Truman Administration Research Articles

Taking The Fair Deal to the Fields: Truman's Commission on Migratory Labor, Public Law 78, and the Bracero Program, 1950-1952

From 1950 to 1952 Harry S Truman invested significant personal effort and political capital in an effort to improve the circumstances of migratory farm workers and to revise the Bracero Program with Mexico. To this end, Truman created the high profile President's Commission on Migratory Labor in American agriculture in 1950. In its report, the commission recommended extending a variety of social legislation and economic protections to domestic farm labor, and it further recommended slowing or ending the importation of foreign, particularly Mexican, workers. The Truman administration energetically worked to convince Congress to act on those recommendations, even enlisting the support of the Mexican government. However, the power of growers' interests and the conservative bloc in Congress halted any significant reform. Instead, the Bracero Program was further institutionalized in the form of Public Law 78 and remained in effect for more than a decade thereafter.

Congressional Position Votes in the Truman Administration, 1947–52: A View from the White House

Scholars have routinely overlooked Harry Truman in analyses of presidential position votes in Congress. The principal data source for longitudinal studies of executive-legislative relations, Congressional Quarterly, did not regularly begin compiling presidential position votes until 1953. Yet position votes for the Truman administration do exist. Archival research at the Harry Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, revealed that the president commissioned his White House staff to undertake an analysis of position votes spanning the 80th, 81st, and 82nd Congresses (1947–52). This research note analyzes Truman's success rate on this set of domestic and foreign policy votes and provides details on the 83 House and 99 Senate position votes for future use by researchers.

‘Forthcoming three months represent best remaining opportunity for accomplishment’: Israeli diplomacy and the 1948 US presidential election (part II)

President Truman's de facto recognition of Israel on 14 May 1948 did not resolve the critical issues of de jure recognition, the new state's boundaries, the arms embargo, and financial assistance. In an ironic convergence with their frequent adversaries in the US State Department who often alleged that politics was driving Palestine policy, Israeli diplomats anticipated that favourable action from the Truman administration on these issues would be forthcoming in the course of that year's presidential election campaign. This article examines Israel's efforts to secure those objectives in the context of that year's presidential politics and the ongoing tug of war between White House and State Department. Despite persistent and determined advocacy, the mobilization of considerable support from American Zionists, and an apparently favourable political environment, Israel diplomacy was unable to overcome Truman's deference to State Department resistance to Israeli aspirations in the months leading up to his unexpected victory at the polls on 2 November 1948. It would be the success of Israeli arms, not the quest for Jewish votes, that proved to be the key to realizing the unfinished agenda of 14 May.

Modern Presidents and the Transformation of the Federal Personnel System

In this paper I review the causes and consequences of key changes in the federal personnel system in the modern presidency. I first describe the contours of this system at the end of the Truman Administration and the problem the system created for presidents. I then detail three changes to this system that emerged in response to the insularity of the civil service at mid-century. I conclude by reviewing how changes in the personnel system influence presidential efforts to control and manage the administrative state. I note how the short-term incentives of presidents to get control can lead to long-term difficulties in controlling that state.

Rapprochement Between Vietnam and the United States: A Response

Vietnam is perhaps the only country in the world to have engaged in so many intensive and marathon negotiations with the US over the past few decades. These include the Paris peace talks of 1968-73, negotiations on the normalization of bilateral diplomatic ties (1992-95), the Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) (1996-2000) and on Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) (2003-06) which paved the way for Vietnam's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 1 January 2007. These negotiations underscored the complexity of the relationship, yet were also instrumental in helping Vietnam and the US to better understand each other. It is difficult to appreciate how far and how quickly the Vietnamese-US relationship has evolved without having a good grasp of the difficulties bilateral ties have experienced over the years. In his article, Professor Brown presents a detailed and comprehensive account of the decades-long rapprochement process in which the national interests--including strategic interests--of both the US and Vietnam influenced the nature and intensity of negotiations. In assessing the history of this rapprochement, it is important to understand Vietnam's perspectives. Geopolitics and the Rapprochement from a Vietnamese Perspective The Vietnamese-US rapprochement should be viewed and analysed from a historical perspective rather than simply looking at developments in bilateral relations since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Vietnam and the US have had a long history of engagement that can be traced back to the late nineteenth century when Bui Vien, an emissary of the Nguyen Dynasty, was sent to Washington D.C. in 1873, but failed to secure a meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant to request diplomatic recognition. During the Second World War, the Viet Minh, the predecessor of the Vietnamese Communist Party, and the Office of Foreign Service (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA, joined forces to fight the Japanese. Such cooperation lasted until the end of the war, and though short-lived, the positive experience of cooperation encouraged President Ho Chi Mirth to write a letter to President Harry S. Truman asking for US help to secure Vietnam's independence from France. The letter was intercepted by Allen Dulles, then Director of OSS, and never reached President Truman. Not long after taking power, the Truman administration had decided to support France's reacquisition of its colonies in Southeast Asia in exchange for Paris' support for American policies in postwar Europe. There is still much debate over the question of whether Vietnam and the US would have been able to avoid conflict had President Truman received the letter from President Ho Chi Minh. However, for Vietnam, the lesson was clear: Washington was willing to sacrifice its ideals and push aside the interests of small-sized countries, including Vietnam, in pursuit of its national interests. These initial interactions slowly planted the seeds of suspicion in the minds of Vietnamese leaders regarding US intentions towards Vietnam. Direct intervention by the US in South Vietnam following France's defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 was aimed at halting Beijing-inspired communist expansion in Southeast Asia and preventing the fall of the pro-American regime in Saigon. Ultimately this proved to be a grave mistake by US policy-makers as they fundamentally misunderstood Vietnamese nationalism and the strained history of Sino-Vietnamese relations. As mentioned in Professor Brown's article, there was a missed opportunity for normalizing bilateral ties during 1977-78. On the Vietnamese side of the equation, two factors played an important role: first, Vietnam's lack of understanding of US politics, which led Vietnamese leaders to assume that the Congress would bow to requests made by President Richard M. Nixon on reconstruction aid for Vietnam; and second, their assumption that Southeast Asia was still a leading priority in US foreign policy even after the Vietnam War had ended. …

No Lost Chance in China: The False Realism of American Foreign Service Officers, 1943-1945

AbstractThis article reexamines the question of whether a chance was lost for the U.S. government to develop relations with Mao's China in the 1940s. I focus on John S. Service and John Paton Davies, seeking along the way to illuminate the ideological roots of the Truman administration's nonrecognition policy toward China. I argue that proponents of the “lost chance” thesis have misapplied the concept of realism in diplomacy, since realism is primarily concerned with power and security, not ideology such as democracy. These proponents overlook the assumptions on which American diplomats and leaders operated. The China Hands assumed that the Chinese Communists were social democrats, not revolutionaries controlled by Stalin. Dean Acheson embraced Davies's assumption that Mao would reassert nationalism upon assuming power and might still be drawn away from Moscow toward Washington. Far from being realists, they were deeply ideological. They disagreed with their domestic rivals within a liberal consensus. None of them had the intention of recognizing a Communist government in China. This study reveals how unspoken shared assumptions shaped not only the dynamics of American policymaking toward China during World War II and in its aftermath, but also the work of many historians who have written about the “lost chance.”

CONELRAD on the front line of Cold War defense

CONELRAD (a contraction of CONtrol of ELectromagnetic RADiation) focused on radio technology for both military and civil defense during the early Cold War years of the 1950s. Conceived as a military defense system into which civil defense needs were incorporated, the civilian aspects were not developed equally. Understood within the context of national security, however, the inequity was the point. CONELRAD contributed to the illusion that a nuclear attack was survivable and helped the Truman and Eisenhower administrations pursue their foreign and military policies without significant public opposition. This article explains the development of CONELRAD and the technical difficulties it faced, and exposes the bureaucratic infighting that was a manifestation of the inherent and mutually exclusive goals of the system.

Straight—but Narrow—Talk about the U.S., Taiwan, and China

Nancy Bernkopf Tucker begins Strait Talk with a striking claim: 'Today confrontation in the Taiwan Strait represents the single most dangerous challenge for the United States in the world/7 as a clash in this region the only conflict in which the US could confront a nuclear power with a huge military establishment (p. 1). Readers who perhaps shuddered when American candidates in 2008 called for open-ended backing of Georgia against Russia, or who view with foreboding recent developments in nuclear-armed Pakistan may be forgiven for taking Tucker's warning as hyperbole, not as straight talk. Her claim illustrates both a strength and a weakness of this meticulously researched book, which is based on the very latest declassified archival material and over 100 interviews. The strength is in showing how Tucker uses history to construct policy advice for American decision makers, in order to avert potentially dire consequences. The weakness is that in overstating her case and in treating diplomatic issues in the Taiwan Strait in relative isolation from events in other parts of the world, Tucker ultimately undermines aspects of her own study. Tucker is among the most prodigious writers and researchers about relations between the U.S., the People's Republic of China (more recently simply called China), and the Republic of China (now usually referred to as Taiwan). She first made her mark with Patterns in the Dust (1983), in which she argued that the Truman administration was open to continued contact with, and possibly even recognition of, the People's Republic after the Communist Party came to power, but that chances of normal relations ended after the Korean War began. Tucker emphasized in that book the mutual suspicions between American leaders and the Nationalist (Kuomintang) regime Chiang Kai-shek instituted on the island of Taiwan, about 100 miles off the mainland. Tucker, who served in the State Department and in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing during the mid-1980s, developed this controversial theme of strained relations between the U.S. and the ROC over a longer time-span in her second book,

Strategic imperatives, Democratic rhetoric: The United States and Turkey, 1945–52

This study states that Turkish President İsmet İnönü did not use democracy merely as a tool to bring his country into the US-led Western alliance at the onset of the Cold War. Instead, İnönü was inspired by a true sense of mission to fulfil Atatürk's legacy to bring democracy to Turkey. Admittedly, the Truman administration used democracy as rhetoric in order to realize its strategic goals in, and secure congressional aid for, Turkey, and yet Washington did not put pressure on Turkey to democratize faster or more thoroughly. There is no causal link between Turkey's democratization and either the Truman Doctrine or Turkey's admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952.

Sanctioning Foreign Policy: The Rhetorical Use of President Harry Truman

Throughout his presidency, George W. Bush actively drew connections between the war on terror and World War II and/or the Cold War (see Chernus 2006; Ivie 2005; Noon 2004; Smith 2007). At the time, Bush also drew parallels between his presidency and that of his predecessors. For example, in a speech before the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Bush made comparisons between his administration and that of Harry Truman. He stated, As we advance the cause of freedom in Iraq, our Nation can proceed with confidence that we have done this kind of work before. After World War II, President Harry Truman believed that the way to help bring peace and prosperity to Asia was to plant the seeds of freedom and democracy in Japan. Like today, there were many skeptics and pessimists who said that the Japanese were not ready for democracy. Fortunately, Harry Truman stuck to his guns. He believed, as I do, in freedom's power to transform an adversary into an ally. And because he stayed true to his convictions, today Japan is one of the world's freest and most prosperous nations, and one of America's closest allies in keeping the peace. The spread of freedom to Iraq and the Middle East requires the confidence and persistence, and it will to the (Bush 2005) Here, Bush analogized the circumstances in postwar Japan to that of Iraq in the midst of the war on terror. For President Bush, the parallels between Truman's presidency and his own were undeniable and served as tacit evidence to justify his activities in Iraq. You could read Bush's message to the nation as this: Harry Truman was right about Japan, and my ability to the United States in Iraq is the as his. Thus, my efforts will be conducted with the same confidence and persistence and will lead to the results. Certainly, President Bush's use of the past is not an isolated example. Historical events and persons are often called upon in all aspects of society to celebrate some political purpose or appropriated in some way to meet the needs of the present day. For example, in American popular culture, the 1990s saw a resurgence of World War II nostalgia. Texts such as Saving Private Ryan and Tom Brokaw's best-selling book The Greatest Generation celebrated the contributions of the World War II generation, but more importantly, they offered up a civics lesson to the American people on the virtues of sacrifice and its own exceptionalist nature (Biesecker 2002). In the realm of politics, our discourse, particularly presidential rhetoric, is rife with references to past events and the great presidents of the past, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. When presidents invoke their predecessors, they are calling upon what Philip Abbott (1990) termed the exemplar presidents. Donald Rice (1992) referred to this kind of invocation as the rhetoric of the authorizing figure. Whatever terminology is used, appropriating the memory of historical heroes for present-day purposes is a form of collective memory that performs important political and symbolic work in American politics, in particular presidential foreign policy rhetoric, and is the subject of this inquiry. Specifically, I focus on the presidential foreign policy rhetoric of three contemporary presidents--Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush--and consider how they invoked the memory of Harry Truman. I chose these three presidents because enough time had passed between their presidencies and Truman's to allow for reflection on a number of events that occurred during the Cold War, which may have influenced their foreign policy worldviews. Moreover, these three presidents are the only contemporary ones who served two full terms that were not interrupted by death (JFK) or scandal (Nixon). That is not to say that one-term presidents such as Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush did not call upon the Truman legacy. …

‘Forthcoming Three Months Represent Best Remaining Opportunity for Accomplishment’: Israeli Diplomacy and the 1948 US Presidential Election (Part I)

President Truman's de facto recognition of Israel on 14 May 1948 did not resolve the critical issues of de jure recognition, the new state's boundaries, the arms embargo, and financial assistance. In an ironic convergence with their frequent adversaries in the US State Department who often alleged that politics was driving Palestine policy, Israeli diplomats anticipated that favourable action from the Truman administration on these issues would be forthcoming in the course of that year's presidential election campaign. This article examines Israel's efforts to secure those objectives in the context of that year's presidential politics and the ongoing tug of war between White House and State Department. Despite persistent and determined advocacy, the mobilization of considerable support from American Zionists, and an apparently favourable political environment, Israel diplomacy was unable to overcome Truman's deference to State Department resistance to Israeli aspirations in the months leading up to his un...

From Radio Adman to Radio Reformer: Senator William Benton's Career in Broadcasting, 1930–1960

William Benton's career in radio began at his advertising agency, Benton & Bowles, founded in 1929. During the 1930s, radio's so-called “Golden Age,” Benton & Bowles was one of the major producers of network radio programs, including Maxwell House's Showboat and Town Hall Tonight. However, while heading one of the most successful radio advertising agencies, Benton approached NBC to argue that sponsor control of programming undermined radio as a medium and proposed an alternative business model. Frustrated with radio's direction, Benton left advertising and pursued careers in education (at the University of Chicago) and politics (in the Truman administration and the Senate). Benton oversaw the educational radio program The University of Chicago Round Table; founded an independent subscription radio service, Muzak, and the Voice of America; and vigorously promoted radio as an educational technology. Benton's efforts to reform broadcasting reflected both his experiences as a radio “adman” and his deep commitment to liberalism. His unusual career and willingness to challenge conventional wisdom may be instructive for us in a later era of technological change.

Kennan, “Universalism,” and the Truman Doctrine

Two key documents in 1947—the speech proclaiming the Truman Doctrine and George F. Kennan's “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” article—ushered in a new U.S. foreign policy aimed at containing the Soviet Union. The Truman administration's request for aid to Greece and Turkey envisaged a global approach, albeit a qualified one. Kennan's article included a call for pressure on the Soviet Union at every opportunity and in every quarter. Two decades later, Kennan repudiated the literal wording of his own article and claimed, inaccurately, that he had disapproved of the Truman Doctrine when he saw it in draft. A close examination of both documents suggests that the Truman Doctrine was never intended as a “universalist” call to action and that Kennan's article, despite its expansive phrasing, was also more limited in its aims than often thought.

The Progress of American Influence in South Vietnam during the 1950s*

Replacing France will surely become a reference work for the historiography of the Indochina wars, not only for its undeniable scholarly contribution but for the richness of its sources, which are drawn from France and Great Britain as well as the United States. The work offers a perceptive analysis of the birth and the disturbances of the Franco-American alliance, as well as of the origins of the American commitment in Vietnam. Above all, Kathryn Statler has developed a long-neglected dimension—the economic and cultural field of the relationship—one that has only recently become a subject of French historiography of Indochina's decolonization. The book, which is divided into three sections, uses a chronological framework that allows the reader to follow the ten years in which the United States managed to substitute its influence and trusteeship in place of the French in South Vietnam. Statler begins her study by an examination of the years 1950–1954 (pp. 15–114), analyzing French efforts to attract the support and help of the United States by exploiting—with a blend of sincerity and cynicism—the rhetoric of the Cold War. Her research strengthens Mark Lawrence's conclusions on the decisive role French and British hawks played in the Truman administration's decision to provide political, military, and financial aid to the French war effort in Indochina after the 1949 Elysée Accords (pp. 16–38).1 It shows the progression of the American influence in Vietnam through the proliferation of agencies and personnel during the early fifties and the subsequent first French expressions of the fear of being replaced by the Americans (pp. 39–44). Although numerous studies have covered this subject,2 Statler's work cleverly analyzes the contradictions of the Franco-American alliance, linked with the dynamics of decolonization, the Cold War, and European reconstruction (European Defense Community–EDC), as well as the growing tensions that led to the failure to establish a common strategy (pp. 44–84). The highly visible split between Paris and Washington at the time of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, the negotiating of the Geneva Accords, and the EDC crisis is also developed with many interesting details (pp. 85–114).

American blacklist: the attorney general's list of subversive organizations

Resonating with disturbing implications for the present, Blacklist is the only full-length study of the so-called Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations (AGLOSO) and its critical role in the post - World War II Red Scare.Although earlier versions of AGLOSO date back as far as 1903 and were wielded by the federal government during both the post - World War I Red Scare and World War II, they were not widely publicized. But beginning in December 1947, as part of the Truman administration's loyalty program, the federal government engaged in a massive effort to publicize the AGLOSO lists. In the process, it threatened, damaged, or destroyed nearly 300 organizations, all of which were listed without any notice, evidence, or hearings.Drawing heavily on previously classified FBI, Justice Department, and other documents, Robert Goldstein demonstrates how the listed organizations and their members (including a large number of federal employees) came under suspicion, were investigated, and suffered numerous public and private penalties. These included the loss of federal tax-exempt status, the denial of passports, deportations and immigration exclusions, ejection from federally subsidized housing, and private employment bans. AGLOSO, which was dominated by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, also placed a huge damper on political dissent throughout the nation.After 1954, AGLOSO and the Red Scare both came under increasing attack as serious violations of American civil liberties. Indeed, AGLOSO's declining significance after 1954 reflected a more general decline in the postwar Red Scare campaign itself. Both gradually diminished in impact and importance, but they left a long-lasting legacy.As Goldstein reveals, AGLOSO's final demise in 1974 resulted from congressional opposition to President Richard Nixon's attempt to revive it via a 1971 executive order, which was severely attacked as an abuse of executive authority and an attack on civil liberties. The subsequent controversy preceded by only three months the Watergate investigation and the collapse of the Nixon presidency, events that continue to leave their unsettling mark on an equally troubled present.

Roosevelt, Truman and the Development of Postwar Grand Strategy

After its victory in World War II, it was clear that United States should move beyond the disastrous policies of the 1930s, but it was less clear how. Ultimately, a lasting postwar strategy was forged under President Truman. Appreciating how Truman moved well beyond Roosevelt's guiding assumptions is essential to understanding the evolution of American grand strategy. One sees that wartime planning and grand strategy formulation can prove quite inadequate for dealing with postwar challenges. An administration cannot be locked into assumptions, but must constantly test them. Thus, the Truman administration eventually developed and adopted containment and moved far beyond FDR's approach. More substantively, the fundamental geopolitical lesson of World War II and the early Cold War was that the United States must assume the essential balancing role relative to other major powers.

Cold War Fears, Cold War Passions: Conservatives And Liberals Square Off in 1950s Science Fiction

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments Bryan E. Vizzini received his PhD in history from UNC—Chapel Hill in 1999, and has been teaching at West Texas A&M University since 2001. In addition to teaching survey courses in Latin American history, World history, and American history, Bryan regularly teaches courses in film and history and graduate seminars in cultural history. Bryan's research interests include film and literary appropriations of the Mexican Revolution, Cold War themes in 1950s science fiction, and the use of graphic novels and comics in teaching history. Notes 1. Brian Neve, for example, cites the production and release of at least 42 anti-communist films between 1951 and 1953 alone. See Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 187. See also Linda K. Fuller, “The Ideology of the ‘Red Scare’ Movement: McCarthyism in the Movies,” in Paul Loukides and Linda K. Fuller, eds., Beyond the Stars, (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1990), 229–248. 2. See Peter Nicholls’ entry for “Politics”, in John Clute and Peter Nicholls, eds., The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, (New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin), 1995. 3. See Roger A. Berger, “‘Ask What You Can Do for Your Country’: The Film Version of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine and the Cold War,” Literature/Film Quarterly, 17.3 (1989): 177–187; Peter Biskind, “Pods, Blobs, and Ideology in American Films of the Fifties,” in Georg Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin, eds., Shadows of the Magic Lamp: Fantasy and Science Fiction in Film (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), 58–72; James B. Gilbert, “Wars of the Worlds,” Journal of Popular Culture, 10.2 (1976): 326–336; Cyndy Hendershot, Paranoia, the Bomb, and 1950s Science Fiction Films (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1999); and Patrick Lucanio, Them or Us: Archetypal Interpretations of Fifties Alien Invasion Films (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987). 4. When the Chinese Communists took control of China in 1949, Republican legislators charged Democrats with having “lost” China. Senator Joseph McCarthy quickly charged that the “loss” had resulted from communist infiltration of the U.S. State Department. The now-famous senator went on to accuse the Truman administration and even the Army of harboring communist sympathizers and subversives. See David Caute, The Great Fear (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 562–567. 5. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049366/>. 16 August 2005. 6. John Foster Dulles, “A Policy of Boldness,” reprinted in Hugh Ross, The Cold War: Containment and its Critics (Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, 1963), 22–24. 7. Adlai Stevenson, “Labor Day Speech,” reprinted in Hugh Ross, The Cold War: Containment and its Critics (Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, 1963), 27–28. 8. See Daniel J. Leab, “How Red Was My Valley: Hollywood, the Cold War Film, and I Married a Communist,” Journal of Contemporary History, 19.1 (January, 1984): 59–88. 9. See Teresa Alves, “‘Some Enchanted Evening’: Tuning in the Amazing Fifties, Switching Off The Elusive Decade,” American Studies International 39.3 (2001): 25–40. 10. See Kirshner, “Subverting The Cold War In The 1960s: Dr. Strangelove, The Manchurian Candidate, And The Planet Of The Apes,” Film & History 31.2 (2001): 40–44.

Trapped in the Cold War

The Cold War, Melvyn Leffler writes in his superb new book, is about men and their ideas and their fears and their hopes. [Officials in Washington and Moscow, Leffler argues, intermittently grasped the consequences of the Cold War, glimpsed the possibilities of detente, and yearned for peace, but they could not escape their fears or relinquish their dreams. Around the globe peoples were struggling to define their future and disputing the benefits of alternative ways of life, so the Cold War was indeed a struggle for the soul of mankind (p. 8). Leffler 's prior work especially his prizewinning book, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War set the standard for analyzing the intersection of threat perception, political economy, and military power in the postwar world. He famously described the combination of prudence and foolishness that led American leaders to seek global preponderance after the Second World War: It meant creating a world environment hospitable to U.S. interests and values; it meant developing the capabilities to overcome threats and challenges; it meant mobilizing the strength to reduce Soviet influence on its periphery; it meant undermining the appeal of communism; it meant fashioning the institutional techniques and mechanisms to manage the free world; and it meant establishing a configuration of power and a military posture so that if war erupted, the United States would prevail. If adversaries saw the handwriting on the wall, they would defer to American wishes.1

Innocent Abroad? Decolonisation and US Engagement with French West Africa, 1945–56

This article investigates America's deepening involvement in the politics, finance and international trade of francophone West Africa in the decade after World War II. It does so by analysing two constituencies of opinion: the US consular service across French West Africa and the network of American business interests then developing throughout the region. These actors, although closest to the events described, have yet to receive much attention in analyses of US policymaking in Africa. The reports, intelligence estimates, and opinions of consular officials and US businessmen were pivotal to the attitudinal formation of policymakers in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, few of whom had much experience of West African affairs. The article traces American engagement with the post-war politics of French black Africa, and discerns a shift in US policy interests from concern with economic development, investment potential and improved living standards to more narrowly strategic concerns. By 1952 the promise of US-driven economic modernization had given way to a reductive vision of West African decolonisation informed by Cold War calculations of political advantage.

CHRISTOPHER D. MCKENNA. The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century. (Cambridge Studies in the Management of Global Enterprise.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xxi, 370. $30.00

The title of Christopher D. McKenna's book suggests a send-up. But readers expecting this book to lampoon business gurus as prostitutes are in for a disappointment. McKenna does show that, just as cynics believe, consultants have often sold their chastity. He hopes, however, that management consultants will adopt professional standards and begin to protect their virtue. The virtue of consultants lies in their offering an inexpensive means of transferring knowledge. McKenna draws on economic theory to argue that corporations' transaction costs for buying knowledge from outside consultants are often less than the cost of acquiring it through their own managers' experiential learning. He demonstrates consultants' economic utility with a detailed account of how they supplied Lukens Steel with vital strategic knowledge at relatively low cost in the middle decades of the twentieth century. America's anti-trust laws make consulting a legally less problematic way of transferring knowledge than interfirm cooperation. McKenna superbly shows how the legal defeat of Franklin D. Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration and its implicit vision of an associative, corporatist state was a triumph for management consulting. Moreover, by mid-century the Truman administration tilted toward buying knowledge from external consultants rather than developing knowledge internally in the civil service, launching today's “contractor state.”