History Commons^™

Heroes Of Berlin Wall Struggle, William D. Bowman

History Faculty Publications

When the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, on Nov. 9, 1989, symbolically signaling the end of the Cold War, it was no surprise that many credited President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for bringing it down.

But the true heroes behind the fall of the Berlin Wall are those Eastern Europeans whose protests and political pressure started chipping away at the wall years before. East German citizens from a variety of political backgrounds and occupations risked their freedom in protests against communist policies and one-party rule in what they called the "peaceful revolution." [excerpt]

Is Russia A Block Of Ice Floating Back Into The 16th Century, Marko Dumančić

History Faculty Publications

Editorial published in The Moscow Times and The Huffington Post

Empire's Children: Child Emigration, Welfare, And The Decline Of The British World, 1869-1967 (Book Review), Christopher Bischof

History Faculty Publications

Empire’s Children is far from the now well-worn tale of imperial decline. It locates the shifting fortunes of the child emigration movement at the heart of the reconfiguration of identities, political economies, and nationalisms in Britain, Canada, Australia, and Rhodesia. Though Britons eventually had to face the diminishing importance of Britishness as either a cultural or racial ideal in the eyes of even their settler colonies, on the whole the story of the child emigration movement’s shifting fortunes testifies to the malleability and resilience of Britishness.

An Unconventional Challenge To Apartheid: The Ivorian Dialogue Diplomacy With South Africa, 1960-1978, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

This article focuses on the dialogue diplomacy that Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny initiated in the late 1960s to engage apartheid South Africa. Although contemporary observers and subsequent scholars (have) derided the scheme as an act of acquiescence and even betrayal, I argue that Ivory Coast's dialogue diplomacy was neither accommodationist nor dependent on the prodding of neocolonial powers such as France. A Pan-Africanist extension of the home-grown neotraditional practice of Dialogue ivoirienne, the diplomatic initiative never got the backing of other African states. A close analysis of the Ivory Coast's maneuvers in the context of an increasing radicalization of …