The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty

The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia (Reprint / 1st Harvard University Press Pbk. Ed)

Cullather has written an engrossing history of how the United States government, along with private philanthropies like the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, aimed to win the hearts and bodies of rural Asia in the post World War II decades by crafting strategies to develop and modernize agriculture and the peasantâ€™s way of life. He explains how America used foreign aid, modernization theory, nutrition, statistics, and technology, to try to reconstruct the social and political order of the decolonized and disadvantaged countries in the region. Initially the issue of how best to intervene in Asiaâ€™s rural countryside was contentious, with clashing visions of development and humanitarian aid being argued throughout the 50â€™s and 60â€™s. Ultimately, one strategy displaced all the othersâ€”the â€œGreen Revolutionâ€ and the ability to feed millions through the miracle of genetically designed dwarf strains of grain and rice. Cullather provides a detailed explanation of how this policy of feeding Asian peasants became the single strategy of â€œprogressâ€ adopted by the US rather than industrialization or land reform. As current controversy swirls about how best to aid Africa in the crisis of nation-building, famine, and a poverty-stricken peasantry, the story of the U.S. interventions in Asia become starkly relevant.
Country USA
Manufacturer Harvard University Press
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2011-04-01
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Harvard University Press
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2011-04-01
Format	Kindle eBook

The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia (Reprint / 1st Harvard University Press Pbk. Ed)

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