American Labor's Global Ambassadors

After World War II, the AFL-CIO pursued an ambitious agenda of containing global communism and helping to throw off the shackles of colonialism. This sweeping collection brings together contributions from leading historians to explore its successes, challenges, and inevitable compromises as it pursued these initiatives during the Cold War.

"The role of labor unions in the formulation of U.S. foreign relations is an important topic that has recently gained the attention of scholars seeking to record a comprehensive understanding of international relations history. Based on copious research, these essays expertly probe the influence of the AFL-CIO in shaping U.S. foreign policy at a critical time in U.S. and world history. The scholarship presented here deserves the attention of historians of U.S. diplomacy and organized labor, as well as of the several regions around the world where labor exerted influence." - Peter Hahn, Professor of History, The Ohio State University, USA, and author of Missions Accomplished?: The United States and Iraq since World War I (2011)

"American Labor's Global Ambassadors is the book that we have been waiting for. Cold War studies have been well established over the last decades, studies of the global Cold War have fared well, but the global labor Cold War - engulfing Asia, Africa, and Latin America aside from Europe - has been neglected. The finely crafted articles in this book, written by a cohort of scholars as well as activists, and based on previously unused labor archives, fill this lacuna." - Daniela Spenser, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Mexico

"Interestingly enough, the American trade union movement played a major worldwide role during the Cold War. Sometimes it behaved like an ambassador; at other times its behavior was not very diplomatic, somewhere between heavy-handed and subtle. This thorough study covers all continents and is innovative, reliable, and a sine qua non for understanding Cold War politics and international trade unionism." - Bob Reinalda, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Autorentext

Quenby Olmsted Hughes, Rhode Island College, USA Yevette Richards, George Mason University, USA Alessandro Brogi, University of Arkansas, USA Barrett Dower, independent scholar and retired president of the Paris-American Chamber of Commerce Dustin Walcher, Southern Oregon University, USA Larissa Rosa Correa, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil Angela Vergara, California State University at Los Angeles, USA John C. Stoner, University of Pittsburgh, USA Mathilde von Bülow, University of Nottingham, UK Edmund F. Wehrle, Eastern Illinois University, USA Eric Chenoweth, Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, USA Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands Magaly Rodríguez García, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium Federico Romero, European University Institute, Italy

Inhalt
Foreword; Marcel van der Linden Introduction; Robert Anthony Waters, Jr. and Geert van Goethem PART I: The Global Activism of a National Trade Union 1. From Dollars to Deeds: Exploring the sources of Active Interventionism, 1934-1945; Geert van Goethem 2. The American Federation of Labor's Cold War Campaign against 'Slave Labor' at the United Nations; Quenby Olmsted Hughes 3. Marred by Dissimulation: The AFL-CIO, the Women's Committee, and Transnational Labor Relations; Yevette Richards PART II: Not Very Diplomatic Ambassadors: Working to Defeat Communism in Europe 4. The AFL and CIO between 'Crusade' and Pluralism in Italy, 1944-1963; Alessandro Brogi 5. The Influence of the American Federation of Labor on the Force Ouvrière, 1944-1954; Barrett Dower 6. AFL-CIO Support for Solidarity: Moral, Political, Financial; Eric Chenoweth PART III: Heavy-handed or Subtle? America's Labor Ambassadors in Latin America and the Caribbean 7. Reforming Latin American Labor: The AFL-CIO and Latin America's Cold War; Dustin Walcher 8. The AFL-CIO and ORIT in Latin America's Andean Region, 1950s-1960s; Magaly Rodríguez García 9. More Subtle than We Knew: The AFL in the British Caribbean; Robert Anthony Waters, Jr. 10. 'Democracy and Freedom' in Brazilian Trade Unionism during the Civil-Military Dictatorship: The Activities of the American Institute for Free Labor Development; Larissa Rosa Corrêa 11. Chilean Workers and the U.S. Labor Movement: From Solidarity to Intervention, 1950s-1970s; Angela Vergara PART IV: Behaving like Ambassadors: The AFL-CIO in Africa and Asia 12. Irving Brown and ICFTU Labor Diplomacy during Algeria's Struggle for Independence, 1954-1962; Mathilde von Bülow 13. 'We will follow a nationalist policy; but we will never be neutral' American Labor and Neutralism in Cold War Africa, 1957-1962; John C. Stoner 14. 'Free Labor Versus Slave Labor': Free Trade Unionism and the Challenge of War-torn Asia; Edmund F. Wehrle, Jr. PART V Conclusion: Transnational Labor Politics in the Global Cold War; Federico Romero