The United States,Great Britain,and the Creation of the Iranian Oil Consortium, 1953–1954

This article examines the attitudes of US, British, and Soviet policy-makers as they planned for the forthcoming peace during the Second World War. It charts how they moved from planning a ‘peace by dictation’ of the great powers, to planning one which would be based on a model of collective security involving all members of the United Nations alliance. The latter plan would reflect both the great powers’ special responsibilities for maintaining international peace and security and the stake which lesser powers had in such a venture. In addressing these historical developments the article employs two concepts familiar to International Relations scholarship, namely concert and hierarchy. It shows how the understandings which the principal post-war planners had of these concepts – and crucially of their inter-relationship - changed over time and the consequences of these changes. The article makes two core claims: firstly, that as post-war planning progressed, the attitudes of the Big Three towards the acceptable nature of the great power–lesser power hierarchy changed radically; and secondly, that the structure and nature of today's United Nations Organisation is in significant part a consequence of these changes.     

Canadian Civil Aviation 1935–45: Flying Between the United States and Great Britain

This article examines Canada's role in post-war planning for international civil aviation and how it was influenced by plans emanating from both London and Washington. Canadian aviation policy was driven by ambitions not easily reconciled: collective-security idealism; commercial advantage; the desire to reconcile British and US policies; and to raise Canada's international profile. These issues are explained and analysed in the lead-up to and in the events of the Chicago International Civil Aviation Conference in November–December 1944. What emerges challenges a considerable part of the conventional wisdom about Canada's diplomacy and the role it played at Chicago through a more nuanced picture of both motives and the stage upon which the civil-aviation drama was played out.     

Preserving the Status Quo: Britain,the United States,and Bolivian Tin, 1946–56

This article analyses the relationship between Britain, the United States, and Bolivia in the context of the tin nexus after the Second World War. While the connection between Britain and Bolivia was long-standing - Bolivian tin had been shipped to Britain since the nineteenth century - it extended far beyond simple bilateralism. Such was the intricate web of connections in the global tin industry that any rupture in the Anglo-Bolivian relationship would have fundamental ramifications on the equilibrium of the industry, and, in turn, Britain's predominant position within it. The United States had overtly challenged Britain's dominance during the Second World War by constructing a smelter to be supplied by Bolivian ores. Despite the financial exigencies of the post-war period, the profound upheavals in the domestic Bolivian tin industry, and the contentious, destabilising tin-procurement policy pursued by the United States, Britain was determined to confront this threat. By actively seeking to preserve its long-term contract for Bolivian tin, Britain was able to maintain its predominance in the post-war global tin industry. At the same time, Bolivia deftly utilised Anglo-American rivalry to ensure more than one outlet for its most critical export commodity.     

Revisiting the Great Compression: Wage inequality in the United States, 1940–1960

Seminal work by Goldin and Margo (1992 Goldin, C. D. and R. A. Margo.1992. The great compression: The wage structure in the United States at mid-century. Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (1):1–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/2118322.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) used the first available microdata samples of the United States decennial census to document the narrowing of the wage structure between 1940 and 1960, a pattern they refer to as the “Great Compression.” We revisit their findings using newly available, substantially enlarged samples of the decennial censuses covering this period. Our findings largely replicate the patterns initially reported by Goldin and Margo. However, differences emerge when estimating rates of return to education and experience for specific groups and in a decomposition exercise. A second goal is to indicate directions for future research that might benefit from the use of the complete count census data.     

Calling the bluff of the Western powers in the United Nations disarmament negotiations, 1954–55

This article, based on British and American archival sources, examines the response of the Western powers (mainly the US and the UK) to the Soviet disarmament initiatives in 1954–55. We shed some light on the Western states' attitude to the UN disarmament negotiations of this period, arguing that the two sides never actually came close to a settlement, since at least the Western side was hesitant to commit to any actual measures of disarmament. This article challenges part of the Cold War historiography that has incorrectly portrayed this particular period as the most opportune time for achieving disarmament.