The Transatlantic Century

Transcription

1 The Transatlantic Century This is a fascinating new overview of European-American relations during the long twentieth century. Ranging from economics, culture, and consumption to war, politics, and diplomacy, charts the rise of American influence in Eastern and Western Europe, its mid-twentieth-century triumph and its gradual erosion since the 1970s. She reconstructs the circuits of exchange along which ideas, commodities, economic models, cultural products, and people moved across the Atlantic, capturing the differing versions of modernity that emerged on both sides of the Atlantic, and examining how these alternately produced cooperation, conflict, and ambivalence toward the other. Attributing the rise and demise of American influence in Europe not only to economics but equally to wars, the book locates the roots of many transatlantic disagreements in very different experiences and memories of war. This is an unprecedented account of the American Century in Europe that recovers its full richness and complexity. mary nolan is Professor of History at New York University. She is the author of Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (1994) and co-editor of Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century (2002). in this web service

2 New Approaches to European History Series editors William Beik Emory University T. C. W. Blanning Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge Brendan Simms Peterhouse, Cambridge New Approaches to European History is an important textbook series, which provides concise but authoritative surveys of major themes and problems in European history since the Renaissance. Written at a level and length accessible to advanced school students and undergraduates, each book in the series addresses topics or themes that students of European history encounter daily: the series embraces both some of the more traditional subjects of study and those cultural and social issues to which increasing numbers of school and college courses are devoted. A particular effort is made to consider the wider international implications of the subject under scrutiny. To aid the student reader, scholarly apparatus and annotation is light, but each work has full supplementary bibliographies and notes for further reading: where appropriate, chronologies, maps, diagrams, and other illustrative material are also provided. For a complete list of titles published in the series, please see: /newapproaches in this web service

3 The Transatlantic Century Europe and America, in this web service

4 cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by, New York Information on this title: / This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of. First published 2012 Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Nolan, Mary, 1944 The transatlantic century : Europe and America, /. pages cm. (New approaches to European history; 46) ISBN (hardback) 1. Europe Relations United States. 2. United States Relations Europe. 3. Europe Civilization American influences. 4. United States Civilization European influences. 5. Europe Civilization 20th century. 6. United States Civilization 20th century. I. Title. D1065.U5N dc ISBN Hardback ISBN Paperback has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. in this web service

5 Contents List of illustrations List of maps List of tables Acknowledgments page vi viii ix x Introduction 1 1 An uncertain balance, World War I: European crisis and American opportunity 52 3 Ambivalent engagement 76 4 The depression and transatlantic new deals Strange affinities, new enemies From world war to Cold War Cooperation, competition, containment Culture wars The American Century erodes, Renewed conflict and surprising collapse A widening Atlantic Imperial America, estranged Europe 356 Suggested readings 374 Index 385 v in this web service

6 Illustrations vi 1 The Rhodes Colossus: striding from Cape Town to Cairo. Punch. December 10, page 46 2 Colossus of the Pacific. Chicago Tribune. August 24, PARS International Corp Make the world safe for democracy, Library of Congress, Print and Photographs Division, Posters: World War I Posters Lenin, Universal Images Group/Hulton Archive/Getty Images The first American gold for Germany, December 23, BArch, Bild /George Pahl Ford Motor Company River Rouge Plant Dearborn, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection Breadline at McCauley Water Street Mission under the Brooklyn Bridge, New York, early 1930s. Library of Congress Reich Labor Service, BArch, B 145 Bild-P022089/A. Frankl Civilian Conservation Corps, April 18, New York Times/Archive Photos, Getty Images Magnitogorsk. IISH, International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam) Destruction of Warsaw, Universal Images Group/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Harry Dexter White (left) and John Maynard Keynes, IMF, public domain Superpowers playing chess: Truman and Stalin, L. G. Illingworth. Daily Mail, February 1949, National Library of Wales Marshall Plan America helps with Europe s reconstruction. BArch, Bild 183-R in this web service

7 List of illustrations vii 15 Berlin Wall and Brandenburg Gate. BArch, B 145 Bild-P Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev at the UN Neal Boenzi/New York Times. Redux Levittown, Pennsylvania, c H. Armstrong Roberts/Retrofile/Getty Images Stalinallee, International Peace March, May 11, BArch, Bild /Günter Weiss Congress Hall Berlin, BArch, N 1648 Bild-KF11408/Manfred Beier May 1968, Paris. IISH, International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam) Burning Russian tank in front of the building of Radio Prague, August (Vrije Volk), International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam) Oil crisis, November 1973, horses replace cars in the Netherlands. akg-images/ria Novosti Strike by Polish Solidarity at the Gdansk shipyard, akg-images/ria Novosti President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev at the Reykjavik summit. Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library Britons mourn United States terror attack victims, September 13, Anthony Harvey/Getty Images News/Getty Images Antiwar campaigners gather in Trafalgar Square, November 20, Patrick Barth/Getty Images News/Getty Images. 365 in this web service

8 Maps 1 The world in After map in Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Empire: (New York: Vintage, 1989), pages Cold War Europe. After map in David Reynolds, One World Divisible: A Global History since 1945 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), European integration. After map in Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. II: Crises and Détente (Cambridge University Press, 2010), viii in this web service

9 Tables 1.1 Percentage world trade and population, 1914 page GDP per capita at 1970 United States prices Distribution of world s industrial production in % world trade 26 ix in this web service

10 Acknowledgments For the last twenty-five years I have been reading, thinking, and writing about transatlantic relations of all sorts, but this work relies on much more than my own research. The writing of history is always a collective project, and a synthetic work like this one relies particularly heavily on the recent scholarship of experts in European, American, and transnational history. I am particularly fortunate to have had Michael Watson as my editor. He read and critiqued each chapter and was enormously patient with the delays in completing the project. Two friends and colleagues, Tom Bender and Marilyn Young, read and critiqued every chapter, sometimes more than once. They offered invaluable advice, saved me from many mistakes, and offered consistent encouragement when I doubted the book would ever be finished. I cannot thank them enough. I am grateful to Fred Block and Sasha Disko for reading early chapters of the manuscript and to Michael David-Fox for getting me up to speed on recent Soviet historiography. I appreciate helpful comments received when presenting parts of this project at the Atlantic History seminar at New York University, at the Northeast Working Group on German Women s History and Culture, and at the Davis Center in Princeton. Writing requires time away from teaching and two institutions provided that. A fellowship from the Remarque Institute at New York University provided a semester s leave at the early stages of the project. The Shelby Collum Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton gave me a most productive and enjoyable year with access to Firestone Library and stimulating colleagues when the book was well underway. My thanks to Dan Rodgers, the director of the Davis Center, for his support for my work and for transnational history more generally. Without help from my graduate student Laura Honsberger, this book would not have the images that enrich it. I am deeply grateful for her tireless work in tracking down both pictures and permissions. A final thanks is owed to my friends and fellow peace activists in Brooklyn For Peace with whom I have worked for the past twenty-five years. They have constantly reminded me of the real-world stakes in x in this web service

11 Acknowledgments xi understanding transatlantic relations and of the importance of combining scholarship with activism. This book is dedicated to my students, past and present. My graduate students have been a constant source of intellectual stimulation and a joy to teach. Both they and the undergraduates in my Cold War course provided welcome feedback as I developed my arguments for various parts of The Transatlantic Century. in this web service