American Labor's Global Ambassadors

After World War II, the AFL-CIO pursued an ambitious agenda of containing global communism and helping to throw off the shackles of colonialism. This sweeping collection brings together contributions from leading historians to explore its successes, challenges, and inevitable compromises as it pursued these initiatives during the Cold War.

"The role of labor unions in the formulation of U.S. foreign relations is an important topic that has recently gained the attention of scholars seeking to record a comprehensive understanding of international relations history. Based on copious research, these essays expertly probe the influence of the AFL-CIO in shaping U.S. foreign policy at a critical time in U.S. and world history. The scholarship presented here deserves the attention of historians of U.S. diplomacy and organized labor, as well as of the several regions around the world where labor exerted influence." - Peter Hahn, Professor of History, The Ohio State University, USA, and author of Missions Accomplished?: The United States and Iraq since World War I (2011) "American Labor's Global Ambassadors is the book that we have been waiting for. Cold War studies have been well established over the last decades, studies of the global Cold War have fared well, but the global labor Cold War - engulfing Asia, Africa, and Latin America aside from Europe - has been neglected. The finely crafted articles in this book, written by a cohort of scholars as well as activists, and based on previously unused labor archives, fill this lacuna." - Daniela Spenser, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Mexico "Interestingly enough, the American trade union movement played a major worldwide role during the Cold War. Sometimes it behaved like an ambassador; at other times its behavior was not very diplomatic, somewhere between heavy-handed and subtle. This thorough study covers all continents and is innovative, reliable, and a sine qua non for understanding Cold War politics and international trade unionism." - Bob Reinalda, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Quenby Olmsted Hughes, Rhode Island College, USAYevette Richards, George Mason University, USAAlessandro Brogi, University of Arkansas, USABarrett Dower, independent scholar and retired president of the Paris-American Chamber of CommerceDustin Walcher, Southern Oregon University, USALarissa Rosa Correa, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, BrazilAngela Vergara, California State University at Los Angeles, USAJohn C. Stoner, University of Pittsburgh, USAMathilde von Bülow, University of Nottingham, UKEdmund F. Wehrle, Eastern Illinois University, USAEric Chenoweth, Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, USAMarcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, The NetherlandsMagaly Rodríguez García, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium Federico Romero, European University Institute, Italy