National Internationalists: British and West German Protests against Nuclear Weapons, the Politics of Transnational Communications and the Social History of the Cold War, 1957–1964

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
HOLGER NEHRING
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social History ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

This article examines the politics of communication between British and West German protesters against nuclear weapons in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The interpretation suggested here historicises the assumptions of ‘transnational history’ and shows the nationalist and internationalist dimensions of the protest movements' histories to be inextricably connected. Both movements related their own aims to global and international problems. Yet they continued to observe the world from their individual perspectives: national, regional and local forms thus remained important. By illuminating the interaction between political traditions, social developments and international relations in shaping important political movements within two European societies, this article can provide one element of a new connective social history of the cold war.

Introduction: The Korean War in Britain

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Grace Huxford
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social History ◽  
Korean War ◽  
British History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

This introduction first gives an overview of Korean War historiography alongside a summary of the war itself, before exploring the position of the Korean War and the Cold War in British history-writing. It highlights how selfhood and citizenship have emerged as growing categories of analysis in Cold War studies and argues why it is important to consider them in the context of post-1945 Britain. It closes by exploring the challenges and possibilities of writing the social history of warfare and bringing domestic and military ‘spheres’ together in a meaningful way.

scholarly journals Życie międzynarodowe rzeczy. Przedmioty luksusu i codziennego użytku w społecznej historii stosunków międzynarodowych

2018 ◽  
pp. 7-34
Author(s):  
Andrzej GAŁGANEK
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social History ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Social World ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Prestige Goods ◽  
The Social ◽  
Uneven And Combined Development ◽  
History Of

The paper discusses the potential of objects, broadly understood luxury ‘items’ and necessities, in order to present uneven and combined development as the foundation of the social history of international relations. The author evidences that this approach to ‘objects’ allows us to achieve, at the very least, the following: (1) to observe the single social world which emerges after the division into ‘internal’ and ‘international’ is rejected; (2) to ‘touch’ the international outside the realm that the science of international relations usually associates with international politics; (3) to examine the social history of international relations, abandoning the approach that dominates in traditional historiography where production processes are privileged over consumption processes; (4) to demonstrate how human activities create internationalism. Discussing apparently different processes related to the international life of broadly understood ‘objects’, such as African giraffes, Kashmiri shawls, silk, the importance of English items for the inhabitants of Mutsamudu, or the opera Madame Butterfly the author identifies similar patterns which, although sometimes concealed, demonstrate the consequences of uneven and combined development for the social history of international relations. Prestige goods express affluence, success and power. They are usually objects manufactured from imported raw materials or materials, with limited distribution, which require a significant amount of labor or advanced technology to create. In contrast to everyday necessities, owing to their high value, prestige goods are exchanged over long distances through networks established by the elite. The analysis of manufacturing, exchange and social contexts related to prestige goods constitutes a significant source for understanding the social history of international relations. The examples in the paper present control over these goods as a source of political power. The control of raw materials, production and distribution of prestige goods is perceived as key to maintaining hierarchical social systems. Objects are inescapably related to ideas and practices. Uneven and combined development leads to meetings between people and objects, either opening or closing the space, allowing for their transfer and domestication, or rejection and destruction respectively. Concentration on the analyses of objects outside of modernization models or comparisons between civilizations and the conscious narrowing of perspective offers a tool with a heuristic potential which is interesting in the context of international relations. Comparative observation of objects (‘single’ elements of reality) via cultures undergoing uneven and combined development protects us from historiographic western exceptionalism. It also shows that the division between the ‘internal’ and ‘international’ unjustifiably splits the social world and makes it impossible to understand.

The End of Apocalypticism: from Burton Mack’s Jesus to North American Liberalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
James Crossley
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social History ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Myth ◽  
The Right

Abstract This article takes a different look at the work of Burton Mack on apocalypticism and the post-historical Jesus crystallisation of the Christian ‘myth of innocence’ in terms of the social history of scholarship. After a critical assessment of previous receptions of Mack’s work from the era of the ‘Jesus wars’, there is a discussion of Mack’s place in broader cross-disciplinary tendencies in the study of apocalypticism with reference to the influence of liberal and Marxist approaches generally and those of Norman Cohn and Eric Hobsbawm specifically. Mack’s approach to apocalypticism should be seen as a thoroughgoing updating of Cold War liberal constructions of apocalypticism for an era of American ‘culture wars’, from Reagan to Trump. Part of this updating has also meant that, while much of his work against the apocalyptic Christian myth of innocence has been explicitly aimed at the de-legitimising the Right, it also continues the old Cold War intellectual battles by implicitly de-legitimising anything deemed excessively Marxist.

Lilley revisited: or science and society in the twentieth century

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
VIDAR ENEBAKK
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
British History ◽  
Substantial Contribution ◽  
Science And Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Radical Discontinuity ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractIn the 1940s the Marxist mathematician and historian of science Samuel Lilley (1914–87) made a substantial contribution to British history of science both intellectually and institutionally. His role, however, has largely gone unnoticed. Lilley is otherwise portrayed either as exemplifying the immaturity of Marxism, most famously by Rupert Hall in ‘Merton revisited’ (1963), or as a tragic figure marginalized during the Cold War because of his communist commitment. But both themes of exclusion and victimization keep Lilley's legacy hidden. By revisiting Lilley and his long-standing commitment to developing our discipline, this essay challenges the notion of radical discontinuity with respect to Lilley's legacy and argues for a more sustained contribution by Marxist historiography of science. This, in turn, requires a more appreciative understanding of the moderate Marxist model developed by Lilley in his popular, political and professional publications on the history of the social relations of science.

Contemporary Lao Buddhism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrice Ladwig
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Lao Pdr ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Indochina War

Lao Buddhism’s histories are deeply fragmented. Most Lao were deported to Siam in the nineteenth century, and after the demise of the French colonial regime, the country was drawn into the Second Indochina War. After two decades of brutal warfare and massive destructions, the Lao communist movement took power in 1975. This chapter examines the history of Lao Buddhism in the context of these events, and puts its main focus on the entanglement of religion and politics in the postcolonial phase, as the political polarization of the Lao sangha during the Cold War and the impact of the subsequent revolution remain crucial for understanding Buddhism’s position in the current Lao PDR. While under reformed socialism there has been a resurgence of Buddhism in the last two decades, the social and religious transformations resulting from rapid modernization through the capitalist economy and globalization bring new challenges for the Lao sangha.

Wallace Stegner's Arabian Discovery: Imperial Blind Spots in a Continental Vision

2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-438
Author(s):  
ROBERT VITALIS
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
American Identity ◽  
The West ◽  
Western History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Oil Company ◽  
Blind Spots

In 1956 Wallace Stegner wrote a history of the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), but it was only published fifteen years later——in Beirut. The book complicates the view of Stegner as a destroyer of American western myths and a forerunner of the social and environmental turn in western history. Stegner shared with those who bought his services some problematic ideas about American identity and history in the context of the Cold War. His forgotten history of oil exploration in Saudi Arabia reveals the blind spots in his ““continental vision,”” an inability or unwillingness to see the moment as part of the long, unbroken past of the U.S. West. Stegner's journey, from chronicler of the despoiling of the West by eastern oil and copper barons to defender of cultural diversity and the collective commons, stopped, as it has for many other Americanists, at the water's edge.

scholarly journals Workers under Communist Rule: Research in the Former Socialist Countries of Eastern-Central and South-Eastern Europe and in the Federal Republic of Germany

2010 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Heumos
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Social History ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
Eastern European Countries

SummaryAfter the collapse of the communist system in eastern Europe, the development of the historiographies in the Czech and Slovak republics, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Federal Republic of Germany has been characterized by a broad spectrum of differences. This article offers an overview of the ways in which these differences have worked out for the history of the working class in the eastern European countries under communist rule, understood here as the social history of workers. It shows that cultural and political traditions and the “embedding” of historical research in the respective societies prior to 1989, the extent to which historiography after 1989 was able to connect to pre-1989 social-historical or sociological investigations, and the specific national political situation after 1989 make up for much of the differences in the ways that the history of the working class is dealt with in the countries concerned.

History ends, worlds collide

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 41-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS BROWN
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
International System ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Business As Usual

The end of the Cold War was an event of great significance in human history, the consequences of which demand to be glossed in broad terms rather than reduced to a meaningless series of events. Neorealist writers on international relations would disagree; most such see the end of the Cold War in terms of the collapse of a bipolar balance of power system and its (temporary) replacement by the hegemony of the winning state, which in turn will be replaced by a new balance. There is obviously a story to be told here, they would argue, but not a new kind of story, nor a particularly momentous one. Such shifts in the distribution of power are a matter of business as usual for the international system. The end of the Cold War was a blip on the chart of modern history and analysts of international politics (educated in the latest techniques of quantitative and qualitative analysis in the social sciences) ought, from this perspective, to be unwilling to draw general conclusions on the basis of a few, albeit quite unusual, events. Such modesty is, as a rule, wise, but on this occasion it is misplaced. The Cold War was not simply a convenient shorthand for conflict between two superpowers, as the neorealists would have it. Rather it encompassed deep-seated divisions about the organization and content of political, economic and social life at all levels.

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