Race, Ethnicity, and the Cold War: A Global Perspective

A white American woman is raped by a black Panamanian laborer in 1946 in the Panama Canal Zone, and the aftermath affects labor relations in the Western hemisphere for the next two decades. And numerous nations use the African continent to exercise their colonial muscle and postwar power, only to encounter the financial and military burdens that will exhaust and alienate their own citizenry half a world away. As Race, Ethnicity, and the Cold War reveals, during this dangerous era there were no longer any "isolated incidents." Like the butterfly flapping its wings and changing the weather on the other side of the globe, an instance of racial or ethnic hostility had ripple effects across a Cold War world of brinksmanship between bitter national rivals and ideological opponents.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Borders of Race and Nation
Nico Slate

Part I: Race and the International System

Token Diplomacy: The United States, Race, and the Cold War
Michael L. Krenn

A Wind of Change? White Redoubt and the Postcolonial Moment in South Africa, 1960-1963
Ryan M. Irwin

Part II: Race, Ethnicity, and Decolonization

Race, Labor, and Security in the Panama Canal Zone: The 1946 Greaves Rape Case, Local 713, and the Isthmian Cold War Crackdown
Michael Donoghue

Race, Identity, and Diplomacy in the Papua Decolonization Struggle, 1949-1962
David Webster

"For a Better Guinea": Winning Hearts and Minds in Portuguese Guinea
Luís Nuno Rodrigues

Part III: Race and the Interplay of Domestic and International Politics

Testing the Limits of Soviet Internationalism: African Students in the Soviet Union
Maxim Matusevich

Crimes against Humanity in the Congo: Nazi Legacies and the German Cold War in Africa
Katrina M. Hagen

Race and the Cuban Revolution: The Impact of Cuba's Intervention in Angola
Henley Adams

Part IV: Ethnicity and the Interplay of Domestic and International Politics

Ethnic Nationalism in the Cold War Context: The Cyprus Issue in the Greek and Greek American Public Debate, 1954-1989
Zinovia Lialiouti and Philip E. Muehlenbeck

God Bless Reagan and God Help Canada: The Polish Canadian Action Group and Solidarność in Toronto
Eric L. Payseur

Ethnic Nationalism and the Collapse of Soviet Communism
Mark R. Beissinger