The Cold War was not simply a stand-off between the two superpowers. Its theaters were not just in Washington and in Moscow, but also in the social, economic, political, and cultural arenas of geographically far-flung countries emerging from colonial rule. Moreover, tensions surrounding the Cold War were manifest not only in global political disputes but also in the struggles over technology. Technological systems and expertise offered a powerful tool to shape countries—politically, economically, socially, and culturally. This book explores how Cold War politics, imperialism, and postcolonial ... More

The Cold War was not simply a stand-off between the two superpowers. Its theaters were not just in Washington and in Moscow, but also in the social, economic, political, and cultural arenas of geographically far-flung countries emerging from colonial rule. Moreover, tensions surrounding the Cold War were manifest not only in global political disputes but also in the struggles over technology. Technological systems and expertise offered a powerful tool to shape countries—politically, economically, socially, and culturally. This book explores how Cold War politics, imperialism, and postcolonial nation building became enmeshed in technologies and considers the legacies of those entanglements for today’s new global order. It addresses such topics as the the taking over of islands and atolls for military and technological purposes by the supposedly non-imperial United States, efforts to achieve international legitimacy as a nuclear nation by South Africa during apartheid, international technoscientific assistance and Cold War politics, the Saudi irrigation system that spurred a Shi’i rebellion, and the “technopolitics” of emergency as signified by the portable medical kits used by Medecins sans Frontières in the killing fields of the Cold War. The contributors—coming from such diverse fields of study as anthropology, the history of development, diplomatic history, international history, imperial history, and science and technology studies (STS)—chart the course of these historical and geographical entanglements with technology during the Cold War.