Review of Tuong Vu and Wasana Wongsurawat, eds. "Dynamics of the Cold War in Asia" (original) (raw)
Related papers
Negotiating Cold War Culture at the Crossroads of East and West
2011
Since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, our understanding of Cold War history has changed considerably. The wave of new research spurred by the opening of archives and opportunities for novel East-West comparisons threw into sharper relief aspects of the Cold War contest that had received little attention previously. It has become increasingly clear that the Cold War was not only a military, political, and economic conflict, but also one profoundly implicated in, and shaped by, key transformations in twentieth-century culture. 1 Capitalizing on the increased accessibility of primary sources from former socialist states, recent research has provided valuable insights into the politics of everyday culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain, 2 and we have seen as well the publication of several transnational accounts of the cultural Cold War spanning the West and the East. 3
The introduction and chapters are collectively and independently well-executed, well researched, identify new sources (consider Curaming’s utilization of East German archival material to gain insights into the activities of some prohibitively secretive Asian communist states like North Korea) from new angles, and are well worth reading. I will certainly assign them in my postgraduate course on the Cold War in Asia. In terms of our general understandings of the Cold War in Asia, as I have outlined above, there remain important questions about how we understand a crucial period in Asia’s history, but there are many new insights to be found in the present volume that will aid the progress and contribute strongly to the trajectory of this evolving discussion.
Divided Dreamworlds? The Cultural Cold War in East and West
This collection, edited by Joes Segal, Peter Romijn, and myself, appeared with Amsterdam University Press in July 2012. It was originally intended as a kind of follow-up to the popular Cultural Cold War in Western Europe 1945-1960 volume from 2003, but this volume has moved with the times of Cold War Culture research and is quite a different collection, focusing more on cultural production and reception across the blocs rather than cultural confrontation between the blocs. This is the Introduction. For those interested in the whole volume, I believe Amsterdam University Press has placed the entire pdf file on the web via an Open Access Publishing initiative.
Between East and West: Memories of the Cold War
History of Classical Scholarship, 2019
For the last fifty years the Respublica Litterarum in classical scholarship has been dominated by the divisions brought about by the Cold War. As this traumatic period begins to fade I have tried to recall the attempts of one classical scholar to bridge this gap between east and west. Let us not forget the past in building a new future.
“Unfinished Business” of U.S. Diplomacy & the Cultural Cold War
ISRG Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies, 2024
American intervention abroad took on varied forms of creative representation during the Cold War. In the period from the 1950s through to the fall of the Soviet Union, a host of new and inventive platforms emerged promoting free expression in things like exhibitions, world fairs, literary works, and radio broadcasting. These are some of the focal points historians have studied in detail. They were wielded by the United States government as a tactic to shape the hearts and minds of international spectators. This historiographical essay addresses the set of arguments that historians have posited explaining how various elements of popular culture were employed as a psychological weapon. Furthermore, this paper argues that examples of psychological warfare in Europe like radio broadcasting and film in Asia created distinct interregional networks where the U.S. proliferated its Americanization agenda through corporate military partnerships. In many ways, historians of the Cultural Cold War make a case for these regional networks being the backbone of intelligence efforts in the U.S. and highlight how consumerism was intertwined with new archetypes of both business culture and military fanaticism. “Cultural Transfer” is a term that Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht defines along a spectrum of meanings, mostly as a way of depicting the diplomatic, cultural transmission of U.S. policy and products. Other historians like Christina Klein and Sangjoon Lee provide specific examples of American consumerism and modernity being deployed in art and technology throughout Asia. This overlap is underemphasized.