African Files in Portuguese Archives

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 463-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bjerk
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
African History ◽  
Specific Interest ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Liberation Movements ◽  
The Cold War

When I first mentioned to David Henige my plan to go to Portugal to do some archival research, he expressed the hope that it would be a somewhat more welcoming atmosphere than he had encountered in 1971, with armed soldiers patrolling the grounds. Indeed it was. I spent three weeks in Lisbon doing archival research in modern African history, with a specific interest in Tanzania. The Arquivo Histórico Diplomàtico (AHD) and the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU) both proved to be rich archival sources kept by accessible and friendly staff.This paper is a brief and informal review of my research in the archives. Unfortunately, I did not survey the holdings of either of the archives I used, so I cannot speak to their scope, but the files on Africa are vast. The AHU, for example, claims over 6000 meters of documents, and not just for Portuguese colonies. They include materials dating to the sixteenth century and extensive intelligence and diplomatic materials for the twentieth century. I hope that this paper will give interested researchers a sense of the type of material available.In going to Portugal, I had the goal of finding out what archival material existed in Lisbon concerning relations between Portugal and Tanzania. Portuguese-Tanzanian relations were largely formed through the encounter over Mozambique. When Tanzania gained independence, it began to support the Mozambican liberation movements, which was very upsetting to Portugal, especially in the context of the Cold War. The Portuguese archives proved very fruitful. I found hundreds of documents that were of great interest, including documents relating directly to my dissertation topic dealing with a diplomatic incident concerning some forged letters that implicated Portugal in a plot to overthrow the Tanzanian government.

Espionage and Exile

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
The Cold War

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.

A Tower of Tangled Histories: The Upper Silesia Tower in Poznań and the Making of an Unromantic Poland, 1911–1955

Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-590
Author(s):  
Patryk Babiracki
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Material Structure ◽  
World War ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

Engaging with regional, international, and spatial histories, this article proposes a new reading of the twentieth-century Polish past by exploring the vicissitudes of a building known as the Upper Silesia Tower. Renowned German architect Hans Poelzig designed the Tower for the 1911 Ostdeutsche Ausstellung in Posen, an ethnically Polish city under Prussian rule. After Poland regained its independence following World War I, the pavilion, standing centrally on the grounds of Poznań’s International Trade Fair, became the fair's symbol, and over time, also evolved into visual shorthand for the city itself. I argue that the Tower's significance extends beyond Posen/Poznań, however. As an embodiment of the conflicts and contradictions of Polish-German historical entanglements, the building, in its changing forms, also concretized various efforts to redefine the dominant Polish national identity away from Romantic ideals toward values such as order, industriousness, and hard work. I also suggest that eventually, as a material structure harnessed into the service of socialism, the Tower, with its complicated past, also brings into relief questions about the regional dimensions of the clashes over the meaning of modernity during the Cold War.

scholarly journals GRANDE ESTRATÉGIA: POLÍTICA EXTERNA E DEFESA EM UM MUNDO EM TRANSFORMAÇÃO

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Celso Amorim
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
World Order ◽  
Defense Policy ◽  
Mixed Structure ◽  
Hard Power ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Brazilian Case

In the last years of the twentieth century, after the end of the Cold War, the world has evolved into a mixed structure, which preserves the characteristics of unipolarity at the same time that approaches to a multipolar world in some ways. In an international reality marked by its fluid nature, the emergence of new actors and the so-called "asymmetric threats" has not eliminated the former agents in the world order. And the conflict between the States has not disappeared from the horizon. In this context, diplomacy must have the permanent support of defense policy. Therefore, in the Brazilian case, the paper presents that the country should adopt a grand strategy that combines foreign policy and defense policy, in which soft power will be enhanced by hard power.

“This Room is Yours, Personal!”: The Rise and Fall of Middle-Class Decoration Expertise in the Bedrooms of America’s Teens, 1900–1985

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-129
Author(s):  
Jason Reid
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Room Design ◽  
Do It Yourself ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

This article also examines how the decline of teen-oriented room décor expertise reflected significant changes in the way gender and class influenced teen room culture during the tail end of the Cold War. Earlier teen décor strategies were often aimed towards affluent women; by contrast, the child-centric, do-it-yourself approach, as an informal, inexpensive alternative, was better suited to grant boys and working class teens from both sexes a greater role in the room design discourse. This article evaluates how middle-class home décor experts during the early decades of the twentieth century re-envisioned the teen bedroom as a space that was to be designed and maintained almost exclusively by teens rather than parents. However, many of the experts who formulated this advice would eventually become victims of their own success. By the 1960s and 1970s, teens were expected to have near total control over their bedrooms, which, in turn, challenged the validity of top-down forms of expertise.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
James D. Strasburg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Global Engagement ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World ◽  
Christian Nationalism

The introduction sketches out the theological, diplomatic, and political commitments of ecumenical and evangelical Protestantism in twentieth century America. It likewise discusses the twentieth-century origins of Christian nationalism and Christian globalism in American Protestant thought, surveying in particular how the two world wars and onset of the Cold War both activated and refined these competing theologies of global engagement. Beyond the American context, it outlines the German Protestant pushback to American efforts to reconstruct Germany on an American basis. Wrestling with the legacy of their own nationalist theologies, German Protestants drew on the devastation of the Second World War to outline a new “third way” theology that positioned Protestant churches as global mediators within the intense ideological landscape of the Cold War. When a growing number of American Protestants found themselves converted to this line of thought, it became clear that their efforts to remake Europe had in fact begun to remake them.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Zorawar Daulet Singh
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Strategic Thought

If we seek to make informed assessments about India’s future foreign policy and possible contestations, we must revisit a much larger and earlier slice of its strategic past, in order to discern prior policy patterns during times of inflexion and change. The Cold War period offers a rich and relatively untapped empirical reserve that can provide much needed depth to understanding Indian strategic thought and geopolitical practices. And, to truly understand Indian statecraft one must go beyond the study of non-alignment and examine more concrete ideas that have informed Indian geopolitics over the years. This book attempts to explicate some of these ideas and their application during some of the most significant events and crises in India’s immediate and extended neighbourhood over three decades during the Cold War. This chapter sets up the book’s main argument, lays out the conceptual framework, elaborates on the historical scope of the case studies, and, finally on the archival material that has been consulted by the author.

War and strong states, peace and weak states?

1996 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Desch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Security ◽  
International Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Weak States ◽  
The Cold War

For most of the twentieth century, international politics were dominated by World Wars I and II and by the cold war. This period of intense international security competition clearly strengthened states, increasing their scope and cohesion. However, the end of the cold war may represent a “threat trough”—a period of significantly reduced international security competition. If so, the scope and cohesion of many states may likewise change. Although this change will not be so great as to end the state or the states system, the state as we know it surely will change. Some states will disintegrate, many will cease growing in scope and may even shrink a little, and few will remain unaffected.

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