This chapter demonstrates the entrenchment of the dominant image of France as weak and poised to tip into revolution. Tensions with the State Department and between Secretary of State James Byrnes and President Harry Truman, the influence of Admiral William Leahy over the intelligence process, and Truman’s preference for military and current intelligence over more comprehensive analyses served to buttress alarmist assessments and legitimized a harder line, even as analysts in the nascent Central Intelligence Group began to question some of the more ominous reporting. In France, anti-communist elements encouraged American attention and aid by warning of secret communist plots involving weapons drops, arms caches, and covert preparations for insurrection, and they themselves as the resistance to these communist plots, willing to act once they received American assistance. Surprisingly, they also advocated for direct American intervention in French affairs, not only in shaping the electoral landscape but also in reestablishing military bases inside France. Meanwhile, other national intelligence services, in their exchanges with US intelligence, also sounded the alarm about communist activity in southern France and questioned the legitimacy and efficacy of the French government. These contacts only reinforced the American belief that France was a weak and unreliable ally.

This chapter details the cracks in the consensus that began to emerge as tension boiled over in France with the expulsion of the PCF from the governing coalition and the communist-directed strikes that paralyzed the nation at the end of the year. Italian, Spanish and French intelligence, US embassy officials in Paris, U.S. military intelligence, and Central Intelligence Group current intelligence reports kept up the drumbeat, warning of growing anti-Americanism, communist power grabs and the PCF’s role in a larger, global communist conspiracy. Their analysis formed the core of the intelligence sent to President Truman and his senior advisors. However darkly uniform the analysis of the preceding year had been, some French officials, experts in the Office of Intelligence and Research (OIR) and a few mid-level analysts in the CIA expressed growing concern about the type and quality of intelligence. OIR analysts who complained that some CIA officials failed to account for French agency raised one of the most serious shortcomings of American analysis. Beyond their entreaties for American aid, French sources also played a role in the development of U.S. interference in France and its pro-colonial turn.

This chapter focuses on Bolaño’s writings that confront the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (1973–1990) and the complicity of intellectuals with Pinochet’s dictatorial state. Prior to Bolaño, few if any Chilean writers had reflected on complicity at such length or with such scathing intentionality. His works illuminate the moral gray zones to which the dictatorship gave rise and the myriad ways civilians and intellectuals became implicated in the regime’s reign of terror. Focusing especially on Bolaño’s 1996 novel Estrella distante (Distant Star, 2004) and his 2000 novel Nocturno de Chile (By Night in Chile, 2003), the chapter evokes several scenes from Bolaño’s two “dictatorship” novels to illustrate a wide spectrum of characters that range from fully complicit subjects to “implicated subjects” (Michael Rothberg). If the poet-killer Carlos Wieder, also known as Alberto Ruíz-Tagle, is clearly an accomplice to the Pinochet regime in Distant Star, figures such as the Opus Dei priest Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix or the belle of the literary salons María Canales in By Night in Chile, might be more aptly characterized as implicated subjects whose example brings into relief the ways a “civilized” culture inhabited by barbarism becomes part and parcel of dictatorial rule.

In June 1776, a group of Company officials conspired to overthrow the governor of the Madras Presidency, George Pigot. Both sides borrowed rhetoric from the more famous revolution then underway in America to frame the conflict as an issue of liberty and tyranny, but many in Britain saw the coup as little more than a cash grab in a settlement that had become synonymous with greed. This chapter revisits Pigot’s overthrow to show how this story of avarice was shaped by political conflict between two Indian rulers, Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah of Arcot and Tuljaji Bhonsle of Thanjavur. Both rulers had shored up their positions by offering patronage to various Company officials: Pigot had ties to Thanjavur, while his opponents had been courted by Arcot. Their competing interests fueled fierce debates in Madras about how the Company should intervene in Indian affairs – and who should direct that intervention. The Company’s European officers used the crisis to claim new authority over their civilian counterparts and led the coup against Pigot. In Britain, officials condemned the coup, but in Madras, it established a powerful precedent used by politically ambitious officers for decades to come.

This chapter examines the consolidation of Pahlavi rule after the removal of Reza Shah from power, especially after 1953, when the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was reestablished following a CIA-sponsored coup. The chapter explores the tenuous beginnings of the reign of the new Shah, the increasing legislative and policy-making significance of the Majles in the 1940s, and the era of oil nationalization, from 1951 to 1953. Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq was successful in getting the powers of the monarchy to be significantly reduced, but his overthrow was followed by the restoration of absolute monarchy built on a massive army and a feared secret service called SAVAK. Ultimately, however, the Pahlavi state failed to incorporate within its orbit and its social base remained weak. As the oil revenues began to lag, and the state was forced into making “housecleaning” concessions, it began to crumble under the weight of the gathering storm.

In Chapter 6, we find evidence that opposition successor parties from more closed opportunity structures experience centrifugal strains caused by the amalgamation of ideological orientations and perspectives that they represent. These strains lead to elite polarization that cause movement fracture and collapse. Conversely, opposition successor parties from more open opportunity structures are ideologically more coherent and thus do not suffer the same centrifugal tensions. Second, we see that nearly all opposition successor parties experience a dramatic decline in popularity after founding elections, due the ephemerality of symbolic resources in general (oppositional credibility, in this context). The positive reputations that helped opposition groups persuade citizens to vote for them in founding elections break down under economic strain and political disfunction that so frequently plague new democracies. Finally, we see that in contexts in which authoritarian state institutions persist beyond the transition, the resurgence of state repression against opposition successor parties becomes more likely, while authoritarian successor parties, in contrast, can integrate former regime members into the new democratic political system.

This chapter discusses Iranian nationalism during the years of Reza Khan’s rise as a nationalism rooted in territorial concepts. It describes how the emerging military rule of Reza Khan coalesced with the foreign policy efforts of the Iranian statesmen until parliamentary politics were overshadowed by the military’s arbitrary rule. Against this backdrop, the greater part of the chapter is devoted to depicting Iran's policy toward the Persian Gulf and toward the Arab shaykhdoms in the Gulf during the period of Reza Khan's rise, and the rhetoric and conduct of Iranian officials in the port towns and islands where the paths of Arabs and Iranians from different walks of life intersected. The assertion of central authority over Arabistan (renamed Khuzestan) is viewed as a decisive step in Iran’s more ambitious goal of reducing British influence in the Persian Gulf waterway, islands, and littoral.