HIST 388
Decolonization and the Cold War Spring 2025
Division II D Difference, Power, and Equity

Class Details

The second half of the twentieth century came to be defined by two distinct, yet overlapping and intertwined phenomena: the Cold War and decolonization. In the two decades that followed the end of WWII, forty new nation-states were born amidst the bipolar struggle for global supremacy between the Soviet Union and the United States. Those new nations were swept up in the Cold War competition in ways that profoundly influenced their paths to independence and their postcolonial orders, but they often had transformative effects on the Soviet-American rivalry as well. In this course, students will focus on two related questions: How did decolonization influence the Cold War and the international behavior and priorities of the two superpowers? And what impact did the Cold War exert on the developing states and societies of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America? Course materials will consist of scholarly texts, primary sources, and films.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 25
Expected: 15
Class#: 3472
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: class participation, several short papers, and a 10- to 12-page final paper
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: History majors; juniors and seniors
Distributions: Divison II Difference, Power, and Equity
DPE Notes: This course is fundamentally concerned with dynamics of unequal power and social change that occurred during the post-WWII process of decolonization that unfolded in tandem with the Cold War. Students examine these shifting power relations from the perspectives of a wide range of actors in the Global South, the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and Europe. They come away with a sense of how the processes under study contributed to the makeup of today's world.
Attributes: GBST South + Southeast Asia Studies
HIST Group G Electives - Global History
LEAD American Foreign Policy Leadership

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