9781422282809

THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD 1 94 5 TO THE P R E S ENT

Education,Poverty, and Inequality

John Perritano

Series Advisor: Dr. Ruud van Dijk, Contemporary History and History of International Relations, University of Amsterdam

THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD

1 94 5 TO THE P R E S ENT

Education, Poverty, and Inequality

BOOKS IN THE SERIES

Culture and Customs in a Connected World Education, Poverty, and Inequality Food, Population, and the Environment Governance and the Quest for Security Health and Medicine Migration and Refugees Science and Technology Trade, Economic Life, and Globalization Women, Minorities, and Changing Social Structures

THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD

1 94 5 TO THE P R E S ENT

Education, Poverty, and Inequality

John Perritano

SERI ES ADVI SOR Ruud van Dijk

Mason Crest

Mason Crest 450 Parkway Drive, Suite D

Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com

© 2017 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

Produced and developed by MTM Publishing. www.mtmpublishing.com

President and Project Coordinator: Valerie Tomaselli Designer: Sherry Williams, Oxygen Design Group

Copyeditor: Lee Motteler, GeoMap Corp. Editorial Coordinator: Andrea St. Aubin Proofreader: Peter Jaskowiak

ISBN: 978-1-4222-3636-9 Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-3634-5 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-8280-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Perritano, John, author. Title: Education, poverty, and inequality / by John Perritano. Description: Broomall, PA : Mason Crest, [2017] | Series: The making of the    modern world: 1945 to the present | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016006862| ISBN 9781422236369 (hardback) | ISBN    9781422236345 (series) | ISBN 9781422282809 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Economic history--1945---Juvenile literature. | Social    history--1945---Juvenile literature. | Equality--History--Juvenile    literature. | Developing countries--Economic conditions--Juvenile    literature. | Developing countries--Social conditions--Juvenile    literature. | Developing countries--Foreign relations--Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC HC59 .P437 2017 | DDC 330.9172/4--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016006862

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

QR CODES AND LINKS TO THIRD PARTY CONTENT You may gain access to certain third party content (“Third Party Sites”) by scanning and using the QR Codes that appear in this publication (the “QR Codes”). We do not operate or control in any respect any information, products or services on such Third Party Sites linked to by us via the QR Codes included in this publication, and we assume no responsibility for any materials you may access using the QR Codes.  Your use of the QR Codes may be subject to terms, limitations, or restrictions set forth in the applicable terms of use or otherwise established by the owners of the Third Party Sites.  Our linking to such Third Party Sites via the QR Codes does not imply an endorsement or sponsor- ship of such Third Party Sites, or the information, products or services offered on or through the Third Party Sites, nor does it imply an endorsement or sponsorship of this publication by the owners of such Third Party Sites.

4

EDUCATION, POVERTY, AND INEQUALITY

Contents Series Introduction 6 CHAPTER 1: A World of Deprivation 9 CHAPTER 2: Decolonization and Newly Independent Nations 17 CHAPTER 3: The Cold War and Social Welfare 27 CHAPTER 4: The Global North and the Global South 39 CHAPTER 5: Today’s Globalizing World 47 Timeline 58 Further Research 60 Index 61 Photo Credits 63 About the Author and Advisor 64

5

CONTENTS

Series Introduction I n 1945, at the end of World War II, the world had to start afresh in many ways. The war had affected the entire world, destroying cities, sometimes entire regions, and killing millions. At the end of the war, millions more were displaced or on the move, while hunger, disease, and poverty threatened survivors everywhere the war had been fought. Politically, the old, European-dominated order had been discredited. Western Euro- pean democracies had failed to stop Hitler, and in Asia they had been powerless against imperial Japan. The autocratic, militaristic Axis powers had been defeated. But their victory was achieved primarily through the efforts of the Soviet Union—a communist dictatorship—and the United States, which was the only democracy powerful enough to aid Great Britain and the other Allied powers in defeating the Axis onslaught. With the European colonial powers weakened, the populations of their respective empires now demanded their independence. The war had truly been a global catastrophe. It underlined the extent to which peoples and countries around the world were interconnected and interdependent. However, the search for shared approaches to major, global challenges in the postwar world—symbol- ized by the founding of the United Nations—was soon overshadowed by the Cold War. The leading powers in this contest, the United States and the Soviet Union, represented mutually exclusive visions for the postwar world. The Soviet Union advocated collec- tivism, centrally planned economies, and a leading role for the Communist Party. The United States sought to promote liberal democracy, symbolized by free markets and open political systems. Each believed fervently in the promise and justice of its vision for the future. And neither thought it could compromise on what it considered vital interests. Both were concerned about whose influence would dominate Europe, for example, and to whom newly independent nations in the non-Western world would pledge their alle- giance. As a result, the postwar world would be far from peaceful. As the Cold War proceeded, peoples living beyond the Western world and outside the control of the Soviet Union began to find their voices. Driven by decolonization, the devel- oping world, or so-called Third World, took on a new importance. In particular, countries in these areas were potential allies on both sides of the Cold War. As the newly independent peoples established their own identities and built viable states, they resisted the sometimes coercive pull of the ColdWar superpowers, while also trying to use them for their own ends. In addition, a new Communist China, established in 1949 and the largest country in the developing world, was deeply entangled within the Cold War contest between communist and capitalist camps. Over the coming decades, however, it would come to act ever more independently from either the United States or the Soviet Union. During the war, governments had made significant strides in developing new tech- nologies in areas such as aviation, radar, missile technology, and, most ominous, nuclear

6

EDUCATION, POVERTY, AND INEQUALITY

energy. Scientific and technological breakthroughs achieved in a military context held promise for civilian applications, and thus were poised to contribute to recovery and, ultimately, prosperity. In other fields, it also seemed time for a fresh start. For example, education could be used to “re-educate” members of aggressor nations and further Cold War agendas, but education could also help more people take advantage of, and contrib- ute to, the possibilities of the new age of science and technology. For several decades after 1945, the Cold War competition seemed to dominate, and indeed define, the postwar world. Driven by ideology, the conflict extended into politics, economics, science and technology, and culture. Geographically, it came to affect virtual- ly the entire world. From our twenty-first-century vantage point, however, it is clear that well before the Cold War’s end in the late 1980s, the world had been moving on from the East-West conflict. Looking back, it appears that, despite divisions—between communist and capitalist camps, or between developed and developing countries—the world after 1945 was grow- ing more and more interconnected. After the Cold War, this increasingly came to be called “globalization.” People in many different places faced shared challenges. And as time went on, an awareness of this interconnectedness grew. One response by people in and outside of governments was to seek common approaches, to think and act globally. Another was to protect national, local, or private autonomy, to keep the outside world at bay. Neither usually existed by itself; reality was generally some combination of the two. Thematically organized, the nine volumes in this series explore how the post–World War II world gradually evolved from the fractured ruins of 1945, through the various crises of the Cold War and the decolonization process, to a world characterized by inter- connectedness and interdependence. The accounts in these volumes reinforce each other, and are best studied together. Taking them as a whole will build a broad understanding of the ways in which “globalization” has become the defining feature of the world in the early twenty-first century. However, the volumes are designed to stand on their own. Tracing the evolution of trade and the global economy, for example, the reader will learn enough about the polit- ical context to get a broader understanding of the times. Of course, studying economic developments will likely lead to curiosity about scientific and technological progress, social and cultural change, poverty and education, and more. In other words, studying one volume should lead to interest in the others. In the end, no element of our globalizing world can be fully understood in isolation. The volumes do not have to be read in a specific order. It is best to be led by one’s own interests in deciding where to start. What we recommend is a curious, critical stance throughout the study of the world’s history since World War II: to keep asking questions about the causes of events, to keep looking for connections to deepen your understand- ing of how we have gotten to where we are today. If students achieve this goal with the help of our volumes, we—and they—will have succeeded. — Ruud van Dijk

7

SERIES INTRODUCTION

Two survivors search for food in a Berlin garbage dump in 1945, after Germany’s surrender at the end of World War II.

WORDS TO UNDERSTAND alliance: nations or groups that agree to cooperate to achieve a particular goal. devaluation: as used here, deliberate reduction in the value of a nation’s money. fascist: relating to rule by a dictatorship, often promoting national or racial purity. ideological: concerned with ideas. obliterated: destroyed completely. tariffs: duties, or fees, levied by a government on imported or exported goods. watershed: as used here, like a milestone; highly influential.

8

EDUCATION, POVERTY, AND INEQUALITY

C H A P T E R 1 A World of Deprivation

W orldWar II had been over for three years, but Berlin was still a city in turmoil. By the summer of 1948, it had become the first flashpoint in the new Cold War, an ideological battle between communism and the Western democracies. The United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union—the former Allies that had defeated Germany, Italy, Japan, and the rest of the Axis powers—had carved the country into zones of occupation. The four-way partition extended to Berlin, even though it was in the middle of the Soviet sector. Strains in the alliance between the West and the Soviets threatened to escalate into an even wider conflict. Traute Grier, a teenager at the time, remembered those tortuous days well. Germany’s economy was in shambles. Coal, food, and other necessities were in short supply. The war had obliterated the city’s electrical, sewer, and water systems. Berlin’s once grand boulevards were reduced to rubble. “I saw how people literal- ly ate the garbage off the streets and desperately tried to fill their stomachs with potato peels and grass,” Grier wrote for the German magazine Der Spiegel in 2008. Grier and her mother lived in the American sector of West Berlin, where life was slowly getting back to normal. The Americans provided the Germans with food, energy, and other supplies. Moreover, the Western democracies were slowly trying to revive the German economy, as well as their own, by establishing a free market system, an approach the communist Soviet Union did not support. On June 25, 1948, life changed drastically for those living in West Berlin. The Soviets closed the door on food shipments by blockading the land and water routes that connected the western sectors of the city to the outside world. It was a calcu- lated move by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to force the Western powers to retreat from the city. The blockade was front-page news the next day in the New York Times . “About 2,250,000 Germans in the Western sectors of Berlin came face to face with the grim specter of starvation . . . [as] the Soviet Military Administration banned all food ship- ments from the Soviet-controlled areas into Berlin as part of its calculated policy

9

CHAPTER 1

of starving the people of the Western sectors,” the Times reported. “Although they see dark days ahead, the Berliners remained calm.” Within days, the Americans and British, along with otherWorldWar II allies, began a massive airlift to resupply the city. The airlift lasted for nearly a year. On May 12, 1949, the Soviets finally lifted the blockade, allowing food and other goods to flow freely into the city. The blockade and the Berlin Airlift were watershed events that helped lead to the

creation of two German states—East and West Germany. For the next four decades, theWestern democracies, led by theUnited States, asserted their liberally minded dominance and capitalist market system over Western Europe, while the Soviets pushed communism in the East. This battle soon raged in other areas, including Africa and Latin America. The result was striking. Countries that subscribed to the free market system of the West fared much better than state-controlled systems. The different economic philosophies had ramifications for the alleviation of poverty and for social development.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS Traute Grier, Who Lived through the Berlin Airlift

At home we carefully had to plan when we would cook, as we only had electricity at certain times. As a result, it was not unusual that my mother would get up in the middle of the night at 2 a.m. and start boiling some potatoes. To keep them warm she would then wrap the saucepan in newspaper and cover it with a blanket before going back to sleep. The next day we would have potatoes, the following day potatoes with soup and the day after soup with potatoes. We were thankful for what we had. — From a personal account written for the German magazine Der Spiegel.

Even though economic development was strong in Western, capitalist-leaning countries, communist economic policies advocated by the Soviets attracted many nations in the Third World, especially those that had once been colonial pos- sessions. At the time, the Soviets made a strategic decision to focus their attention on economically developing countries that had been exploited by the colonial powers. By helping to modernize and edu- cate people in these undeveloped regions, the communists hoped to deny the capitalist West vital resources, while making the nations of the Third World communist allies. Many politicians and people living in these poorer countries had long been exploited by Western colonial powers. In their worldview, communism was a way to throw off the shackles of foreign economic exploitation and create opportunities at home.

10

EDUCATION, POVERTY, AND INEQUALITY

Children in Berlin, living next to the Tempelhof Airport, playing a game they called “Luftbucks,” meaning “air bridge,” during the Berlin Airlift in 1948; they are using models of American planes sold in toyshops in the city’s western sector.

11

CHAPTER 1

Florence, Italy, in September 1944, one year after its surrender to the Allies during World War II.

THE UN’S MISSION The United Nations, established in 1945, would attempt to address poverty, education, and social development in the devel- oping world. While its primary mission at the beginning was maintaining security and peace in the world, the organization included “solving international problems of economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character” in Article 1 of its charter. It would come to take an active role immediately after the war and in the following decades in doing just that.

Poverty in War-Weary Europe The economic situation in postwar Europe was dire. The conflict destroyed entire cities and the industrial produc- tion of most countries. Millions had become displaced, with many seeking refuge in strange and unfamiliar coun- tries. Agricultural production vanished, leading to starva- tion in many regions. Jobs were in short supply. According to data cited by historian Tony Judt in his book, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 , by 1950 some 25 percent of Italian families lived in poverty. Less than half lived in a house with an indoor toilet. Many villages and towns did not have any public water supplies or sanitation facilities. In West Germany, more than 17 million people were considered “needy” because they were homeless. Even the victorious British continued to ration food years after the war’s end. Few Europeans owned a house, a car, or a refrigerator.

12

EDUCATION, POVERTY, AND INEQUALITY

The economic situation intheSovietBlocwas evenbleaker.Manynations, including Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, did not abolish rationing until the mid-1950s, while it continued in Albania and East Germany until 1957 and 1958, respectively. The economic situation was so bad in 1953 that 50,000 East German workers faced down Soviet troops in East Berlin to protest economic conditions. In subsequent years, protests took place in Poland (1956), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968). All demanded economic and political reforms. In most cases, the Soviet military put down the revolts. New Monetary Policies The United States was the only nation to emerge from World War II stronger than it had been. Its economy was robust. After the war, America found itself as a bulwark against communism. As some Western European nations, including Italy and France, flirted with communism, many in the West were certain that unless the United States took an active role in rebuilding Western Europe, communism would spread across the continent. Many also feared that if trade did not increase and newmonetary policies were not established, Europe would devolve into mayhem, as it did in the aftermath of World War I (1914–1918). The economic collapse of the world’s economies after World War

I gave rise to fascist governments in Italy, Japan, and Germany, which eventually led an even greater world war twenty years later. Policy makers in the United States understood the challenges that a new world order would bring long before World War II ended. In 1944, world leaders from forty-four Allied nations, including the Soviet Union, gathered at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to discuss the eco- nomic future of a postwar world.

Some foodstuffs were still being rationed in Britain in 1953 and 1954 , when this ration book was issued.

13

CHAPTER 1

Officially known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, the goal of BrettonWoods was to provide war-shattered economies with the financial help they needed to rebuild. The guiding principle was the belief that free trade promoted international pros- perity and peace. Most of those who attended the Bretton Woods Conference believed high tariffs , unfair trading practices, and the devaluation of currencies all contributed to the economic calamity that preceded World War II. Several new institutions were formed to aid in the rebuilding effort as a result of the Bretton Woods Conference, including the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which is now part of the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). While its representatives attended the conference, the Soviet Union refused to ratify the agreements resulting from it, con- tending that the Bretton Woods institutions favored the U.S. capitalist system. Aid from the United States In March 1948, the U.S. Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act, originally drafted

Workers, ca. 1950, in present-day Gabon, then part of French Equatorial Africa, assembling drill pipes with training, parts, and financing by the Marshall Fund.

in June 1947, to provide Europe with $12 billion. Eventually, sixteen nations partici- pated in the Marshall Plan—named after the U.S. secretary of state, George Marshall, who proposed it. They received nearly $13 billion in aid, allowing their economies to grow quickly and helping to stop the communists from expanding westward. Earlier, President Harry Truman had also offered American aid to help rebuild the Soviet economy and those in the Soviet sphere of influence. Stalin declined the offer and ordered all Eastern European countries not to accept American help. In 1947, in reaction to the original development of the Marshall Plan, the Soviet Union established the Cominform—an international forum of communist parties. Under the Cominform, which had its precedent in the prewar Comintern, the ac- tions of communist parties in Europe were to be coordinated.

14

EDUCATION, POVERTY, AND INEQUALITY