire to protect Zambian national security and assert African agency, but also a political tactic which he and his supporters could use to defend his long tenure as ruler of a one-party state."Essentially a Work of Fiction": Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, Imperial Romance, and the Iran Coup of 1953
Wilford, H., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
No Justice, No Peace, No Nukes: The Bomb, De-Colonization, and the Radical Internationalism of African-American Liberalism
Fousek, J., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Modernism Remade, Remodeled
Scott-Smith, G., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
The Nuclear Imperative: Atoms for Peace and the Development of U.S. Policy on Exporting Nuclear Power, 1953-1955
Drogan, M., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
In December 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave speech, soon known as "Atoms for Peace," before the United Nations in which he promised to share non-military nuclear technology with the nations of the world. Very few members of his administration were aware of the proposal before it was made and in the months after the speech was given, they debated its intention and its implications for policy. This article examines the process by which members of the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Atomic Energy Commission devised a policy to put Eisenhower’s promises into practice. Intelligence reports, NSC debates, and policy drafts reveal that although members of the Eisenhower Administration believed that nuclear power was neither economical nor ready for export and represented a serious proliferation risk, they were convinced that the international political landscape left them no choice but to proceed with the sharing of technology worldwide.The War that Split the World
Mitter, R., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Capturing the Villages
Frey, M., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
American Indians, American Law, and Modern American Foreign Relations
Harmon, A., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Indian Polities, Empire, and the History of American Foreign Relations
DeLay, B., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
The Long, Stubborn Dialogue Between the United States and Cuba
Lipman, J. K., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Crossing New Boundaries: American Indians and Twentieth Century U.S. Foreign Policy
Rosier, P. C., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Expatriate Foreign Relations: Britain's American Community and Transnational Approaches to the U.S. Civil War
Tuffnell, S., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
This article proposes that U.S. foreign relations in the nineteenth century were structured around the transnational interconnections of American communities overseas. The diplomacy of Britain’s American community during the Civil War refocuses historian’s attention on the offshore institutions and civic life that conditioned American public diplomacy throughout the nineteenth century.Missionaries and Imperial Cult: Politics of the Shinto Shrine Rites Controversy in Colonial Korea
Ryu, D. Y., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
State Shinto was established in colonial Korea to assimilate the Korean population. Although the Japanese government declared the Shinto ceremonies as non-religious, patriotic rituals, they consisted of traditional Shinto rites. When the Japanese authorities began forcing attendance at Shinto shrine rites, two American Presbyterian missions in Korea refused to cooperate. Their uncompromising attitude enraged the Japanese authorities, and embarrassed the American diplomatic establishment and accommodative members of the missionary community. As the Shinto shrine issue developed into a public controversy, American diplomats had to protect the national priorities over and against the private interests of missionaries.Sharing the Burden? The American Solution to the Armenian Question, 1918-1920
Laderman, C., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Drawing on public and private archives in the United States, Britain and Armenia, this article assesses the Anglo-American response to the Armenian Question as an illuminating but neglected window into the United States’ rise to world power, the decline of the British Empire and the origins of the League of Nations. The Armenian Question, relating to the security and independence of the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire, was a humanitarian cause célèbre at the turn of the 20th century. The search for its solution was at the center of an American, and wider international, debate over the world role of the United States. Previous studies have not appreciated the significance of this solution to the larger public debate over the nature and purpose of U.S. power. Above all, whether the United States should join with the British Empire to construct a new global order.By following the public and political debates on a solution to the Armenian Question, this article re-examines the American conflict over its world role after World War One and re-interprets the evolution of ideas on international governance in the early twentieth century. The domestic clash over the legitimate basis for U.S. intervention in global affairs, requiring sanction by international association or unfettered national authority, demanding legislative approval or executive authorization, is addressed. It considers the British and American responses in tandem, explaining why the most prominent international champions of Armenian independence were also the most determined advocates of establishing a reformed international system, underpinned by an Anglo-American alliance. Furthermore, it reveals how Turkish and Armenian leaders influenced the mandate debate, forcing Americans to confront the complexities of pacifying the post-Ottoman Near East. Ultimately, this article reveals how the search for a solution to the Armenian Question became entangled in a wider debate over America’s future world role and the international commitments it was willing to assume.Envisioning Detente: The Johnson Administration and the October 1964 Khrushchev Ouster
Miles, S., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
"Captive to the Demonology of the Iranian Mobs": U.S. Foreign Policy and Perceptions of Shi'a Islam During the Iranian Revolution, 1978-79
Biglari, M., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Making use of recently declassified documents, in this article I examine the U.S. government’s perceptions about Shi’a Islam during the time of the Iranian revolution, 1978–9. I show how lower ranking officials in diplomatic and intelligence circles came to the common conception of Shi’ism as being a uniquely populist religion with an inherent propensity towards revolutionary instability, as demonstrated in its doctrines, rituals and history. These perceptions influenced higher levels of government, including President Carter himself. I then explore how analysts and policymakers conceptualized the religious leadership in Iran, especially Khomeini. I show that although opinion was divided about whether Khomeini represented U.S. interests, the prevailing view was to oppose him because of his populist tendencies empowering the Iranian masses, which senior policymakers had come to see as integral to Shi’ism itself. As a result, I argue, although the wider Cold War context dictated the U.S. government’s attempt to maintain diplomatic relations with the new Iranian regime in 1979, this was to be done without overtures to Khomeini, long before the Hostage Crisis.Reagan's Real Catholics vs. Tip O'Neill's Maryknoll Nuns: Gender, Intra-Catholic Conflict, and the Contras
Keeley, T., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s decision to oppose U.S.-Nicaragua policy based on Maryknoll nuns’ advice led Ronald Reagan and his supporters to question O’Neill’s authenticity as a Catholic and his masculinity. Catholics and non-Catholics argued that true Catholics backed U.S. policy because, as they incorrectly asserted, the pope did. While 25 years earlier presidential candidate John F. Kennedy faced questions about his primary loyalty as a Catholic, Reagan and his allies promoted the stereotype that Catholics should fall in line behind the pope. Likewise, the Maryknoll Sisters were bad nuns for failing to obey male Church leaders who supported the contras. The response to the O’Neill-Maryknoll connection revealed how intra-Catholic conflict influenced U.S. policy, challenging scholars’ stress on evangelical Protestants’ influence on Reagan and on inter-religious conflict during the Cold War.Oil Power and Economic Theologies: The United States and the Third World in the Wake of the Energy Crisis
Dietrich, C. R. W., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
The European Youth Campaign in Ireland: Neutrality, Americanization, and the Cold War 1950 to 1959
McKenzie, B. A., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Arms Wrestle: Capitol Hill Fight Over Carter's 1978 Middle East 'Package' Airplane Sale
Strieff, D., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
This article examines the domestic politics of President Jimmy Carter’s 1978 "package" sale of advanced warplanes to Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Based on newly available documents from the Carter Presidential Library, the Israel State Archives, private collections, and media and public opinion material, it argues that Carter was so eager to demonstrate he had the strength to overcome domestic opposition to pursue his international agenda that the means used to gain support for the package virtually eclipsed the end itself. The White House based its decision to pursue the sales on strategic imperatives. However, the tactics employed to push the package through Congress stemmed as much from Carter’s political imperatives as from the need to meet the Saudis’ request. The episode underscored the reflexive nature of Carter’s domestic political standing and his Arab-Israeli policy, with his position in one serving to reinforce the other.Choosing "the Long Road": Henry Kissinger, Melvin Laird, Vietnamization, and the War over Nixon's Vietnam Strategy
Prentice, D. L., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Focused on Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and the Paris negotiations, scholars have overlooked Melvin Laird’s role as secretary of defense though his Vietnamization ended America’s presence in the ground war. I argue that Laird was Vietnamization’s architect and that in 1969 he proved critical in the formation of Nixon’s Vietnam strategy. That year, Nixon and Kissinger devised an elaborate plan to threaten and then launch a bombing campaign against North Vietnam to compel its capitulation. Laird contended the domestic front would not tolerate such a mad scheme. Instead, he developed what became America’s exit strategy, Vietnamization—the strategy of improving South Vietnamese military capabilities while withdrawing U.S. troops. Through Laird’s efforts, Vietnamization replaced Kissinger’s strategy to halt troop withdrawals and use unrelenting military force against North Vietnam. By the end of 1969, Nixon sided with Laird, hoping that Vietnamization could win the war at home and abroad.Haiti, the Rockefeller Foundation, and UNESCO's Pilot Project in Fundamental Education, 1948-1953
Verna, C. F., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
The short-lived efforts by the United Nations, the Haitian Government and the Rockefeller Foundation to eradicate illiteracy reveal how the United States’ reputation in Haiti as an auspicious resource for expertise and the acquisition of information, materials and financing deepened as the culture of international development gained increased popularity after 1945.The Collapse of the Western World: Acheson, Nitze and the NSC 68/Rearmament Decision
Fletcher, L., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
This article is based on the premise that a full and complete understanding of the NSC 68 decision has continued to elude historians. It argues that neither the post-1952 European dollar shortage nor the danger of a land invasion of Western Europe were as important to the NSC 68 rearmament decision as the more immediate fear that Germany and/or other European allies were losing their desire to remain in the US-led ‘‘free world’’ system. Keeping Germany and its economic resources within in the US-led Western system, and out of Soviet hands, was the most important factor. The article also demonstrates that the rearmament strategy, the rhetoric of the NSC 68 document and the public statements accompanying it (total diplomacy) can be understood in terms of an underlying logic which was grounded in the perceived requirements of US hegemony.Observing the Imperial Transition: British Naval Reports on the Philippines, 1898-1901
Elizalde, M.-D., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
In 1898, the Philippines ceased to be a Spanish colony and were annexed by the United States, ignoring the Philippine expectation to gain national independence. Based on novel archival sources this article re-examines the experience of that imperial transition in the Philippines from British perspectives.As the British had strong interests in the Philippines, when the Spanish-American War broke out, the British government sent a naval squadron to Manila in order to protect the lives and properties of its subjects, but also to report on everything that was taking place in the islands. The officers in that squadron became privileged observers of the transfer of sovereignty from the Spanish to the Americans, a process that extended from 1898 to 1903, and which the British saw not as a war for the independence of the Philippines, but rather as the handoff between two colonial governments."La Nina Adorada del Mundo Socialista:" The Politics of Childhood and U.S.-Cuba-U.S.S.R. Relations, 1959-1962
Casavantes Bradford, A., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Between 1959 and 1962, children played a highly visible role in the dramatic realignment of revolutionary Cuba’s diplomatic relations. This article demonstrates that Fidel Castro’s government consistently deployed discourses and images of childhood as well as actual children within a broader campaign to liberate themselves from U.S. domination even as it sought to strengthen ties between Cuba, the U.S.S.R. and the socialist world. At the same time, the Castro regime also made use child-centered images, texts and speeches in order to negotiate the contradictions between the Revolution’s claims to have fulfilled the islands’ long-frustrated aspirations towards national sovereignty even as it sought to justify its reinvention as "la niña adorada del mundo socialista,"dependent for its survival on the protection and largesse of the Soviet Union."The GI Bill Abroad: A Postwar Experiment in International Relations"
Covert, L. P., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
This article uncovers the unexplored history of the men and women who used their GI Bill stipends to study at foreign institutions in the years following World War II. The rapid expansion of the GI Bill’s educational subsidies abroad and the numerous challenges that expansion presented highlighted the possibilities and risks of educational exchanges as a diplomatic tool during the Cold War. Moreover, the unanticipated outcomes of the GI program helped shape a framework for subsequent educational exchange initiatives including the most successful government-sponsored exchange, the Fulbright program. Ultimately, this article demonstrates that as a policy for veterans of a world war, the GI Bill was not simply domestic in scope, but rather a program that bridged the domestic and the global in a way that was representative of broader American policy in the postwar years."The Possibilities and Limitations of First-Lady Diplomacy: Imelda Marcos and the Nixon Administration"
Kotlowski, D. J., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Imelda Romualdez Marcos is commonly remembered as a profligate spender and power-hungry consort to Ferdinand E. Marcos. But Imelda Marcos performed a variety of first-lady roles, and her political ambition at home was matched, even reinforced, by her diplomatic work abroad. Imelda’s overseas journeys, and dealings with Nixon, exemplified a blend of opportunism, possibility, and limitation reflective of the elastic duties of a first lady, and they marked an important part of her transformation into a political force within the Philippine government. Although Nixon and his staff tried to hold Imelda at arms’ length, she forced the White House to receive her during visits to Washington in 1970 and 1971. These Nixon-era diplomatic forays lifted Imelda’s standing in the Philippines and paved the way for her to make official visits to other nations, gain government positions during the Marcos dictatorship, and grow arrogant as she pursued a "Jet Set" lifestyle.In the Name of the Americas: The Pan-American Redefinition of the Monroe Doctrine and the Emerging Language of American International Law in the Western Hemisphere, 1898-1933
Scarfi, J. P., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
The historiography of the Monroe Doctrine has tended to concentrate on nineteenth century interpretations, as proposed by U.S. politicians. More importantly, Latin American interpretations of the doctrine have been overlooked. This article explores the hemispheric intellectual history of the doctrine in the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, examining its re-interpretation by Latin American jurists and politicians, such as Luis María Drago, Alejandro Álvarez and Baltasar Brum, and the reactions it provoked in the U.S. in the context of the emergence of the modern version of Pan-Americanism (1889) and a continental approach to international law. It argues that by re-interpreting the Monroe Doctrine as a Pan-American principle, these Latin American figures contributed in turn to redefining U.S. hemispheric hegemony along the lines of multilateralism and non-intervention. However, U.S. politicians and jurists were for the most part reluctant to renounce U.S. unilateral aspirations and interventionism on the continent until 1933.Wilsonian National Self-determination and the Slovak Question during the Founding of Czechoslovakia, 1918-1921
Cude, M. R., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
This article examines how United States officials observed the Slovak Question during the Czechoslovak Republic’s foundation from 1918 to 1921, to determine what the Slovak case exposes about the Wilsonian administration’s view and application of national self-determination after World War I. This article shows how conceptions of modernity were central to Wilsonian national self-determination, as the Wilson administration placed divergent views on the Czechs and Slovaks based on images of civic, economic, and cultural development, despite qualifying the two peoples as a common nationality. In doing so, the Wilson administration prioritized Czech views of a centralized state administered from Prague, over the appeals of many Slovaks who desired domestic autonomy for Slovakia within the state. This Wilsonian prioritization of civic development and modernity over national identity thus abetted a volatile national-political environment in the reorganized East Central Europe by dismissing the views of many national minorities in the region, such as the Slovaks, in their desires for national self-determination.Antecedents and Memory as Factors in the Creation of the CIA
Jeffreys-Jones, R., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Lajos Kossuth and the Permeable American Orient of the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Roberts, T., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
Hungary for antebellum Americans was difficult to characterize as a part of ‘western civilization,’ or outside it, as part of the ‘Orient.’ The Hungarian nationalist Lajos Kossuth brought not only Hungary but the larger ‘Orient’ into sharper relief. Kossuth was popular for hailing America as a model of a successful revolutionary republic. But he was also an ‘Oriental,’ arriving in the United States via rescue from Austria by the Ottoman Empire. Kossuth’s complicated celebrity challenged Americans’ understanding of Hungary as a ‘border’ nation, the Ottoman Empire as a symbol of eastern stagnation, and even Austria as a part of ‘Europe.’ In their encounter with the trans-civilizational figure Kossuth, Americans revealed a sense of themselves as part of ‘western civilization,’ but different from Europeans in their ties to liminal places like Hungary and the Ottoman Empire: ‘West’ and ‘East’ were permeable. These connections provided reassurance in an era when Americans were growing more conflicted about their place in the world.Interior's Exterior: The State, Mining Companies, and Resource Ideologies in the Point Four Program
Black, M., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
"Interior’s Exterior" investigates an unexamined material lineage of the Point Four program, the foreign policy initiated by President Truman in 1949 to offer technical assistance to the developing world. Unlikely foreign diplomats hailing from the Department of the Interior spearheaded efforts within participating Point Four countries to target and unearth foreign minerals. Decision makers rationalized the hidden mineral agenda within development by citing two resource-based ideologies, "resource globalism" and "resource primitivism," which posited that minerals by nature evaded national sovereignty and primitive people’s understanding. To enact this plan, Interior technicians utilized procedures, from geological reconnaissance to juridical reform, to develop new commodity markets and ease foreign investments. Such procedures were historically and simultaneously used in the domestic context in order to dispossess Native Americans of their minerals. Building upon the history of U.S. settler colonialism, Interior field agents materially re-ordered foreign landscapes in preparation for the globalization of American capitalism.Radio Free Enterprise: The Manion Forum and the Making of the Transnational Right in the 1960s
Burke, K., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
This article examines the conservative radio program the Manion Forum of Opinion as an important site of transnational cooperation between American conservative activists and businessmen, their allies in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. I argue that the modern American right took shape in dialogue with other kindred movements abroad.Forming a Democratic Society: South Korean Responses to U.S. Democracy Promotion, 1953-1960
Lee, J., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
This article investigates the influence and limitations of American democracy promotion in South Korea by analyzing various texts produced by different ideological groups during the 1950s. Americans promoted diverse concepts of democracy, including anti-Communist, institutional, individualistic, nation-centered, and life-centered notions. The diversified programs and channels of the U.S. information service, while contributing to the wide dissemination of democracy, allowed greater room for Koreans to interpret and use them for their own agendas. Exploring various texts produced by different groups, I find that, while "American" ideas were crucial sources of reference, they were often transformed or used only in part. Different Korean groups developed their own democratic ideas by referring to various "American" democratic concepts. Furthermore, Koreans not only used democratic ideas, but also drew from post-colonial nationalist discourses and their own sense of patriotism.Waiting for the Dust to Settle: Anglo-Chinese Normalization and Nixon's Historic Trip to China, 1971-1972
Mark, C.-K., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
This article examines the Anglo-Chinese negotiations over diplomatic normalization from a comparative perspective, and sheds valuable light on the transformation of the Cold War in the early 1970s. The Anglo-Chinese talks were inextricably linked with the complicated process of Sino-American rapprochement. At first, the White House kept Britain in the dark concerning its China initiative. After delivering the "shock" of his forthcoming China visit, Nixon asked Heath to delay reaching a deal with Beijing until the dust of the presidential party had settled. For all his initial outrage, Heath’s unsentimental attitude toward the "special relationship" made it easier for him to adjust to the "Nixon shock." Ultimately, it was not the pressure from the White House, but the long-held British legal position that Taiwan’s status was "undetermined," that prevented Britain from reaching an agreement with China until March 1972.Race to Subversion: Nationality and Koreans in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952
Nantais, S., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
This article challenges many long-held assumptions about the treatment of Koreans in Occupied Japan (1945–1952). The central premise of this article is that scholars have treated "race" and "nationality" as equivalent categories of analysis. During the Occupation, Koreans were legally Japanese nationals, notwithstanding their Korean ethnicity or their desire to be recognized as "Korean nationals." Nationality is an appropriate lens through which to study Koreans in Japan since they were legally Japanese nationals, but both North Korea and South Korea claimed them as their own nationals. By using the Koreans’ Japanese nationality as the unchanging fact, this article examines how race, nationality, and ideology intersected into the early Cold War in Asia to deal with a Korean population in Japan that was overwhelmingly in support of North Korea’s Kim Il-sung. This article brings to light a secret Cold War plan to deport tens of thousands of leftist Koreans from Japan during the Korean War to United Nations prisoner-of-war camps in South Korea. Since Koreans in Japan could not be legally deported from their ostensible home country (Japan), Occupation authorities devised a rationale that would overcome legal barriers.The United States, Israel, and Nuclear Desalination: 1964-1968
Levey, Z., 2015-10-09 11:55:06 AM
This work examines U.S.-Israeli cooperation on nuclear desalination, arguing that neither technical nor financial obstacles were the main reasons for its demise. By late 1968 U.S. policy makers concluded that the offer of a reactor for desalination would not sway Israel from its determination to maintain secrecy at Dimona, leaving open the way to a nuclear military option.
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