How the United States used its position as the world's leading scientific and technological power to rebuild European scientific practices and institutions and align them with American interests during the first two decades of the Cold War.
In 1945, the United States was not only the strongest economic and military power in the world; it was also the world's leader in science and technology. In American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe , John Krige describes the efforts of influential figures in the United States to model postwar scientific practices and institutions in Western Europe on those in America. They mobilized political and financial support to promote not just America's scientific and technological agendas in Western Europe but its Cold War political and ideological agendas as well.
Drawing on the work of diplomatic and cultural historians, Krige argues that this attempt at scientific dominance by the United States can be seen as a form of 'consensual hegemony,' involving the collaboration of influential local elites who shared American values. He uses this notion to analyze a series of case studies that describe how the U.S. administration, senior officers in the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the NATO Science Committee, and influential members of the scientific establishment--notably Isidor I. Rabi of Columbia University and Vannevar Bush of MIT--tried to Americanize scientific practices in such fields as physics, molecular biology, and operations research. He details U.S. support for institutions including CERN, the Niels Bohr Institute, the French CNRS and its laboratories at Gif near Paris, and the never-established 'European MIT.' Krige's study shows how consensual hegemony in science not only served the interests of postwar European reconstruction but became another way of maintaining American leadership and 'making the world safe for democracy.'
Review text:
'John Krige's impressively researched case studies document a US cold-war agenda for shaping European science that was deeply political--yet, for all of America's preponderance of material resources, subject to continuous negotiation. As a book that also reveals how the enrollment of science became a project for state-building, this work is important for students of American power, hard and soft.'
--Charles S. Maier, Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University
'Krige's book is the first comprehensive account of American efforts both to reconstruct European science after World War II and to make it a politically reliable ally of American purposes in the Cold War. Drawing on a vast array of published and archival sources, it ranges authoritatively across key subjects such as physics and genetics, NATO and CERN, and the Ford and Rockefeller philanthropies, setting all of them in the larger context of American foreign policy in postwar Europe. The result is an original, important, and eye-opening work, one that will interest historians of the Cold War as well as historians of science and technology.'
--Daniel J. Kevles, Stanley Woodward Professor of History, Yale University
'The first comprehensive study of the important role that the natural sciences played in America's cultural Cold War in Europe, this truly excellent and carefully researched book will be of great interest not only to modern historians of all stripes but also to scientists. A model of the new approach to the history of science, it includes a particularly fascinating chapter on Niels Bohr's institute in Copenhagen and its cooperation with the Ford Foundation and the CIA.'
--V. R. Berghahn, Seth Low Professor of History, Columbia University
In 1945, the United States was not only the strongest economic and military power in the world; it was also the world's leader in science and technology. In American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe , John Krige describes the efforts of influential figures in the United States to model postwar scientific practices and institutions in Western Europe on those in America. They mobilized political and financial support to promote not just America's scientific and technological agendas in Western Europe but its Cold War political and ideological agendas as well.
Drawing on the work of diplomatic and cultural historians, Krige argues that this attempt at scientific dominance by the United States can be seen as a form of 'consensual hegemony,' involving the collaboration of influential local elites who shared American values. He uses this notion to analyze a series of case studies that describe how the U.S. administration, senior officers in the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the NATO Science Committee, and influential members of the scientific establishment--notably Isidor I. Rabi of Columbia University and Vannevar Bush of MIT--tried to Americanize scientific practices in such fields as physics, molecular biology, and operations research. He details U.S. support for institutions including CERN, the Niels Bohr Institute, the French CNRS and its laboratories at Gif near Paris, and the never-established 'European MIT.' Krige's study shows how consensual hegemony in science not only served the interests of postwar European reconstruction but became another way of maintaining American leadership and 'making the world safe for democracy.'
Review text:
'John Krige's impressively researched case studies document a US cold-war agenda for shaping European science that was deeply political--yet, for all of America's preponderance of material resources, subject to continuous negotiation. As a book that also reveals how the enrollment of science became a project for state-building, this work is important for students of American power, hard and soft.'
--Charles S. Maier, Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University
'Krige's book is the first comprehensive account of American efforts both to reconstruct European science after World War II and to make it a politically reliable ally of American purposes in the Cold War. Drawing on a vast array of published and archival sources, it ranges authoritatively across key subjects such as physics and genetics, NATO and CERN, and the Ford and Rockefeller philanthropies, setting all of them in the larger context of American foreign policy in postwar Europe. The result is an original, important, and eye-opening work, one that will interest historians of the Cold War as well as historians of science and technology.'
--Daniel J. Kevles, Stanley Woodward Professor of History, Yale University
'The first comprehensive study of the important role that the natural sciences played in America's cultural Cold War in Europe, this truly excellent and carefully researched book will be of great interest not only to modern historians of all stripes but also to scientists. A model of the new approach to the history of science, it includes a particularly fascinating chapter on Niels Bohr's institute in Copenhagen and its cooperation with the Ford Foundation and the CIA.'
--V. R. Berghahn, Seth Low Professor of History, Columbia University