Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 The Cold War and the intellectual history of the late twentieth century
- 2 The world economy and the Cold War, 1970–1990
- 3 The rise and fall of Eurocommunism
- 4 The Cold War and Jimmy Carter
- 5 Soviet foreign policy from détente to Gorbachev, 1975–1985
- 6 Islamism, the Iranian revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
- 7 The collapse of superpower détente, 1975–1980
- 8 Japan and the Cold War, 1960–1991
- 9 China and the Cold War after Mao
- 10 The Cold War in Central America, 1975–1991
- 11 The Cold War and southern Africa, 1976–1990
- 12 The Gorbachev revolution and the end of the Cold War
- 13 US foreign policy under Reagan and Bush
- 14 Western Europe and the end of the Cold War, 1979–1989
- 15 The East European revolutions of 1989
- 16 The unification of Germany, 1985–1991
- 17 The collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990–1991
- 18 Science, technology, and the Cold War
- 19 Transnational organizations and the Cold War
- 20 The biosphere and the Cold War
- 21 The Cold War and human rights
- 22 The Cold War in the longue durée: global migration, public health, and population control
- 23 Consumer capitalism and the end of the Cold War
- 24 An ‘incredibly swift transition’: reflections on the end of the Cold War
- 25 The restructuring of the international system after the Cold War
- Bibliographical essay
- Index
- References
22 - The Cold War in the longue durée: global migration, public health, and population control
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2010
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 The Cold War and the intellectual history of the late twentieth century
- 2 The world economy and the Cold War, 1970–1990
- 3 The rise and fall of Eurocommunism
- 4 The Cold War and Jimmy Carter
- 5 Soviet foreign policy from détente to Gorbachev, 1975–1985
- 6 Islamism, the Iranian revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
- 7 The collapse of superpower détente, 1975–1980
- 8 Japan and the Cold War, 1960–1991
- 9 China and the Cold War after Mao
- 10 The Cold War in Central America, 1975–1991
- 11 The Cold War and southern Africa, 1976–1990
- 12 The Gorbachev revolution and the end of the Cold War
- 13 US foreign policy under Reagan and Bush
- 14 Western Europe and the end of the Cold War, 1979–1989
- 15 The East European revolutions of 1989
- 16 The unification of Germany, 1985–1991
- 17 The collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990–1991
- 18 Science, technology, and the Cold War
- 19 Transnational organizations and the Cold War
- 20 The biosphere and the Cold War
- 21 The Cold War and human rights
- 22 The Cold War in the longue durée: global migration, public health, and population control
- 23 Consumer capitalism and the end of the Cold War
- 24 An ‘incredibly swift transition’: reflections on the end of the Cold War
- 25 The restructuring of the international system after the Cold War
- Bibliographical essay
- Index
- References
Summary
A three-volume history is an impressive monument to Cold War studies. But could it one day be seen as a tombstone? The grave danger inherent in superpower relations might appear to provide enduring reasons to continue studying them indefinitely. A different outcome, after all, could have changed everything. Yet this argument would base the importance of the Cold War on shifting ground: something that might have happened. Only a handful of crises had truly catastrophic potential, and treating them to ever more fine-grained analyses yields diminishing returns. As the Cold War continues to recede into history, scholars will therefore have to work harder to explain its importance to future generations.
If one instead turns to the history of populations and public health – the kind of “structural” history favored by the followers of Fernand Braudel – the period coinciding with the Cold War can be shown to have witnessed changes that were comparable to the impact of global nuclear war, only these changes unfolded over decades and had nearly the opposite demographic effects. The number of people living on earth more than doubled between 1945 and 1989. By the time Germans were living under one government again, world population was growing by the number of people in the reunited nation – more than 80 million – each and every year. The overwhelming majority of them were being born in Asia and Africa. For the largely Russian leadership of the USSR, the higher fertility of Central Asians appeared to pose an existential threat.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of the Cold War , pp. 466 - 488Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
, , and , Population Matters: Demographic Change, Economic Growth, and Poverty in the Developing World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2000) –55Google Scholar
, “Between Camps: Eastern Bloc ‘Escapees’ and Cold War Borderlands,” American Quarterly, 57 (2005) –42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Text of Address,” 11 May 1961
, “The West and the Displaced, 1945–1951: The Post-War Roots of Political Refugees,” Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 2000.Google Scholar
y, “To Inherit the Earth: Imagining World Population, From the Yellow Peril to the Population Bomb,” Journal of Global History, 1 (2006) –11.Google Scholar
, “Seeing Beyond the State: The Population Control Movement and the Problem of Sovereignty,” Past & Present, 195 (November 2006).Google Scholar
, “Taking off the Cold War Lens: Visions of North–South Conflict during the Algerian War for Independence,” American Historical Review, 105 (2000) –54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), ch..Google Scholar
, “Population Control in India: Prologue to the Emergency Period,” Population and Development Review, 32 (2006) –67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Government in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar
, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie,” American Historical Review, 112 (2007) –64CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, “Miracles of Modernization: The Green Revolution and the Apotheosis of Technology,” Diplomatic History, 28 (2004) –54Google Scholar
, “The Growth of Tropical Populations,” c. March 1948
, “Population Control in the 20th Century: Scandinavian Aid to the Indian Family Planning Programme,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Oxford, 2005.Google Scholar
, “Reading Between the Lines of the 1979 Soviet Census,” Population and Development Review, 8 (1982), 349 –57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Face of the Nation: Immigration, the State, and the National Identity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996) –97Google Scholar
, The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100: Europe, America, and the Third World, ed. by , et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 257–61, 327–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, et al., provide an excellent introduction, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
and , “Feminists and Neo-Malthusians: Past and Present Alliances,” Population and Development Review, 23 (1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Trade and Aid: Eisenhower’s Foreign Economic Policy 1953–1961 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982)Google Scholar
, “The Politics of Reform: Policymakers and the Immigration Act of 1965,” Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1999, 172–73, 176 –89.Google Scholar
and , “The World’s Changing Human Capital Stock: Multi-State Population Projections by Educational Attainment,” Population and Development Review, 27 (2001) –39.Google Scholar
, “Stalinist Forced Relocation Policies: Patterns, Causes, Consequences,” in and (eds.), Demography and National Security (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 309, 315 –22.Google Scholar
, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders, 1834–1937 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).Google Scholar
, et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Universe Books, 1972).Google Scholar
and , Population and Family Planning Programs: A Compendium of Data through 1978, 10th ed. (New York: Population Council, 1980).Google Scholar
, “Problems of Policy in Relation to Areas of Heavy Population Pressure,” in Demographic Studies of Selected Areas of Rapid Growth (New York: Milbank Memorial Fund, 1944).Google Scholar
, World Population Crisis: The United States Response (New York: Praeger, 1973), 36–40.Google Scholar
, Eisenhower and Latin America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988);Google Scholar
, “The Soviet Union’s Abortion Law,” Women Today, December 1936;
, “Demand for Children in Low Income Countries,” Handbook of Population and Family Economics, 1 (1997) –84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Population Science, Private Foundations, and Development Aid: The Transformation of Demographic Knowledge in the United States, 1945–1965,” in and (eds.), International Development and the Social Sciences (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997) –93.Google Scholar
, “Constructing International Identity: The World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization, 1945–1965,” Ph.D. thesis, Ohio State University, 1998 –29.Google Scholar
, China’s Population Struggle: Demographic Decisions of the People’s Republic, 1949–1969 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1973) –79.Google Scholar
, Point Four: Cooperative Program for Aid in the Development of Economically Underdeveloped Areas (Washington, DC: US Department of State, 1950)
and , “The Demographic Policy Debate in the USSR,” Population and Development Review, 7 (1981) –87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Nature, Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic Body in the Age of Socialism,” American Historical Review, 104 (1999) –55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Official Records, 42 (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1952), 131 –42.
and , World Population and Production: Trend and Outlook (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1953) –56.Google Scholar
- 5
- Cited by