Suchergebnisse

Amerikanisierung und Antiamerikanismus sind in Deutschland und Europa im 20. Jahrhundert allgegenwärtige, sich wandelnde und umstrittene Phänomene gewesen. Sie haben die einzelnen Nationen und die transatlantischen Beziehungen tiefgreifend geprägt. Mary Nolan, Expertin für deutsche und transnationale Geschichte, untersucht, wie die Europäer von amerikanischen Wirtschafts-, Kultur- und Politikmodellen beeinflusst wurden und mit ihnen umgingen. Dabei entstanden hybride Gesellschaften und politische Systeme, die sich manchmal deutlich von den Vereinigten Staaten unterschieden, in jüngerer Zeit aber, angesichts von Wirtschafts- und Migrationskrisen und rechtsradikalem Populismus, die dortigen Entwicklungen widerspiegeln. Wie die Aufsätze von Mary Nolan zeigen, waren die diplomatischen Beziehungen und die Visionen von der globalen Ordnung eine ständige Quelle transatlantischer Konflikte. Das Gleiche gilt für Fragen zu Frauen, Geschlecht und Sexualität. Die transatlantischen Beziehungen werden häufig auf sehr geschlechtsspezifische Weise erzählt. Nolan zeigt, dass die transnationale Geschichte neue Einblicke sowohl in die nationale Geschichte als auch in die internationalen Beziehungen bietet.

Conventionally defined, "global commodities" refer to raw materials and basic foodstuffs—sugar, bananas, cotton, coal, bauxite—that are extracted or grown in one area of the world and sold on the world market for industrial or consumer use elsewhere. Labor historians focusing on the point of extraction/production or tracking the production and circulation of specific global commodities have gained insight into the development of global capitalism, in particular relations between colonized and colonizer, developing countries and advanced industrial countries. From Sidney Mintz's Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1986) to Mark Kurlansky's Cod: The Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (1998) scholars and general readers alike have found in studies of a single commodity a productive method for understanding social relations in the making of the modern world.

Postwar multilateral cooperation is often viewed as an attempt to overcome the limitations of the nation-state system. However, in 1945, when the United Nations was founded, large parts of the world were still under imperial control. Building States investigates how the UN tried to manage the dissolution of European empires in the 1950s and 1960s – and helped transform the practice of international development and the meaning of state sovereignty in the process. Eva-Maria Muschik argues that the UN played a key role in the global proliferation and reinvention of the nation-state in the postwar era, as newly independent states came to rely on international assistance. Drawing on previously untapped primary sources, she traces how UN personnel – usually in close consultation with Western officials – sought to manage decolonization peacefully through international development assistance. Examining initiatives in Libya, Somaliland, Bolivia, the Congo, and New York, Muschik shows how the UN pioneered a new understanding and practice of state building, presented as a technical challenge for international experts rather than a political process. UN officials increasingly took on public-policy functions, despite the organization's mandate not to interfere in the domestic affairs of its member states. These initiatives, Muschik suggests, had lasting effects on international development practice, peacekeeping, and post-conflict territorial administration. Casting new light on how international organizations became major players in the governance of developing countries, this volume has significant implications for the histories of decolonization, the Cold War, and international development.