Jeffrey A. Engel, Katherine Carté Engel, eds. Local Consequences of the Global Cold War. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2007. xvii + 334 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8047-5947-2.

Reviewed by Werner D. Lippert (Department of History, Indiana University of Pennsylvania)
Published on H-German (February, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher

The Global Impact on the Local

When devising a history class, one of the first steps my beginning student teachers need to ponder is how the historical content is relevant to the audience. Such concerns for the audience are less common, though, with academics in higher education and I dare say diplomatic history is no exception. In this light, I was especially delighted to review this edited volume as it is focused on the dialectic between the local and the international in Cold War history. As editors Jeffrey A. Engel and Katherine Carté Engel state, contributors to this volume were asked to look beyond the traditional set of actors, "demonstrating not only how domestic forces affected international policies but also how international affairs altered a large range and number of lives" (p. 4). Such focus in historical research opens up new options for diplomatic history and holds the promise of arousing more interest from the public in general.

In an essay that deserves attention, the Engels create a comprehensive overview of the traditional approaches of diplomatic history-writing and how it intersects with local history. According to the Engels, diplomatic history remained generally isolated from tendencies in the larger profession, such as the emergence of the Annales school or later social history. While each generation of historians accepted domestic influences on foreign policymaking, the reverse--a trickle-down diplomatic history, so to speak--was not acknowledged. They argue that in a world flattened by globalization and instantaneous communication, the local (however one chooses to define it) can no longer be ignored. This volume sets out to explore the local effects of the Cold War on the daily lives of people (part 1), on industrial development (part 2), on the environment (part 3), and on life in the developing world (part 4).

As essays in the volume demonstrate, the establishment and dissemination of pro-American Hollywood movies in postwar Japan (Hiroshi Kitamura), the motives and actions of activist students in West Berlin in 1968 (Jeremi Suri), and the alteration of the way of life in the U.S. South (Thomas Borstelmann) all describe the Cold War's impact on individual lives. This impact ranges from conscious reaction to individual policies, to the fashioning of entertainment in the Cold War framework, to the subconscious alteration of a way of life for an entire region.

The second part of the collection offers a treatment of the most apparent result of Cold War diplomacy: the expansion of the military-industrial complex. Seattle's growth with the help of the aerospace industry (Richard Kirkendall), the development of the "other" Los Angeles--driven by defense contracts and the technological superpower race (Michael Oden), and the very same easy interplay between the military and industry in Novosibirsk (Anita Seth) all provide evidence for the significant economic growth of the defense sector and how it came to dominate entire regions.

While the interplay between the military and industry (as described in part 2) is readily accepted, the most shocking evidence is offered in part 3. Here, local reactions to the creation of a U.S. nuclear submarine base in Scotland are examined (Alan Dobson/ Charlie Whitham), the negative impacts of Soviet land policies on East Germany are explored (Arvid Nelson), and the militarization of the U.S. northern plains are analyzed (Catherine Stock). Of particular interest to the reader, here, is the discussion of the apparent willingness of locals and national officials to accept the Cold War discourse--even when it came at a cost to the local environment.

In the last part, the impact of the Cold War on developing nations is examined. Luís Rodrigues examines the impact of the Cold War on Angola, and Jeremy Ball describes the suffering of the East Timorese people as a pawn in the superpower game. This last part seems most reminiscent of a traditional foreign policy analysis. Nonetheless, it maintains a strong focus on the people's suffering in local contexts 

Interestingly, the local aspect seems to make these essays more relevant, allowing an emotional subtext to build that all too often is missing from traditional diplomatic historiography. Yet, beyond the reminder that what historians analyze actually mattered to many people, this volume offers other insights into the complexity of composing a multilevel history: it is neither linear nor one-dimensional. The authors have done a fine job in demonstrating that local sentiments, such as the Scottish dissatisfaction over the presence of U.S. nuclear submarines, developed out of Cold War policies. This conclusion, however, raises the question of how these sentiments influenced global politics, making the analysis cyclical rather than linear. A second methodological point which makes this book quite valuable is the question of evidence. The more narrow the focus on a community, the more diverse the evidence. While some authors stuck to traditional diplomatic sources, others included interviews, local archives, TV excerpts, and other fascinating "unorthodox" sources.

Overall, the breadth of topics and quality of content, along with the methodological insights, make this book a necessary addition to any Cold War collection.

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Citation: Werner D. Lippert. Review of Engel, Jeffrey A.; Engel, Katherine Carté, eds., Local Consequences of the Global Cold War. H-German, H-Net Reviews. February, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23725

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