The Study of Cold War International History in China: A Review of the Last Twenty Years

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yafeng Xia
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Joint Research ◽  
Main Research ◽  
East European ◽  
International History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Chinese Scholars ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cold War History

The study of Cold War international history in China has made major strides in the past two decades. By using newly available Chinese sources, augmented by sources from American, British, Russian, and East European archives, Chinese scholars have produced important works on Cold War history. As the latest publications in China show, Chinese scholars have been gradually adopting a more evenhanded approach in their writings about the Cold War. They have also expanded international cooperation by conducting joint research projects and engaging in meaningful academic dialogues with foreign scholars. This article offers a review of the field, including a survey of new Chinese sources, the leading Chinese scholars, and their main research interests and contributions. The article also points out the challenges, obstacles, and opportunities of the field in China.

CONTINUING DEBATE AND NEW APPROACHES IN COLD WAR HISTORY

2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 913-934 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL F. HOPKINS
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Economic Dimension ◽  
Strategic Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Strategic Narratives ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cold War History

ABSTRACTThe Cold War lasted for almost fifty years and ended nearly twenty years ago. A vast historiography continues to grow. In explaining the past and continuing debate, this article is necessarily selective. It has three aims. The first is to locate the main phases and trends in the debate about the Cold War. The second is to analyse the growing literature on the end of the Cold War. Thirdly, it attempts to identify a number of major themes by looking beyond geopolitical issues to various aspects of the cultural Cold War, to espionage and intelligence, and to the economic dimension. The review has three main conclusions. First, diplomacy and strategic issues have been extensively explored, though more is needed on the Soviet Union and especially on China. Secondly, analysis of the economic and intelligence dimension has improved, though, again, knowledge of the Soviet Union and China remains thin. Lastly, the growing coverage of cultural issues has deepened our understanding but needs to be integrated into political and strategic narratives.

Danish Cold War Historiography

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 180-211
Author(s):  
Rasmus Mariager
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Great Depth ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Attention ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cold War History ◽  
Security Affairs

For decades, little research on Danish Cold War history was conducted either inside or outside Denmark. The relevant archives were closed, and generations of Danish contemporary historians were primarily interested in what happened during World War II. This is no longer the situation. Over the past 35 years, especially since the end of the Cold War, researchers have scrutinized Danish Cold War history in great depth. By now, scholarly research in Denmark on the Cold War, especially in the area of Danish national security affairs and foreign policy, has reached a level that merits international attention, and this survey article provides an overview. The article encourages Danish Cold War scholars to promote comparative research that incorporates Danish Cold War history into the wider international Cold War scholarship, to the benefit of both Danish and international research.

Land of Blue Helmets

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Member States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Mediation

Born in 1945, the United Nations (UN) came to life in the Arab world. It was there that the UN dealt with early diplomatic challenges that helped shape its institutions such as peacekeeping and political mediation. It was also there that the UN found itself trapped in, and sometimes part of, confounding geopolitical tensions in key international conflicts in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, such as hostilities between Palestine and Iraq and between Libya and Syria. Much has changed over the past seven decades, but what has not changed is the central role played by the UN. This book's claim is that the UN is a constant site of struggle in the Arab world and equally that the Arab world serves as a location for the UN to define itself against the shifting politics of its age. Looking at the UN from the standpoint of the Arab world, this volume includes chapters on the potential and the problems of a UN that is framed by both the promises of its Charter and the contradictions of its member states.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Asia ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Cold War

Until recently, East Asia was a boiling pot of massacre and blood-letting. Yet, almost unnoticed by the wider world, it has achieved relative peace over the past three decades.1 At the height of the Cold War, East Asia accounted for around 80 percent of the world’s mass atrocities. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, it accounted for less than 5 percent....

Vietnamese Historical Writing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Pelley
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Asian ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Southern State ◽  
The Past ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
North Vietnam

This chapter demonstrates how the process of decolonization and the ensuing separation of Vietnam into a northern and southern state as part of the Cold War in Asia led to different types of history-writing. In both Vietnamese regimes, the writing of history had to serve the state, and in both countries historians emphasized its political function. Whereas North Vietnam located itself in an East Asian and Marxist context, historians of South Vietnam positioned it within a Southeast Asian setting and took a determinedly anti-communist position. After 1986—over a decade after reunification—with past tensions now relaxed, the past could be revaluated more openly under a reformist Vietnamese government that now also permitted much greater interaction with foreign historians.

Rethinking the Middle East and North Africa in the Cold War

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-319
Author(s):  
Paul Thomas Chamberlin
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Third World ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Transnational Connections ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cold War History

The new Cold War history has begun to reshape the ways that international historians approach the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during the post-1945 era. Rather than treating the region as exceptional, a number of scholars have sought to focus on the historical continuities and transnational connections between the Middle East and other areas of the Third World. This approach is based on the notion that the MENA region was enmeshed in the transnational webs of communication and exchange that characterized the post-1945 global system. Indeed, the region sat not only at the crossroads between Africa and the Eurasian landmass but also at the convergence of key global historical movements of the second half of the 20th century. Without denying cultural, social, and political elements that are indeed unique to the region, this scholarship has drawn attention to the continuities, connections, and parallels between the Middle Eastern experience and the wider world.

scholarly journals The Right to Survival in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiyoung Song
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Confucian Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
North Korean Defectors ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Over Time

AbstractFor the past decade, the author has examined North Korean primary public documents and concludes that there have been changes of identities and ideas in the public discourse of human rights in the DPRK: from strong post-colonialism to Marxism-Leninism, from there to the creation of Juche as the state ideology and finally 'our style' socialism. This paper explains the background to Kim Jong Il's 'our style' human rights in North Korea: his broader framework, 'our style' socialism, with its two supporting ideational mechanisms, named 'virtuous politics' and 'military-first politics'. It analyses how some of these characteristics have disappeared while others have been reinforced over time. Marxism has significantly withered away since the end of the Cold War, and communism was finally deleted from the latest 2009 amended Socialist Constitution, whereas the concept of sovereignty has been strengthened and the language of duties has been actively employed by the authority almost as a relapse to the feudal Confucian tradition. The paper also includes some first-hand accounts from North Korean defectors interviewed in South Korea in October–December 2008. They show the perception of ordinary North Koreans on the ideas of human rights.

scholarly journals Discourse Beyond Borders: Periodicals, Dissidents, and European Cultural Spaces

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Reijnen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Spatial Perspective ◽  
Central European ◽  
East European ◽  
European Public ◽  
Cultural Spaces ◽  
The Cold War

Émigré periodicals in Cold War Europe have long been considered isolated islands of Central and East European communities with limited relevance. In the second half of the Cold War, some of these periodicals functioned as crucial intersections of communication between dissidents, emigrants and Western European intellectuals. These periodicals were the greenhouses for the development of new definitions of Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Europe at large. This article studies Cold War émigré periodicals from a spatial perspective and argues that they can be analysed as European cultural spaces. In this approach, European cultural spaces are seen as insular components of a European public sphere. The particular settings (spaces) within which the periodicals developed have contributed greatly to the ideas that they expressed. The specific limits and functions of periodicals such as Kultura or Svědectví [Testimony] have triggered perceptions of Central European and European solidarity. The originally Russian periodical Kontinent promoted an eventually less successful East European-Russian solidarity.  

Geopolitics of a Divided Europe

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 531-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitchell A. Orenstein
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Russian President ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Two Sides

Europe is again a divided continent. When it comes to governance, political economy, or values, two contrasting poles have emerged: one Western, liberal, and democratic, another Eastern, statist, and autocratic. The dividing line between them has become ever sharper, threatening to separate Europe into two distinct worlds. This new divide in Europe arises from a clash between two geopolitical concepts for the continent: One is the Western project of a “Europe whole and free,” an enlarging zone of economic cooperation, political interdependency, and democratic values. The other is the Russian project of a “Eurasian Union” to rival the European Union. This article shows how these two sides of Europe have grown further apart in their conceptions of the European space, their values, governance, and economic models. It explores the reasons for the belated Western responses to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s program to divide Europe. The Russo-Georgian war was a turning point, but the West took a long time to recognize the full implications of Putin’s policy. The current confrontation between Russia and the West is not exactly like the Cold War. Russia’s position is weaker. And the battle will be fought out primarily with economic instruments. However, it is clear that this conflict places Central and Eastern Europe back on the front lines of a divided Europe, raising any number of demons from the past.

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