No other decade evokes such contradictory images as the 1970s: reform and emancipation on the one hand, crisis and malaise on the other. In The Global 1970s: Radicalism, Reform, and Crisis, Duco Hellema portrays the 1970s as a period of global transition.
Across the world, the early and mid-1970s were still years of political mobilization with everything seemingly an object of public controversy and conflict, including economic development, education, and family matters. Social movements called for the reduction of social inequalities, for participation, and the emancipation of various groups at the same time as the rise of ambitious and reform-oriented governments. Ten years later, a different world was emerging with the call for state-controlled social and economic changes in decline and new economic policies centred on liberation and deregulation taking their place. This book examines a range of explanations for this radical transformation, highlighting how economic problems, such as the oil crisis, political battles and dramatic confrontations resulted in a free-market-oriented conservatism by the end of the period.
Divided into nine broadly chronological chapters and taking a global approach that allows the reader to see the familiar themes of the decade examined on an international scale, The Global 1970s is essential reading for all students and scholars of twentieth-century global history.
Foreword Introduction Chapter I: Legacies of the Sixties The Start of the Long Seventies The Welfare State The Revolution that Failed The Tet Offensive The Prague Spring and the Cultural Revolution Upheavals Conclusion Chapter II: Everything is Political The Early and Mid-1970s Prosperity Students Worker Militancy Emancipation The Environment Vietnam Violence and Terrorism Conclusion Chapter III: Reform Mania The Early and Mid-1970s ‘A Mania for Large Scale Reforms’ Southern Europe Britain and France Nixon The State Western Divisions Conclusion Chapter IV: Self-Reliance The Non-Western World in the Early and Mid-1970s Self-Reliance Africa Latin America Asia Miracles of Growth The Middle East The October War A New International Economic Order Conclusion Chapter V: The Communist States The Early and Mid-1970s Détente The Soviet Union Eastern Europe Soviet Expansion The Sino-Soviet Split Conclusion Chapter VI: Crisis in the World Economy From the Early to the Late 1970s What Crisis? Monetary Problems Globalization The Oil Crisis Unemployment Fighting the Crisis The Non-Western World The Communist States Conclusion Chapter VII: The Free Market Alternative The Mid- and Late 1970s The Me Decade Self-Help and Identity Politics The Great Awakening The New Right Grass-Roots Mobilization Neoliberalism and Supply-Side Economics Human Rights Neoliberal Experiments The Newly Industrializing Countries Conclusion Chapter VIII: Confrontation and Deadlock The Late 1970s Deadlock Watergate Carter A German Autumn Governing Western Europe The Winter of Discontent Southern Europe Eurosclerosis Debts and Violence in the Third World Charter 77 Conclusion Chapter IX: Dawn of a New World The End of the Seventies The Personal Computer Revolution in Iran The Second Oil Crisis The Lady’s not for Turning Reagan’s Second American Revolution Western Europe Weakening Left The Second Cold War Solidarnosc The End of the Third World Deng Xiaoping Conclusion Post-Script The End of Progress? Literature
Biography
Duco Hellema studied political science at Leiden University, the Netherlands. In 1998, he was appointed Professor of the History of International Relations at the History Department of Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He has published widely on the history of post-World War II international relations and particularly on developments in the 1970s.
