Cold War Asia: A Visual History of Global Diplomacy

By: Matthew Phillips and Naoko Shimazu

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Synopsis: This innovative, interdisciplinary and international collection of essays offers fresh perspectives on the history of global diplomacy. Experts in history, international relations, art history and performance art have come together to examine a series of visual sources relating to Asia's role in global diplomacy during the Cold War. They explore how leaders, including Indonesia's Sukarno, the Philippines' Imelda Marcos and Thailand's King Bhumibol, exploited the symbolic value of diplomacy to emphasise their agency in relationships with Great Powers. These case studies demonstrate the significance of Asian diplomacy in understanding the Cold War, shifting away from the use of 'war' as the dominant criterion for analysis of the region. Cold War Asia sheds critical light onto how culture shapes international relations, widening the lens of analysis to embed the role of gender, religion, and ethnicity, as well as the material world, into our understanding of diplomacy.