Contesting American hegemony
Attacks to US scientific initiatives in Cold War Europe (and means to secretly defy these challenges)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14800628 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Simone Turchetti (0000-0003-1834-2503, University of Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 109-128 |
| Publication date | 2024-04-02 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History and Technology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0734-1512 • E-ISSN: 1477-2620 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/07341512.2024.2360715 |
| OpenAlex | W4400676625 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 35 |
This article focuses on the French communist scientists’ attack, executed in 1953, on US initiatives for the promotion of science in Europe. Collated in the anonymous booklet Un plan U.S.A. de mainmise sur la science, these accusations caused a sensation in the already tense political climate of the early 1950s by alleging that American initiatives offered cover to intelligence operations, and a chokehold on the development of European science. While US government agencies never offered an official comment on these indictments, in great secrecy their officials sought to find out about the booklet’s authors, identify potential leaks of restricted information that might have informed its completion, and reorient science initiatives in Europe because of what the communist propaganda exposed. This essay thus argues that US efforts to reduce the impact that the publication had in France (and Western Europe more generally) played a role in shaping American hegemony, since finding ways to deflate the influence of dissenting voices in European science, at times stealthily, was as decisive as consensus building through the strengthening of transatlantic scientific relations
Communism · Dissenting opinion · Hegemony · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Secrecy · Sociology · International Science and Diplomacy · Law · Public Administration · Research, Science, and Academia · Twentieth Century Scientific Developments
American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe
Stay-behind networks and interim flexible strategy
Confronting America
The Concept of Cultural Hegemony
The Wizards of Langley
The Carter Administration and Italy
Paris–New York roundtrip
The Crisis in Physics
The Unflinching Mr. Smith and the Nuclear Age
The Congress for Cultural Freedom, Minerva, and the Quest for Instituting “Science Studies” in the Age of Cold War
France Restored
Louis Rapkine and the Restoration of French Science after the Second World War
Cécile Morette and the Les Houches summer school for theoretical physics; or, how Girl Scouts, the 1944 Caen bombing and a marriage proposal helped rebuild French physics (1951–1972)
Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony
The Atomic Secret in Red Hands? American Suspicions of Theoretical Physicists During the Early Cold War
| Highly cited | No |
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