Geography and global order - The Hindu
▻http://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/geography-and-global-order/article6164049.ece
A thesis that explains how the Cold War, origins of the UN and decolonisation were mutually implicated processes
Mapping the End of Empire by U.S. State Department historian Aiyaz Husain embodies a project that the author himself describes as ‘ambitious’. Aiming to offer a fresh perspective on the end of European colonialism and the attendant rebuilding of the global order at the end of World War II is ambitious indeed. And Husain’s core insight — that policy-framing and diplomacy in London and Washington were shaped as much by material factors as by the mental geographies of the East nurtured by strategists and academics — is so original as to run the risk of appearing eccentric. That hazard is avoided, though, as Husain adequately convinces the reader of the tenability of his thesis that in the post-war period ‘perceptions of geography’ came to shape Anglo-American foreign policy agendas, especially on the question of refugee settlement, drove organisational changes, and ultimately ‘congealed into international bodies like the U.N. Security Council’.
#recension #géopolitique #cartographie #histoire_contemporaine
