Technological Internationalism and World Order

Explores the place of science and technology in international relations through early attempts at international governance of aviation and atomic energy.

Waqar H. Zaidi (Author)

9781108819190, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 March 2023

314 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.459 kg

'Weaving together the histories of aviation and atomic energy, Zaidi makes innovative contributions to scholarship on technology and internationalism. He deftly analyzes how policymakers and intellectuals, on both sides of the Atlantic, sought to transform the airplane and the atomic bomb into catalysts of global order rather than global catastrophe.' Jenifer Van Vleck, author of Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy

Between 1920 and 1950, British and US internationalists called for aviation and atomic energy to be taken out of the hands of nation-states, and instead used by international organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. An international air force was to enforce collective security and internationalized civil aviation was to bind the world together through trade and communication. The bomber and the atomic bomb, now associated with death and devastation, were to be instruments of world peace. Drawing on rich archival research and focusing on public and private discourse relating to the control of aviation and atomic energy, Waqar H. Zaidi highlights neglected technological and militaristic strands in twentieth-century liberal internationalism, and transforms our understanding of the place of science and technology in twentieth-century international relations.

Introduction: machines of peace
1. Invention, interdependence, and the lag: conceptualizing international relations in the age of the machine
2. Controlling scientific war: international air police and the reinvention of disarmament
3. The shape of things to come: aviation, the League of Nations, and the transformation of world order
4. Air power for a United Nations: the international air force during the Second World War
5. Wings for peace: planning for the postwar internationalization of civil aviation
6. A battle for atomic internationalism: United States and the international control of atomic energy
7. A blessing in disguise: Britain and the international control of atomic energy
Conclusion: science, technology, and internationalism into the Cold War and beyond.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Diplomacy [JPSD], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW]