This chapter examines the foreign teacher recruitment strategies mobilized by Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Economists and politicians agreed that secondary schools were crucial for producing the skilled workers essential to development. But new nations faced an intractable roadblock as they sought to expand secondary schools: a deficit of local teachers. Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire found different solutions to the crisis of teacher scarcity, although both relied on foreigners. Ghana turned to plural sources of generally inexperienced educators. Côte d’Ivoire, instead, leaned on French teachers available through technical assistance (or coopération). Both strategies responded to the maddening paradox of the postcolonial teacher: a role that West Africans agreed was essential, but which few opted to pursue. Ultimately, the reliance on foreign teachers contributed to the corrosion of the emancipatory project of public education.

This chapter analyses the first two decades of European integration from 1950 to 1969, a period marked by ambitious plans, spectacular setbacks, and unexpected successes. Starting with the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, the study examines how a complex system of supranational and intergovernmental institutions developed from modest beginnings. It shows that early integration was characterised less by a master plan than by pragmatic compromises and the external constraints of the Cold War. While the failure of the European Defence Community in 1954 showed the limits of supranational ambitions, the Treaties of Rome of 1957 proved to be surprisingly dynamic. The European Economic Community in particular developed into the centre of gravity of integration. One central outcome of this was the realisation that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), originally only an appendage to market integration, became the ‘green heart’ of the Community. Despite fundamental approval, people in Europe largely lacked concrete knowledge about the Communities. The chapter shows that in this phase the EC was still one of many international organisations: its later dominance was by no means predetermined.

Elizabeth Maconchy became Chair of the Composers’ Guild in 1959 and oversaw important diplomatic visits to Canada and the Soviet Union during her tenure. The Guild was ostensibly a professional organisation representing composers’ interests in such matters as BBC opportunities, performing rights’ payments, and film composing. However, as this chapter outlines, its early years up to Maconchy’s tenure were characterised by a concerted effort in diplomacy with countries of the emerging Communist Bloc, particularly under the Chairmanship of Alan Bush from 1947. While Bush’s efforts to align the Guild with similar organisations east of the Iron Curtain were ultimately rejected by the membership, his efforts paved the way for Maconchy’s 1960 visit, and constituted an important example of ‘unofficial’ cultural diplomacy with the Eastern Bloc preceding the more famous state-sponsored visits of Benjamin Britten to the Soviet Union.

This chapter focuses on the different ways that strategic uses of submarines have influenced developments in international law. It highlights the security dimensions in discussions at the failed Second Law of the Sea Conference in 1960. Superpower dynamics during the Cold War also influenced decisions leading to the negotiations for the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as well as the negotiations themselves. The growing importance of nuclear-powered submarines, as well as nuclear weapons on conventionally-powered submarines, spurred international agreements on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. This chapter brings to the fore the strategic importance of military submarines for major maritime powers in recent decades as it provides critical context for contemporary development and application of international law. We conclude Part I of the book in this chapter in bringing together key themes in the legal history of submarines that continue to influence the modern international law of submarines.

The use of submarines in World War II and the development of submarine technology into the Cold War had implications for different fields of international law. This chapter addresses the peace negotiations and agreements that were adopted after World War II, which concerned the decommissioning (to varying degrees) of submarines and efforts to revise the Montreux Treaty. International law developments were sometimes slow, as evident in responses to violations of the law of naval warfare. Equally, the chapter highlights the rise of nuclear technology in relation to submarines and the modest advances in international agreements on nuclear tests. Despite the growing strategic importance of submarines in the Cold War, their explicit regulation in the 1958 conference and treaties on the law of the sea was scant. Instead, international laws relating to the passage of warships and military activities on the high seas generally impacted international laws regulating submarine operations.

The Second World War confronted the League of Red Cross Societies with a set of challenges and opportunities that would allow it to re-cast its position as a humanitarian institution. This chapter focuses on the League’s decisive meeting in Oxford in July 1946, when the Board of Governors set out a bold agenda for the post-war world and sought to establish the institution as the leading voice in the Red Cross movement. The chapter explores how these ambitions played out over the remainder of the decade, as Cold War tensions re-set the international order. The League consciously strengthened its democratic credentials, establishing membership criteria, and reinforcing its normative / ideological foundations through the enunciation of a new set of Red Cross ‘principles’. It likewise built on its wartime experience to mount its first independent relief operation in Palestine in 1948. The years also witnessed a vital shift within the institution, with the once dominant Americans giving way to Scandinavians. This was critical at a time when the Red Cross needed to maintain the confidence of National Societies from the socialist bloc and the emergent Global South.

The 1970s and 1980s were important decades as the League of Red Cross Societies became one of the world’s largest and most influential humanitarian organisations for disaster relief and prevention. This chapter examines the League’s involvement in Sudan and Ethiopia during these years, when the two countries struggled with drought, famine, and protracted armed conflict. Both National Societies were members of the League prior to the 1960s and could trace their roots to before the Second World War. These examples offer critical insights into how their relationships with the League shaped the relief collaborations, and explore a core concern of the League to build capacity and strong relationships with its member Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies. They confirm that the League’s relations across national borders were often unstable, buffeted by the variously shifting power relations through decolonisation and the Cold War.

This chapter focuses on the Tansley Report or ‘Big Study’, an independent study undertaken by the Red Cross movement in the 1970s. The aim was to conduct a reappraisal of the Red Cross, its role, image, and status in a rapidly changing world. The chapter argues that the main recommendations of the Report, to narrow the focus of the League of Red Cross Societies on disaster relief and strengthen the Secretariat, were largely ignored because they ran counter to the federated nature of the global humanitarian organisation. National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies wanted to retain their autonomy and continue to conduct a broad range of social welfare and public health programmes relevant to their own communities. Despite its flaws, the Tansley Report offers a unique snapshot of the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement in the 1970s, and remains the most detailed external analysis undertaken.

For much of the twentieth century, South East Asia was neglected by the League of Red Cross Societies. However, in the post-1945 period, with decolonisation and new National Societies joining the League and the Cold War accelerating in the region, the League organised a South East Asian Forum in 1964 under the auspices of its Development Programme, hosted by the Australian Red Cross. This chapter explores the Forum and the politics of regional Red Cross and Red Crescent networks during this period when resources for building the capacity of the network were scarce. It analyses how the Red Cross used the Colombo Plan as a way to fund Development Programme initiatives especially through securing Fellowships that brought Asian medical experts to Australia for advanced training in blood transfusion. The chapter also examines how the League had to rely on regional leaders of more developed Red Cross National Societies like the Australian Red Cross to support its members. This played into the Australian government’s strategic interests in the region and led to the League Secretariat having little control of its programmes in South East Asia.

This chapter explores the limited response of the League of Red Cross Societies and the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement to the wider turn towards ‘the human environment’ in the 1970s. It investigates the role played by Secretary General Henrik Beer and his efforts to mobilise National Societies to the dangers of environmental degradation and pollution, and to develop preventative environmental health campaigns and new systems for pre-disaster planning. The role of the League during the 1972 UN Stockholm Conference is examined, as is Beer’s relationships with Maurice Strong, Barbara Ward (Lady Jackson) and Dr Irena Domanska, former President of the Polish Red Cross, who chaired the League’s Health and Social Service Advisory Committee and was an early champion of the environment and the role of the Red Cross. The influence of Soviet aligned National Societies and Cold War politics is also explored.

In June 1966, the International PEN Club held its annual conference in New York City. It was the first time in forty-two years that the United States had hosted the meeting, and there was much to celebrate. Pablo Neruda, who had repeatedly been denied visas to the United States since 1943 on the grounds that he was a communist, was one of the stars of the show. Throughout – and, indeed, long after – the conference, he made headlines, drew audiences, and made statements that had a lasting impact. He also earned the wrath of supporters of the Cuban Revolution, who attacked him for betraying the revolution by participating in the conference. This chapter discusses Neruda’s participation in the event, including the controversies that he sparked during and afterward, as well as his other activities in New York and his travels in the United States afterward.

The chapter examines the representation of Cold War nuclear threat and international politics in The Little Girls. The triangular relationship of the three girls over time, from the burying of the box before the First World War until the Cold War setting in 1962, plays out a Macbeth-inflected version of the international relations governing the nuclear world. Bowen had registered the shape and dangers of those relations at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946, which she attended with her lover, the Canadian diplomat Charles Ritchie. The rule of three governing the girls’ friendship and experience of war trauma matches the three geopolitical points of the triangle of Cold War politics – the West, the communist bloc, the non-aligned nations – as well as mimicking forms of international diplomacy, two conflicting parties, and a third-party mediator.

While living in exile in a divided Berlin after the 1973 military coup and Pablo Neruda’s death twelve days later, Antonio Skármeta created his own version of Neruda in Ardiente paciencia (Burning Patience), a humane image of the poet that contrasted with the one-dimensional communist martyr projected after his death. Skármeta wrote the base story for four different media under the same title: a radio drama, a play, a film, and a novel. The story has since been freely adapted by others, such as Michael Radford’s film Il Postino (The Postman), Daniel Catán’s opera, with Plácido Domingo as Neruda, and Rodrigo Sepúlveda’s recent film released by Netflix. Aside from clarifying the confusion in the critical bibliography regarding these multiple stories, this chapter focuses on Skármeta’s two media versions of Ardiente paciencia, the play and the film, to show how a single artistic creation can captivate audiences worldwide.

Neruda’s poetry and political activism have been naturally inscribed in the geopolitical and hermeneutical framework of the Cold War, the struggle between capitalism and communism, and the national liberation processes of the Global South. His international recognition coincides with his political radicalization: from his exile at the end of 1940 to his presidential candidacy in 1969, promoted by the Communist Party of Chile. His poetry, on the other hand, from Residencia en la tierra and El canto general, and to his later Incitación al Nixonicidio y alabanza de la Revolución Cubana, can be understood as an expression of partisan literature. It is clear that Neruda is not only a well-known writer, but also an important witness of the twentieth century. In this context, this chapter begins with the question: Is a new reading of Neruda possible, a reading beyond the historical framework that has informed his usual reception?