From World War to Postwar: Revolution, Cold War, Decolonization, and the Rise of American Hegemony, 1943-1958

New Approaches to International History

by Andrew N. Buchanan, Thomas W. Zeiler (Editor)

Offering a global account of the 'long' World War II, this book challenges conventional narratives that picture a clearly defined war period (1939-1945) followed by a distinct postwar era dominated by the encroaching cold war. Arguing instead that while some aspects of the war did end abruptly in 1945, in many corners of the world 'war' bled directly and raggedly into the 'postwar' such as Allied Occupation in Italy, the civil war in Greece, the rise of US hegemony and struggles for national liberation in India. From World War to Cold War shows how critical developments in the latter half of the 20th century were a direct result of the Second World War, and reconceptualizes the conflict as an intersecting series of regional wars as well as an overarching world war.

Offering new ways to think about how 'the war' shaped the second half of the 20th century, this book reaches into those regions often overlooked in the study of WWII. Showing how wartime relations between the US and Latin America played a crucial role in the worldwide development of US hegemony, how WWII accelerated the retreat from Empire in Sub-Saharan Africa and how it encouraged the growth of anti-colonialism in regions around the world, Buchanan offers a truly global account of the outcomes of the largest conflict in human history, and challenges the temporal boundaries in which we view it.

286 pages, Hardcover

Published December 28, 2023

Reviews

[Jason Friedlander · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a continuation of Buchanan’s previous book, World War II in Global Perspective. Buchanan provides a broad overview of the many aftermaths of WWII all over the world, from Asia and Africa to North and South America. This includes details of various independence movements, CIA-backed coups, local struggles for power, and more. It’s quite extensive and includes a good amount of citations too for those who want to read more into each national situation. It’s not a book about the Cold War, exactly, but about the period described as the “Postwar,” of which the Cold War was but one aspect.

I highly recommend his two books for anyone who is interested in an introduction to the global nature of WWII and how all of our histories have been profoundly shaped by those first few years after the war. It’s a fascinating macro overview of mid-century history that I think is definitely worth learning about as a part of all of our general educations.