History Commons^™

‘Mightier Than Marx’: Hassoldt Davis And American Cold War Politics In Postwar Ivory Coast, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

Using the travels of Hassoldt Davis in Ivory Coast to explore the global Cold War in French West Africa in the 1950s, this article argues that the main line of confrontation in the postwar era did not always pit Americans against Russians. In many instances, the struggle for the mind and soul of Africans was between the Americans and the French. The study highlights the role of everyday technology in the expansion of the American informal empire. By focusing on Davis and the significance of low-tech artifacts, the article suggests that in our scrutiny of Cold War science/technology, we need …