Epilogue: Exporting the New Deal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Rarely have I presented parts of this study that someone hasn't asked about the connection between New Deal domestic policy and the postwar export and influence of these attitudes and techniques. “Now I understand why Lyndon Johnson would have proposed a TVA for the Mekong Delta,” many say, often shaking their heads sadly to acknowledge Johnson's naivete. In this epilogue I'd like to trace a few aspects of this international story, not by analyzing the route to Vietnam, of course, but by exploring how New Deal personnel traveled abroad to assist developing countries and how they helped create a new institutional network for assisted modernization. My intent here is not to make decisive claims about U.S. foreign policy but to suggest the existence of overlap and continuity between domestic and foreign affairs. What shaped many of these overseas rural development efforts was the favorable assessment of the recent American experience and the belief that war–ravaged and developing countries alike would benefit from similar agrarian and industrial resource policies.
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- Information
- This Land, This NationConservation, Rural America, and the New Deal, pp. 242 - 284Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007