Rethinking the Cold War

Module Tutor: David BrydanContact: d.brydan@bbk.ac.uk

The Cold War was more than just a conflict between the superpowers. Much of the history written on the period has focussed on the foreign policy of the United States and the USSR, and on the ‘great men’ – the Kennans, Krushevs, and Kissingers – who shaped it. Military strategy and foreign policy certainly form an important part of the story, but the Cold War was also a thread which ran through post-war global history, shaping the domestic policy of states and the everyday lives of people around the world. This course brings together the latest research into the period to help us to rethink the Cold War – how it developed, who it affected, what it meant for different countries and their citizens, how individuals and governments sought to exploit or oppose it, why it ended, and how it continues to shape the modern world. It also examines the conflict from a global perspective, exploring its impact on people and societies in Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia often underrepresented in traditional bipolar histories of the period. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources and new scholarship, students will explore the role of ideology and political ideas in both East and West, the links between the Cold War and parallel histories of decolonisation, international development and European integration, and the way the conflict shaped understandings of welfare, science and the environment.

Preliminary Seminar Plan

1) Introduction - global Cold Wars

2) Drawing the Iron Curtain - building socialism in Eastern Europe

3) Going nuclear - Korea, Cuba and the ‘hot wars’

4) Beyond bi-polarity - the Non-Aligned Movement

5) The Cold War and the ‘Third World’

6) Socialism or welfare? The social state in East and West

7) Iron or nylon curtain? Interactions between East and West

8) Science and technology in the Cold War

9) Tearing down the wall - how the Cold War ended

10) The Cold War today

Suggested Reading

John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997)

Carole K. Fink, Cold War: An International History (2013)

Michael R. Fitzgerald (ed.), Out of the Cold: The Cold War and its Legacy (2013)

Jussi M. Hanhimaki and Odd Arne Westad (ed.), The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (2003)

Gabrielle Hecht (ed.), Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War (2011)

Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann (ed.), Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology and European Users (2009)

Oscar Sanchez-Sibony, Red Globalization: The Political Economy of the Soviet Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (2014)

Young-sun Hong, Cold War Germany, the Third World and the Global Humanitarian Regime (2015)

Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (2006)