Frank Gerits

The Benelux and the Cold War: Re-interpreting West-West Relations

What is there new to say on the Low Countries and transatlantic relations during the Cold War? How do recent trends in Cold War research open up uncharted areas to explore these relations from new angles and perspectives? With attention shifting to cultural, global, transnational and multi-centric approaches to the international history of the twentieth century, it would seem that the transatlantic is long passé as a primary frame of reference. As the first special issue in this series claimed (The Low Countries and Eastern Europe during the Cold War), existing scholarship on the Benelux nations has tended to emphasise the ‘loyal ally’ thesis, the uniqueness of small states among larger powers and the importance of traditional diplomacy. With this special issue, a set of articles has been brought together that open up new ways to consider the changing relations both within and between the Benelux nations and their Western allies during the Cold War. As a starting point, it takes the dual approach of the Benelux nations as both actors in the Cold War and as sites where Cold War dynamics were played out and influenced local political and social outcomes. By applying such a structure-agency approach, new perspectives on the importance of the Cold War for Benelux history, and the relevance of the Benelux for Cold War history, can be mapped out.

‘Défendre l’oeuvre que nous réalisons en Afrique’: Belgian Public Diplomacy and the Global Cold War (1945–1966)

Between 1945 and 1966, Belgian public diplomacy operatives turned Africa into their principal target area. Scholars have alternately seen Belgian foreign policy as driven by the quest to safeguard economic interests while also emphasizing the skill with which Belgian foreign ministers increased the influence of Belgium within the Transatlantic partnership. As a result, the use of public diplomacy and the impact of colonialism on foreign policy is under-researched. However, the study of the archives of Inforcongo, Inbel and the Belgian Information Centre in New York allows for a better understanding of the close connections between Belgian public diplomacy and the changing views on development which shifted in the course of the 1950s and 1960s.

Bandung as the call for a better development project: US, British, French and Gold Coast perceptions of the Afro-Asian Conference (1955)

Abstract How important international actors such as France, Britain and the United States, viewed the Bandung Conference of 1955 is heavily debated. Furthermore, it remains unclear how the Gold Coast, an emerging power in Africa, perceived the Afro-Asian meeting. This article seeks to illuminate those positions on Bandung through a multi-centric analysis and by reflecting on the importance of Africa for the Afro-Asian agenda. It is argued that, rather than the Cold War, racial solidarity or anti-colonialism, it was development and modernisation that shaped the response of conference observers.

Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World,

Freedom Time is an engaging book that combines cultural anthropology, political theory and postcolonial theory and offers the reader a detailed intellectual history of Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire between 1945 and 1960. However, the monograph is conceived of as an essay which makes it difficult to understand how different chapters relate to one another. Nonetheless, these chapters are worth the read because Senghor and Césaire were essential in defining the contours of Negritude and in that way helped form decolonisation as it played out in the 1950s. Gary Wilder skilfully scrutinises how these intellectuals relied on black culture as a tool to reclaim words which had facilitated imperial subjection. Moreover, the author claims Senghor and Césaire not only worked to replace the nationstate and colonial domination by federalism and post-national democracy, but also wanted to instigate a radical global transformation. The study of imagined futures beyond state sovereignty has thrived since historians such as Frederic Cooper and Todd Shepard revealed the intricacies of the ‘historical hiatus’ after 1945 when empires began to crumble (p. 166). Wilder’s distinct contribution to this literature is his minute exploration of Césaire’s and Senghor’s intellectual development. For a detailed historical account the reader will have to consult Cooper’s Citizenship between Empire and Nation, but when we want to understand what Senghor and Césaire might have to say about today’s world we can turn to Freedom Time (Frederick Cooper, Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945-1960, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2014). The author examines their pursuit of meaningful self-determination in three parts. The first three chapters describe the different contexts in which the protagonists operated and reconstruct the intellectual traditions on which they drew. Senghor and Césaire saw themselves as revitalising political projects that had been imagined by anticolonial thinkers such as Karl Marx and Toussaint Louverture. At the same time they were considered members of a family of cosmopolitan intellectuals which included Hannah Arendt and Albert Camus. In a second chapter Césaire’s views are discussed as part of a body of ideas that was touted by post-war thinkers, such as Réné Ménil and Marc Bloch, who all reflected on ‘untimeliness’: so-called moments of opening and foreclosure when alternative futures became possible. The author then proceeds to unpack Césaire’s vision of modernisation in which democratic forms of African civilisation would be fostered in a peaceful interaction with Europe. The third chapter describes Senghor who was convinced that poetry and the French language could decentre metropolitan culture and reconcile particular African forms of life with the cosmopolitism that had been created by imperialism. As the twelve contributions unmistakably show, research in the field is in fact thriving, and will hopefully continue to do so.

The Low Countries and Eastern Europe during the Cold War: Introduction

This introductory article critically assesses the main themes and issues that have dominated the historiography of the Low Countries and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. It reflects on the ways in which new archival sources and trends in international historical research can make the picture of East-West relations more diversified and complex in terms of actors, ideas, and directions. Rather than showing the importance and singularity of the Benelux countries as ‘small states among big powers’, it stresses transnational connections and perspectives, and dismantles some important premises with regards to these countries’ position within the Cold War. In sum, this article wants to make clear that the Low Countries certainly deserve their place in Cold War historiography, not as a primus inter pares, but as an integral part of a wider transnational phenomenon with global but also often very local aspirations and dimensions.

Stalin's Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War

there is much here that is stimulating for the historian interested in the intellectual origins of the European project. The roster includes both well-established academics and younger scholars, which is commendable, at least from the reviewer’s relatively youthful perspective. Hewitson and D’Auria are certainly correct in asserting that there were important continuities throughout this period, born out of the sense of a persistent crisis. The point is well made that we should not only look back to Antiquity or the Middle Ages in the manner of Federico Chabod or Denys Hay, even though it provides apparent erudition for our introductions. Looking backwards is of course an occupational hazard, but one that should not be remedied by fixating exclusively on the immediate post-war period. This volume serves as a useful reminder that Europe during these 40 years, as was most evocatively depicted by Mirko Szewczuk’s cartoon ‘Europa und der Stier’ in 1949, was a continent suspended between ancient roots and new beginnings.

Washington During Civil War and Reconstruction: Race and Radicalism

arrangements,’ namely NATO and the EU (p. 266). Biondich has produced a very solid and accessible work about the post-1878 Balkans. Of course, given the complexity of the period covered, it could be argued that some important events should have been examined in more detail, so that they could, for example, illustrate his argument about the violence in the Balkans as animated by ideas generated elsewhere in Europe even better. The author is aware of this and here he deserves additional credit for providing a separate list of sources at the beginning of his bibliography, dealing with individual states and Balkan dilemmas.