Remaking the World: Decolonization and the Cold War

Between 1945 and 1965, more than fifty nations declared their independence from colonial rule. At the height of the Cold War, the global process of decolonization complicated US-Soviet relations, while Soviet and American interventionism transformed the decolonizing process. Remaking the World examines theconnections between the Cold War and decolonization. Through six carefully selected case studies―India, Egypt, the Congo, Vietnam, Angola, and Iran―historian Jessica M. Chapman addresses the shifting of Soviet, American, Chinese, and Cuban policies, the centrality of modernization, the role of the United Nations, the influence of regional actors like Israel and South Africa, and seminal post–Vietnam War shifts in the international system. Each case study analyzes at least one geopolitical turning point, demonstrating that the Cold War and decolonization were mutually constitutive processes in which local, national, and regional developments altered the superpower competition. Chapman presents the complexities of international relations and the ways in which local communist and democratic movements differed from their Soviet and American ties, as did their visions for independence and success.

Jessica M. Chapman is professor of history at Williams College, where she teaches courses related to US foreign relations, decolonization and the Cold War, the Vietnam War, sport and diplomacy, and Cold War studies. She is the author of Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam.