The Cold War in South Asia
Britain, the United States and the Indian Subcontinent, 1945–1965

This book traces the rise and fall of Anglo-American relations with India and Pakistan from independence in the 1940s, to the 1960s.

Paul M. McGarr (Author)

9781107595507, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 November 2015

406 pages, 2 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.54 kg

'Excellent use is made of private papers accessed in India, Britain and the United States, as well as of government records in order to construct McGarr's authoritative and closely argued narrative. … McGarr's volume is an important addition to scholarly appreciation of the relationship of India and Pakistan with the international community in the two decades which followed independence.' Ian Talbot, Diplomacy and Statecraft

The Cold War in South Asia provides the first comprehensive and transnational history of Anglo-American relations with South Asia during a seminal period in the history of the Indian Subcontinent, between independence in the late 1940s, and the height of the Cold War in the late 1960s. Drawing upon significant new evidence from British, American, Indian and Eastern bloc archives, the book re-examines how and why the Cold War in South Asia evolved in the way that it did, at a time when the national leaderships, geopolitical outlooks and regional aspirations of India, Pakistan and their superpower suitors were in a state of considerable flux. The book probes the factors which encouraged the governments of Britain and the United States to work so closely together in South Asia during the two decades after independence, and suggests what benefits, if any, Anglo-American intervention in South Asia's affairs delivered, and to whom.

Introduction
1. India, Pakistan and the early Cold War, 1947–57
2. Eisenhower, Macmillan and the 'New Look' at South Asia, 1958–60
3. The best of friends: Kennedy, Macmillan and Jawaharlal Nehru
4. Upsetting the apple cart: India's 'liberation' of Goa
5. Allies of a kind: Britain, the United States and the 1962 Sino-Indian War
6. Quagmire: the Anglo-American search for a Kashmir settlement
7. Realigning India: Western military aid and the threat from the north
8. The other transfer of power: Britain, the US and the Nehru-Shastri Transition
9. A bumpy ride: Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and South Asia
10. Triumph and tragedy: the Raan of Kutch and the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War
Conclusion: the erosion of Anglo-American power in India and Pakistan
Select bibliography.

Subject Areas: The Cold War [HBTW], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], History of the Americas [HBJK], Asian history [HBJF], British & Irish history [HBJD1]