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When Mao Zedong, China’s ‘great helmsman’ died in 1976, the China that emerged after destructive reign began to be de-Maoified economically but also culturally. By the early 1980s a cutlure of Mao criticism was prevalent in the arts, television and cinema, along with critiques of the Mao era communist party. This podcast examines the processes of De-Maoification and how China changed throughout the 1980s, and the significance of this in the 21st Century. Explaining History helps you understand t
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Following the disastrous chaos and violence of the cultural revolution, Deng Xiaoping, one of Maoist China’s inveterate survivors and a hate figure for Mao himself, began a series of changes of global significance in 1978. Deng’s four modernisations (agriculture, industry, education, science and defence), and the policy of opening up China to foreign investment were the product of two fears. Firstly, that a disorderly, anarchic China would eventually see the collapse of party rule, and secondly,
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This is the first of a multi part exploration of protest music in America during the late 1960s, beginning with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Ohio, written to mourn the killing of four students by the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio, in May 1970. By the late 1960s, the pressure of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement had led to a progressive radicalisation of the new left and also a reactionary backlash from America’s lower middle classes, who flocked to Nixon in 1968
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John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson both saw Vietnam as the vital frontline in America’s struggle against communism, but it was Chinese, as opposed to Soviet communism they were most concerned about. The widely accepted ‘Domino Theory’ which postulated that one country in Asia after another would fall to the communist rule was widely accepted across the administrations of both presidents, and it was also a vision that Mao and his inner circle hoped for. However, the lack of understanding about Ind
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When Neville Chamberlain succeeded Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister in 1937 he inherited a highly precarious world situation. His predecessor was exhausted from his time in office but also was defeated by the dilemmas posed by rearmament. Chamberlain believed that a broad policy of appeasement in both Europe and Asia would stabilise the world situation that had been produced by the peace making of 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century throug
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The British hold over the Indian Army was born of strategic calculations; the army was the most powerful weapon in Asia at Britain’s disposal, and its huge manpower enabled Britain to punch above its weight on the world stage during the conflict. The British government attempted to limit the numbers of commissions granted to Indian officers, but the demands of war and the mass mobilisation of India to fight the Axis powers meant that by 1945, the numbers of officers leading Indian companies and
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Anti communism became a defining aspect of American politics during the 1940s and 1950s, not just for the right wing of the Republican Party, but also for the Democrats and the liberal intelligentsia and journalists the traditionally supported the party. They shifted to the right throughout the period, and whilst some decried McCarthy’s methods, others began to lend them tacit and then vocal support. Liberals saw communism as antithetical to their beliefs and believed it could and should be resi
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The landslide victory for Eisenhower and the Republican Party in the 1952 Presidential Election showed Democrats that a right of centre, socially conservative America in the grip of an obsessive anti communism would decide their political fate for decades to come. The continuing Korean War and the loss of China to communism three years earlier shaped American attitudes to communism and its perceived threat. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations a
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For the Republican Party in the 1940s and 1950s, the only means of attacking the Democrats was by inflating the fear of communism and accusing their rivals of treason. In 1951, following the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur for challenging the authority of President Truman, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin used the end of MacArthur’s career to boost his own, and to suggest that it was the result of ‘treason’. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical con
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In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the belief that anything was now possible in the reshape and redesign of societies was widespread in the liberal capitalist and communist worlds. The role that planning had played in the victory over fascism was beyond doubt and politicians, intellectuals, planners and citizens in Europe, Asia, America and Africa saw the post war era as an opportunity to harness the power of the state to transform society. A fringe group of economists and think