Poisoned Partnership: The International Mercury Cartel and Spanish–Italian Relations, 1945–1954

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
PABLO DEL HIERRO ◽  
ESPEN STORLI
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Original Source ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Cold War

This article investigates the development of the Spanish–Italian mercury cartel from the end of World War II to the mid-1950s. Previous literature has singled out the cartel as one of the most robust international cartels of the twentieth century, but as this article shows, the cartel broke down toward the end of the 1940s, and although briefly reestablished in 1954, it quickly dissolved again. Building on access to original source material from archives in Spain, Italy, the United States, and United Kingdom, we investigate the underlying reasons why the cartel broke down, and how and why it was eventually reestablished. Because both the main Italian and the Spanish mercury producers were state-owned, this article pays special attention to the influence of the political relations between Spain and Italy on the development of the cartel. The study of the mercury cartel is used as a prism to investigate the point where industry strategies meet government strategies. This article thus contributes to two major strands of literature, both to the business history literature on international cartels in the post-1945 world and to the diplomatic history literature on the intricate relationship between Spain and Italy in the early phase of the Cold War.

The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-702
Author(s):  
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”

scholarly journals EXPLORING AND EXPLAINING THE ECONOMIC POLITICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN IRAN AND THE SOVIET UNION IN THE SECOND PAHLAVI ERA EMPHASIZING THE SYSTEM THEORY

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimia Zare ◽  
Habibollah Saeeidinia
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

Iran and Russia have common interests, especially in political terms, because of the common borders and territorial neighborhood. This has led to a specific sensitivity to how the two countries are approaching each other. Despite the importance of the two countries' relations, it is observed that in the history of the relations between Iran and Russia, various issues and issues have always been hindered by the close relations between the two countries. The beginning of Iran-Soviet relations during the Second Pahlavi era was accompanied by issues such as World War II and subsequent events. The relations between the two countries were influenced by the factors and system variables of the international system, such as the Cold War, the US-Soviet rivalry, the Second World War and the entry of the Allies into Iran, the deconstruction of the relations between the two post-Cold War superpowers, and so on.The main question of the current research is that the political relations between Iran and Russia influenced by the second Pahlavi period?To answer this question, the hypothesis was that Iran's political economic relations were fluctuating in the second Pahlavi era and influenced by the changing system theory of the international system with the Soviet Union. The findings suggest that various variables such as the structure of the international system and international events, including World War II, the arrival of controversial forces in Iran, the Cold War, the post-Cold War, the US and Soviet policies, and the variables such as the issue of oil Azerbaijan's autonomy, Tudeh's actions in Iran, the issue of fisheries and borders. Also, the policies adopted by Iranian politicians, including negative balance policy, positive nationalism and independent national policy, have affected Iran-Soviet relations. In a general conclusion, from 1320 (1942) to 1357 (1979), the relationship between Iran and Russia has been an upward trend towards peaceful coexistence. But expansion of further relations in the economic, technical and cultural fields has been political rather than political.

scholarly journals Politicizing Religion

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-99
Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter defines Graham’s crusades in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom in the 1950s as powerful cultural orchestrations of Cold War culture. It explores the reasons of leading political figures to support Graham, the media discourses that constructed Graham’s image as a cold warrior, and the religious and political worldviews of the religious organizers of the crusades in London, Washington, New York, and Berlin. In doing so, the chapter shows how hopes for genuine re-Christianization, in response to looming secularization, anticommunist fears, and post–World War II national anxieties, as well as spiritual legitimizations for the Cold War conflict, blended in Graham’s campaign work. These anxieties, hopes, and worldviews crisscrossed the Atlantic, allowing Graham and his campaign teams to make a significant contribution to creating an imagined transnational “spiritual Free World.”

The Origins of the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Edelstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter traces the deterioration of Soviet-American relations at the end of World War II and into the beginning of the cold war. While the United States and the Soviet Union found common cause during World War II in defeating Hitler’s Germany, their relationship began to deteriorate as the eventual defeat of Germany became more certain. The chapter emphasizes that it was growing beliefs about malign Soviet intentions, rather than changes in Soviet capabilities, that fuelled the origins of the cold war. In particular, the chapter details crises in Iran, Turkey, and Germany that contributed to U.S. beliefs about long-term Soviet intentions. As uncertainty evaporated, the enmity of the cold war took hold.

Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War: Some Reflections on the 1945–8 Conjuncture

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Bethell ◽  
Ian Roxborough
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

The importance of the years of political and social upheaval immediately following the end of the Second World War and coinciding with the beginnings of the Cold War, that is to say, the period from 1944 or 1945 to 1948 or 1949, for the history of Europe (East and West), the Near and Middle East, Asia (Japan, China, South and East Asia), even Africa (certainly South Africa) in the second half of the twentieth century has long been generally recognised. In recent years historians of the United States, which had not, of course, been a theatre of war and which alone among the major belligerents emerged from the Second World War stronger and more prosperous, have begun to focus attention on the political, social and ideological conflict there in the postwar period – and the long term significance for the United States of the basis on which it was resolved. In contrast, except for Argentina, where Perón's rise to power has always attracted the interest of historians, the immediate postwar years in Latin America, which had been relatively untouched by, and had played a relatively minor role in, the Second World War, remain to a large extent neglected. It is our view that these years constituted a critical conjuncture in the political and social history of Latin America just as they did for much of the rest of the world. In a forthcoming collection of case studies, which we are currently editing, the main features of the immediate postwar period in Latin America, and especially the role played by labour and the Left, will be explored in some detail, country by country.1In this article, somewhat speculative and intentionally polemical, we present the broad outlines of our thesis.

The United States and Asia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Ellings ◽  
Joshua Ziemkowski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
World War ◽  
Scholarly Research ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
The Cold War

The United States’ experience with Asia goes back to 1784. Over the subsequent two-and-a-third centuries scholarly research grew in fits and starts, reflecting historical developments: the growth of US interests and interdependencies in the region; the wars in Asia in which the United States fought; the ascendance of the United States to international leadership; and the post–World War II resurgence of Asia led by Japan, then the four tigers, and most dramatically China. The definition of Asia evolved correspondingly. Today, due to strategic and economic interdependencies, scholars tend to view it as incorporating Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Russian Asia as well as relevant portions of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The most recent US National Security Strategy (White House 2017, cited under Contemporary US-Asia Relations: General) reconceives the Asia-Pacific as the Indo-Pacific, stretching “from the west coast of India to the western shores of the United States” and constituting “the most populous and economically dynamic part of the world” (pp. 45–46) The first Asia scholars came to prominence in the United States during World War II, and the Cold War strengthened the impetus for interdisciplinary area and regional studies. Through the middle and late Cold War years, social scientists and historians concentrated further, but they increasingly looked inward at the development of their separate disciplines, away from interdisciplinary area studies as conceived in the 1940s and 1950s. While area studies declined, barriers between academia and the policy world emerged. Many scholars disapproved of the Vietnam War. “Revisionists” in the international relations, foreign policy, and area studies fields held that US policy and the extension of global capitalism were conjoined, suppressing both economic development and indigenous political movements in Asia and elsewhere. Simultaneously, behavioral science and postmodernist movements in policy-relevant fields developed. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Theory and methodology overtook the old approach of area-specific research that tried to integrate knowledge of the history, culture, language, politics, and economics of particular nations or subregions. Theory and methodology prevailed in research, tenure, and promotion. Policy-relevant studies became viewed as “applied” science. Another factor was money. Already under pressure, area studies was dealt a major blow at the end of the Cold War with cutbacks. Research on policy issues related to the United States and Asia increasingly came from think tanks that housed scholars themselves and/or contracted with university-based specialists. In recent years due to the rapid development of China and the urgent challenges it presents, interest in policy-relevant topics has revived on campuses and in scholarly research, especially in the international relations and modern history of the Indo-Pacific and the politics, economics, environment, and foreign and military affairs of China. Interest has revived too in the subregions of Asia, much of it driven by Chinese activities abroad.

WOODROW WILSON AND THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR: A Hundred Years Later and Still Relevant

World Affairs ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 180 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-46
Author(s):  
Eugene P. Trani ◽  
Donald E. Davis
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Security ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Eu

American-Russian relations have been troubled from Lenin to Putin, from Wilson to Trump. Woodrow Wilson insisted that no one power should dominate Europe. This detailed analysis shows that Wilson was the first “Cold War Warrior,” and his “quarantine” policy toward Russia was the precursor of the policy the United States has generally followed toward Russia since the end of World War II. Wilson tried to avoid taking sides in the Bolshevik Revolution but finally was drawn into it from relentless Allied pressure. Yet he kept intervention minimal. Afterward, he quarantined communism until FDR recognized Russia and, later, allied with Stalin against Hitler. Truman and his successors renewed “quarantine,” calling it “containment.” With the USSR’s collapse, the shape and stability of Wilson’s Europe reappeared. The West has preserved that Europe through the EU, NATO, and sanctions against Putin’s restoring a Soviet sphere. America should now be clear, as Wilson once was, in supporting European security.

Crisis prevention and the Austrian State Treaty

1987 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Welch Larson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Crisis Prevention ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Ways Of Life

Much has been written about how the United States and the Soviet Union have managed crises since World War II, avoiding dangerous escalation and war; little on how the two superpowers have avoided confrontations. In part scholarly neglect of the question of crisis avoidance reflects the acute suspicion and hostility of the cold war. When U.S.-Soviet rivalry was perceived as a struggle between incompatible ideologies and ways of life, it was unthinkable that the superpowers might have any common interests, much less that they could collaborate, even tacitly, to control the conflict in their relationship.

scholarly journals Cold and World War II: Understanding the Causes, Views and Conceptual Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 408-414
Author(s):  
Abraham Kuol Nyuon
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
New World Order ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Speed Up ◽  
The Cold War

This article examines the theoretical framework of the cold war as the basis for comprehending the genesis of the Cold War. This author gave emphasizes to events which clearly elaborate the end of the war known as the superpowers struggle from 1945-1991 by focusing on factors which have speed up the collapse of the Cold War resulting into the new World Order. In this paper, the author argued that, the Cold War and World War II are inseparable because conflict among the Allies surfaced at the end of the World War II. This paper set out how World War II shaped the beginning of the Cold War through engaging with the major schools of thoughts that are considered as the cause of Cold War. Therefore, the blame for the escalation of the Cold war should be attributed to both the United States and the Soviet Union as both of them were serving their national interest. Keywords: War, interest, power, ideology, determinants, cessation, orthodox, revisionist, realist, War, destruction, assured, mutually, weapon and competition.

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