By Way of Introduction: the United States, Decolonization and the World System

Abstract

The collapse of the Soviet imperial system increased the tendency to look at the period since 1945 through paradigms other than those that centralized the Cold War. Though the Cold War exerted considerable influence, greater attention is being paid to the dynamics of the US-European relationship, their colonial systems, the independence movements and later to the nations that were identified collectively as the Third World. The international system struggled with the centralizing tendencies of the superpowers and the de-centring challenges of other states trying to assert a more independent role. Similarly analysts of the period struggled within a charged atmosphere that hung over the development of the historiography. Warren Kimball commented that the historical imperialism of the Cold War had colonized much of the history of the Second World War, because many of the scholars writing about the war were in part fighting the Cold War. Even though the bipolar paradigm may be useful to analyse the US-Soviet confrontation, Fraser contends that it ‘has consistently proved itself inadequate as an analytical tool in studying the forces of change that have reshaped the international order’ since 1945.