[BLANK_AUDIO] Hi, welcome back. Let's look at some of the ways in which the governments of the world organized themselves during the 1950s. New Empires and Confederations. So, we've talked about the world of empires. In the mid-1950s, the empires are mainly still there. India is independent. Indonesia is independent. But if you look, for instance, at this map of the world in 1939, you don't have to break down exactly whose colony belonged to whom, but you do get the sense though of lots of different colonies and mandates all over the world. Contrast that with the world of the mid-1950s. You don't have to do too much with this map except simply to notice that the dark red stuff, that's still part of the British Empire, is still substantial. The pink is now part of a British Commonwealth: independent states that still regard the queen as their sovereign, independent states in a league, or a kind of confederation, dedicated to their common heritage and economic understanding and political cooperation, as fellow members of a British Commonwealth. The green here, like here, is still part of the French Empire, Indochina in the early 1950s and so on. The empires, though, are changing. We talked in the 1800s about imperial partnerships: partnerships between colonial rulers and colonial elites, wealthy merchants, financiers, landowners, other men of property who are the essential partners of the colonial rulers in managing these domains. What's happening during the 1950s, as empires are receding, the elites are rising. But what had been a partnerships remains a partnership. It's just that instead of this side being dominant maybe this side becomes dominant, but this side is very much in play. The British role recedes, but it's still substantial. They may now be junior partners in a Commonwealth Member, but their oil companies, their political advisers, their military advisors may still be deeply involved there, so shifting imperial partnerships. As decolonization unfolds, you change from one kind of partnership to another one, in which the locals have more autonomy. Now this is a little more complicated: In this world of persistent multinational organizations, new kinds of imperial partnerships or commonwealths, now there's an overlay on top of that, an anti-communist confederation. This too is a multinational organization, or really a set of organizations, led by the United States. You'll notice that I use the word, here, anti-communist confederation. I don't use the word American Empire. That term is used very casually. Empire has a fairly specific meaning. These countries, let's say, that are countries that for example are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, are not really part of an American Empire, they remain independent countries. They are, however, part of an anti communist confederation. What do I mean by the term confederation? Well, I'll not tell you what I mean by it, this is the definition of the term in the Oxford English Dictionary. You can look at the first definition in which a confederation is a kind of league or even a kind of alliance. I especially like, though, the second definition here for confederation: a number of states united by a league, united for common purposes. It is in effect a kind of union of sovereign states for common action in relation to externals. That seems to be the best definition I've found for the kind of multi-national organizations the United States is setting up all over the world. One of the interesting things about that for the Americans is that they begin to view the members of this league with them almost in the way they view countries that are a part of their domestic politics. I mean, literally, Americans would be involved in the domestic politics of these countries, and they would be involved in domestic politics in the United States as if they were part of some common political entity, which in a way they were. So, here are German politicians lobbying members of Congress. American politicians forming kinships with members of this or that German political party. Indeed, American presidents knowing better who the leaders are of one or another German states sometimes, than they knew who the governors were of states inside the United States. It's this enlarged sense of identity, for instance of being part of an Atlantic community, that's one of the striking things to understand about this world of the 1950s. Their interests, our interests, are different, yet blended somehow. In 1947, the Americans lead the negotiation of a Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, a kind of defense treaty involving every country colored here. Mexico was a member, too; it withdrew more recently, which is why it's shown in a different color. That treaty was signed in Rio de Janeiro in 1947. The Inter-American Treaty of Assistance, called the Rio Pact, aimed increasingly at the outside danger of communist subversion. Most famously, and most importantly, was this treaty: the North Atlantic Treaty. When first signed in 1949 in Washington, it just said North Atlantic Treaty. After the mobilization in the aftermath of the Korean War, it becomes a North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with a multinational military headquarters, commanding sets of ground forces, air forces, naval forces, in being with multinational military commands, constant interaction between the politicians, officials, generals, and colonels of this North Atlantic community. You can see them colored in blue, shaded depending on the different years in which they joined, facing the opposing alliance of the Warsaw Pact led by the Soviet Union. In the mid-1950s, the British, with support from the United States, began organizing a Baghdad Pact that would have linked all these countries in an anti-communist confederation, supported by the United States. The potential tension between a pact led by the British, much hated in parts of the world, created nationalist tensions that lead to the disintegration of this alliance by the end of the 1950s. In Southeast Asia, though, the Americans take the lead in forming a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and another kind of anti-communist confederation. This shows a ceremony where the leaders are getting together in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. So, looking at all these bewildering political organizations, just think of it as a series of anti-communist confederations of largely independent countries as an overlay, underneath which are the component empires, commonwealths, associations, and entirely independent countries that have linkages, partnerships, and relationships of their own. As we'll see later on, these interests could sometimes come into tension, when the goals of an anticommunist confederation conflicted with the goals of a British Empire. To see how that conflict between confederation and empire could play out, let's look at this map published in 1956. Over here you see Egypt, which had had a British military protectorate, but in 1952, a group of Egyptian military officers throw out the king who'd been ruling as an ally of the British and claim Egypt is for the Egyptians. If this sounds a lot like the turmoil of 1881 and 1882 in Egypt, you're right. In 1882, that led to a British invasion of Egypt to sort out the turmoil and protect the Canal. And a similar crisis would recur in 1956. We'll come back to that. But for now, just think about the way the Americans thought of this problem. The British think of the turmoil in Egypt as a threat to the Empire, a threat to the Canal. The Americans think of this as a threat to the anti-communist confederation because they would like the Egyptian nationalists to be part of that confederation. They want to support Arab nationalism because Arab nationalism could be anti- communist. So, the Americans want to be friends with these new Egyptian leaders, like Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser. As the Americans are trying to be friends with Nasser, the British are looking for ways to depose him. There's the Egyptian problem right there, mid-1950s. Look right over here at Iran. Iran is struggling to regain a full measure of independence. In the mid-1940s, the crisis was to push out the Russian occupiers. The British troops left, but the British retain a controlling interest in Iran's oil supply in this part of the country, through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. A nationalist leader of Iran comes to the fore, a liberal named Mohammad Mosaddegh, determined to nationalize the oil interests, take over the oil industry for the benefit of the Iranians. Puts them squarely into conflict with the British. Again, the Americans are torn. On the one hand, they don't agree with the British on the oil issue, and they want to support Mosaddegh as someone who might be anti-communist. But, on the other hand, the British are their key partners in standing up to communism in Europe and in other parts of the world. So, the goals of the anti-communist confederation are running into the goals of the British Empire, which is part of that same confederation. Complicated enough? Mosaddegh understood these complications, and this liberal leader of Iran pushed the issue hard. Here's, Mosaddegh, who Time magazine proclaimed their Man of the Year in 1951. Here he is on the cover of Time in January 1952. You see, he oiled the wheels of chaos. This is not an entirely favorable depiction. And notice the picture in the background: a fist of national assertion over here in Egypt, where the canal is. Another fist of national assertion over here in Iran, where all these oil derricks are dotting the landscape. Mosaddegh, himself, was an interesting, somewhat eccentric, figure. Definitely a nationalist. Definitely in favor of reducing foreign influence, but not a brutal military autocrat in the model we've seen in so many other countries. He's genuinely, in some ways, like some of the liberal politicians of an earlier era, looking for parliamentary solutions, looking for negotiations and a peaceful way out, but his rhetorical stand is very strong. This is part of what makes his cause so appealing to many Americans, yet also so vexing. They worry he'll become a pawn of communists who will be trying to take advantage of the turmoil in Iran. In early 1953, under the new Eisenhower administration, finally the Americans decide to quit quarreling with the British about Iran and go along with them as they both plot to overthrow Mosaddegh and put back in the old ruling family in the person of the young shah of Iran, living in exile in Rome. That coup in 1953 didn't keep the British from losing control of their oil interests in Iran. It did make Iran a member of the anti-communist confederation... for awhile. Embedded in these different partnerships, politically and economically, devastated Europe and devastated Japan are reborn in these postwar years. The 1950s and into the 1960s are still looked back on with some nostalgia in both Western Europe and Japan as the great boon years. Part of what's creating this boon is a bewildering alphabet soup of organizations. It's worth taking a moment to go through them. What does GATT mean? GATT is the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. This is a multilateral organization for negotiating the terms of lowering trade barriers. The Economic Cooperation Administration is the institutional heir to the Marshall Plan. It's the organization for distributing the aid that required the Europeans to work together and leads very quickly to a European Payments Union, in which the Europeans are coordinating their financial system to lower their own internal trade and financial barriers to each other, one of the conditions to Marshall aid. Western Europe is becoming a collective political entity, a kind of political and economic association. The French Foreign Minister and the French planner, Jean Monnet, joined together with the West Germans for a historic step, this acronym, the European Coal and Steel Community. Think about it. In an age when coal and steel were still seen as the barometers of national military power, France and Germany, those ancient enemies, are going to pool multinational control of those vital resources. That's becoming the new wave of the future in the Europe of the 1950s. Here's Monnet and Schuman working together in the beginning of the 50s. Here's Time Magazine celebrating Monnet's achievement. You see that cheerful Frenchman depicted in this Time Magazine cover of 1961. You see all the different flags in the background and the byline: New Strength for the West. Europe unites in the common market, or more technically, the European Economic Community. But it is worth pausing and reflecting on what a break this is from everything we've been seeing in the story of European history up to this point. So, you have the anti-communist confederation, NATO, layered on top of a new European Economic Community that brings those countries together, and you see the ingredients: security, prosperity, organizational pathways for their rebirth, their renewal in the world economic system and a European economic system. Something similar also happens in East Asia: What I call here a SCAPanese model. What's SCAP? SCAP is the acronym for the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers. That was the allied occupation authority in postwar Japan. SCAP and the Japanese worked together to create a new model Japanese constitution, very much influenced by liberal and social democratic models. Is it any surprise then that the ruling party in Japan for generations called itself the Liberal Democratic Party or LDP. Here is the Japanese prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru, who had been a pre-war politician beaten down by the militarists. He's now in charge of the new SCAPanese postwar Japan. Yoshida, here, is signing a treaty of San Francisco in April of 1951. This treaty settles the war time issues between Japan and her former enemies. The Soviet Union didn't take part, but you can see other former enemies that are there, including the United States, represented here by the American Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, and the chief American envoy who had worked on the negotiations, John Foster Dulles, who had become President Eisenhower's Secretary of State. So, as Japan finds the solution to its security problems in a political and a military alliance with the United States, Japan is also at the hub of a new East Asian Economic Community. Not the kind of exclusive imperial economic community that Japanese militarists had envisioned in the 1930s, this one is between sovereign states. So, again we're back at our map of the world of 1956. Think of Japan, then, as the economic and security hub of all kinds of outward investment and cooperation with the offshore economies of East Asia: in Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong, South Vietnam, Indonesia, uniting them in a trade and financial network that then spans the Pacific, with the United States as a critical market for exports, because the United States is now playing the free trade role that Britain had played in the 1800s. Happy to accept imports from other countries, even if those other countries weren't necessarily as open to imports in return, understanding that those countries' economic development would be important to general economic prosperity for everyone. The results are significant. This is a chart of per capita GDP, production per person, in some different countries and regions. The United States is at the top and between 1946 and 56 grows steadily. Western Europe, coming from a lower base, is growing at an even more rapid rate up to 1956. And that's headed to continue. You see here the Soviet Union, and you have a lower base still, devastated by the war, growing somewhat slowly, but moving forward. Japan, down even lower, also beginning to grow again, at the same pace as the Soviet Union. What's hard to visualize in the 1950s is that Japan, which still seemed like a very poor country in the 1950s, is about to cross over the Soviet Union's progress and begin moving rapidly up towards high income status. That will happen really in the 1960s and �70s. But the seeds have been laid for it already. If you look down here at this chart, you see South Korea in the Mid-1950s, still not taking off yet. Their take-off will happen later. This is still a desperately poor and war-ravaged country during the 1950s, getting a lot of foreign aid from the United States. China and India, both very, very poor, having trouble taking off. India under democratic socialism, and China under Mao's rule. Well one of the things that you'll notice then from this complex story of partnerships, institutions, associations is the growth of a kind of consensus politics, again the relationships between big government, big business, big unions which also creates a kind of consensus economics that's created the whole class warfare environment of the first half of the twentieth century. We traced a little bit of the story as to how this happened. The development of different kinds of political parties and ideologies, different kinds of institutions that require a lot of cooperation. Now, let's just think for a moment. Why did it happen? Clearly part of that answer has got to be the experience of the Second World War. A sense that we can't, we won't, go back to the politics of extremes. We can't, won't go back to the politics of dictatorships, at least in some of these countries, which is what makes consensus politics, with all of its materialism and unsatisfactory compromises, still seem more appealing than the alternatives. In the mid-1950s, the communist world wasn't static, either. In 1953, Stalin died. This produces results in two ongoing wars. The Korean War had been a stalemate for years. Now, with Stalin dead, with the new Eisenhower administration threatening to escalate the war if it's not brought to a successful conclusion, American power seeming stronger now, the North Koreans and their Chinese backers decide to go ahead and sign an armistice agreement, not a peace treaty, just a suspension of hostilities. That suspension of hostilities froze the old battle lines in place along a demilitarized zone, where the old warring sides still confront each other today. The peace precariously holding now after more than 60 years of armistice. In Indochina, the war between the French and the Viet Minh, who'd been trying to throw the French out, comes to a conclusion at a big international conference in 1954 in Geneva. The outcome of that conference was an agreement that the French would leave, Vietnam would hold elections. The elections are never held. Instead what happens is, in the North, where the Communist Vietnamese were strongest, they created new state called North Vietnam. In the southern part of Vietnam, a new state is created called the Republic of Vietnam. What a lot of people were beginning to wonder then, in the mid-1950s, is, in the aftermath of Stalin's death, with some resolution of these conflicts, could there be a wider opportunity for a thaw in the Cold War. There's some really important turnovers in the leadership of the international communist movement. In Western Europe, communism was still a powerful movement with a lot of long-time followers, people who had believed deeply in communism as an answer to the great turmoils and struggles of their youth. They more and more becoming a community of outsiders, though, in their countries. There are a few other communists, like those in Yugoslavia, that try to espouse an independent path, led by a long time communist fighter who had taken the name Josip Broz Tito, T-I-T-O. They say we're going to find an independent path, independent of the Soviet Union. There was some real danger for years that Stalin would invade Yugoslavia, or somehow get Tito out of the way. But Stalin dies, Tito survives, and puts in place a kind of authoritarian state capitalism that's a little more like a mix between communism and democratic socialism. In the Soviet Union itself, there is a renewed burst of attention to modernist development, to great new land development projects, hydro-electric projects, other things that will help take the Soviet Union into modern development. There's a lot of sharing of technical expertise, industrial expertise, with China, really kind of a warm period there in the mid-1950s in Soviet-Chinese relations. Here you see one of the relatively few happy moments between the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Zedong. But many old communists wonder whether these new communists are still committed to the global revolution and to the triumph of the communist cause, whether they're still as committed to the overthrow of capitalism, reactionaries, and imperialists. That's the question Khrushchev faces when he decides to take on the legacy of Stalin in 1956. Here again our old friends at TIME Magazine, through their website, are doing a wonderful job of trying to graphically portray what Khrushchev represents. This is a cover from April 1956 for Russia's Khrushchev. The occasion was Khrushchev was paying a visit to London. Alright, so here's the suspicious British lion eying their Soviet visitor. You see the Kremlin Tower is being represented here with this happy smiling face, in his right hand he's holding a bouquet of roses [LAUGH] and behind his back, in his left hand, is a spiked club with the portrait of Stalin apparently being trampled underfoot. So what do you make of this visitor to the West? Khrushchev is a blend of contradictions. Impulsive, earthy, even crude at times. From humble beginnings. No experience in world travel. A lot of experience in the upper levels of the Soviet Communist Party. He'd survived all the purges. He'd gotten through the war years, he'd been involved in the worst of the Stalin years, but he hoped for other things. He had high hopes for what the Soviet Union could become, was sure that it could catch up and even get ahead of the West in its economic development. He wanted to concentrate on domestic affairs, but at the same time, he also wanted to show that the Soviet Union was strong, that he was militant. That he'd demonstrate his strength, his certainty that he was tougher than the Western leaders were, would lead him to make some pretty fateful choices in the coming years. Now, contrast, though, Khrushchev with Mao Zedong. If anything, Mao Zedong now feels that if had been Stalin's junior partner, he really should be the elder statesman when it comes to someone like Khrushchev. Mao feels like he's had as much experience in leading and building a revolution as Khrushchev has had, and that this now needs to be a relationship of equals. Indeed, it's not too long before Mao begins telling Khrushchev, you need to share with us your nuclear weapons technology. You need to give us the nuclear bomb so that we can stand up to the United States, just like you are. Khrushchev is increasingly uneasy about that. That's a little bit of the background as we get into the crisis year of 1956. Khrushchev convenes the 20th congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and he delivers a long, extraordinary speech recounting the crimes of Stalin. This secret speech soon became public, and even if those crimes were presented in a milder form than we might discuss them today, you can imagine the sensational impact this had for people trained to respect party orthodoxy, party discipline, and who themselves had almost all been involved in some of these activities at one level or another. Mao's reactions to Khrushchev's secret speech was to give a carefully guarded speech of his own, in which he said that Stalin had to be carefully evaluated. There was both good and bad. He tended to think that 70% good and 30% bad. Mao is really deciding that he needs to embark on his own path, that Khrushchev's approach is unstable and maybe not sufficiently revolutionary. He holds his own party congress at which he announces that actually, in China, class struggle has been brought to an end. China can move forward for real communism. Mao is actually about to lead a revolution inside China itself and in its relationships with all China's neighbors. Think about the reaction to Khrushchev's speech in Eastern Europe, in places like Poland and Hungary. Well, the reaction there was that we too can find an independent path, that the Soviets won't kill us in order to keep us part of the empire. In both Hungary and Poland, communist rulers try to embark on a different path, and they both soon find the limits of Soviet tolerance. In Hungary, this actually produces an invasion of the country by Soviet soldiers. Tens of thousands of people are killed in the ensuing violence, as Hungary is brought firmly back into the empire, along with Poland. It's difficult for people who don't take communist beliefs seriously and understand their world to understand the extraordinary tension and friction of a year like 1956 for the millions of followers of international communism. One voice that helps us understand that a little bit better is the memoir of a famous British historian, world historian, named Eric Hobsbawm. Here he is in this illustration depicted as the eternal Hamlet, uncertain, undecided, as he contemplates the globe. So, here's Hobsbawm on 1956: Difficult to reconstruct not only the mood but also the memory of that traumatic year. Even after half a century, my throat contracts as I recall the almost intolerable tensions under which we lived month after month, the unending moments of decision about what to say and do on which our future lives seem to depend. Friends now clinging together or facing one another bitterly as adversaries. In 1957, Khrushchev will move internally against his political opponents who are criticizing him both as not being revolutionary enough or as not moving enough on domestic development. The anti-party faction, the anti-rightist faction, he has to put both of them down. Though to Khrushchev's credit, he breaks with Stalin in another way: His opponents are exiled, not shot. As you can tell, these years were a potential turning point for the whole future of world communism. We've seen how the world of capitalism had in a way reordered itself, reorganized itself around new ideals, new institutions, renewed itself. What's happening in world communism? It's being challenged from within. There's a lot of tension. Will it embark on a different path, reinvent its ideology, become something else, maybe some new amalgam between old communism and democratic socialism that might have a different, or broader, appeal? But fundamentally communism comes out of this period of crisis torn by another internal crisis: Khrushchev versus Mao, and that competition for the leadership of the international communist movement keeps both of them on the more radical, revolutionary, coercive path. Revolution crushed in Hungary. Mao leading a revolution inside China and confrontation with others outside China. And perhaps a potential turning point was lost. Now, in this presentation I've concentrated overwhelmingly on kind of the worlds of the West, metaphorically, though it includes Japan, for example, and the East, which we might think of as the communist world. Again, metaphorically. But now let's look at that Third World that people talked so much about in the 1950s. Let's look at the rest. [BLANK_AUDIO]
