Abstract
Soon after the Czechoslovak state was created from the ashes of World War I, its leaders understood that because it was a small, democratic state surrounded by larger, undemocratic, and potentially hostile neighbors (Germany, the Soviet Union, and the remnants of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire), it could not stand isolated in the international system, and instead must develop relationships outside of Central Europe in order to ensure its security. Establishing diplomatic missions abroad in support of the state’s political and economic interests was therefore viewed as vitally important. By the mid-1920s, the Czechoslovak diplomatic network had become one of the largest in the world—and was much more extensive than nearly any other state of comparable size.1 Czechoslovak diplomatic and consular missions were established, not only in Europe and North America, but also in countries such as India, China, Japan, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
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Notes
P. Zidek (2006) Československo a francouzská Afrika 1948–1968 [Czechoslovakia and French Africa, 1948–1968] (Prague: Nakladatelství Libri), p. 18.
R. Bass and E. Bass (1963) “Eastern Europe” in Z. Brzezinski (ed.) Africa and the Communist World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), p. 92.
P. Zidek and K. Sieber (2007) Československo a subsaharská Afrika v letech 1948–1989 [Czechoslovakia and Sub-Saharan Africa, 1948–1989] (Prague: Ústavmezinárodníchvztahů), p. 127.
J. H. Arrowsmith-Brown (2011) Prutky’s Travels to Ethiopia and Other Countries (London: Ashgate).
H. G. Marcus (1994) A History of Ethiopia (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 123.
Letter from Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie to Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš, August 10, 1942, quoted in J. Chmiel (1992) “The Czechoslovak Armaments Industry and the Italo-Ethiopian Conflict” Asian and African Studies 2, p. 171. Czechoslovakia sent arms to Hamburg, Germany to a Chilean owned company who then shipped the arms onwards to Ethiopia. See Chmiel, “The Czechoslovak Armaments Industry and the Italo-Ethiopian Conflict,” pp. 180–1.
Resolution of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the KSČ, May 12, 1959. NA-UV KSC, f. 02/2, sv. 217, ar. j. 295, b. 9. Also see A. K. McVety (2012) Enlightened Aid: U.S. Development as Foreign Policy in Ethiopia (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 82.
Marcus, A History of Ethiopia, p. 161 and H. G. Marcus (1983) The Politics of Empire: Ethiopia, Great Britain and the United States, 1941–1974 (Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press, Inc.), p. 53. For Wilson’s spears comment see Memorandum of the 304th Meeting of the National Security Council, November 15, 1956. Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers as President of the United States, 1953–61, National Security Council Series, Box No. 8, Folder “304th Meeting of NSC, November 15, 1956,” DDEL.
W. Shurtleff and A. Aoyagi (2009) History of Soybeans and Soyfoods in Africa (Lafayette, CA: Soyinfo Center), p. 274 and “Historical Contacts” on the website for the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Addis Ababa, http://www.mzv.cz/addisababa/en/ (home page), date accessed February 7, 2013.
Telegram from Department of State to US Embassy in Cairo, July 15, 1953, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Volume IX, The Near and Middle East (1986) (Washington DC: US State Department), pp. 2121–2.
M. H. Heikal (1973) The Cairo Documents: The Inside Story of Nasser and His Relationship with World Leaders, Rebels, and Statesmen (Garden City, NY: Doubleday), p. 37.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill quoted in D. D. Eisenhower (1965) Waging Peace: 1956–1961 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday), p. 34.
P. E. Muehlenbeck (2012) Betting on the Africans: John F. Kennedy’s Courting of African Nationalist Leaders (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 10.
S. Yaqub (2004) Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press).
From the viewpoint of the Kremlin, the formation of the Baghdad Pact created “a new mutuality of interests” with Nasser, because Moscow needed to find a new regional ally to offset the creation of this anti-Soviet military bloc. See A. Fursenko and T. Naftali (2006) Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York: W. W. Norton), p. 64.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles quoted in R. D. Mahoney (1983) JFK: Ordeal in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 18.
Each of these countries had additional reasons (besides the Egyptian seizure of the Suez Canal) to be upset with Nasser. British banking and business interests held about a 45 percent stake in the canal. The British also saw Nasser as a fascist comparable to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler and did not want to repeat their mistake of “appeasing” another leader with a perceived expansionist mind-set. Israelis were displeased with Egypt for having allowed Palestinian nationalists refuge inside their country from which they frequently launched commando raids inside Israel. Finally, the French were upset with Nasser for having supported insurgents in Algeria. See D. Yergin (1991) The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon & Schuster), Chapter 24. For an account that the primary goal of the Suez intervention was to eliminate Nasser, see Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War, pp. 94, 109–110.
P. Zidek (2002) “Vývoz zbrani z Československa do zemí třetího světa v letech 1948–1962” [Export of arms from Czechoslovakia to third world countries in the years 1948–1962] Historie a vojenství 3, p. 524.
C. F. Beck (1963) “Czechoslovakia’s Penetration of Africa, 1955–1962” World Politics 15 (3), pp. 407–409.
P. Zidek and K. Sieber (2009) Československo a Blízký východ v letech 1948–1989 [Czechoslovakia and the Middle East 1948–1989] (Prague: Ústav mezinárodních vztahů), pp. 68–9.
For accounts of Kořinek’s time in Morocco see J. Kořinek (1959) Maroko Křížem Krážem [Crisscross across Morocco] (Prague: Orbis); J. Kořinek (1946) Fez, klenot islamu [Fez, the Jewel of Islam] (Prague: Česka grafická unie); and J. Kořinek (1941) Maghreb el Aksa: nejzápadnĕjší Orient [Maghreb el Aqsa: The westernmost Orient] (Prague: nádkl. České Grafické Unie).
S. Mazov (2010) A Distant Front in the Cold War: The USSR in West Africa and the Congo, 1956–1964 (Washington, DC and Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press), pp. 34–42.
Memorandum of conversation between Liberian President William V. Tubman and American Ambassador to Liberia Jones, January 5, 1956. See Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Vol. XVIII, Africa (1989) (Washington, DC: US Department of State), pp. 391–2. For documents discussing repeated Liberian rejections of Soviet overtures, see “Political relations between Liberia and Soviet Union, 1956,” and “Attitude of Liberia towards communism and Soviet Union, 1957” in Records of the Foreign Office, 371/119452 and 371/125724, PRO.
The best account of Guinea’s decision to reject the 1958 referendum is E. Schmidt (2007) Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946–1958 (Athens: University of Ohio Press).
G. Lusignan (1969) French-Speaking Africa since Independence (New York: Praeger), p. 35.
W. Taubman (2003) Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: W.W. Norton & Company), pp. 452–53. To see a quote regarding how the French preferred a “Soviet Guinea” to an “Americanized Guinea” see W. Attwood (1967) The Reds and the Blacks: A Personal Adventure (New York: Harper & Row), p. 130.
Quotes from R. Legvold (1970) Soviet Policy in West Africa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 102–3.
K. Van Walraven (2009) “Decolonization by Referendum: The Anomaly of Niger and the Fall of Sawaba, 1958–1959” Journal of African History 50, pp. 269–92.
K. Van Walraven (2003) “Sawaba’s Rebellion in Niger (1964–1965): Narrative and Meaning.” in J. Abbink, M. de Bruijn, and K. Van Walraven (eds.) Rethinking Resistance Revolt and Violence in African History (Boston, MA: Brill).
A. Andereggen (1994) France’s Relationship with Subsaharan Africa (Westport, CT: Praeger), p. 61; F. T. McNamara (1989) France in Black Africa (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press), p. 92.
For the best account of international opposition to apartheid at the United Nations during this time, see R. Irwin (2012) Gordian Knot: Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order (New York: Oxford University Press).
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© 2016 Philip Muehlenbeck
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Muehlenbeck, P. (2016). Relations with Conservative African States (1945–62). In: Czechoslovakia in Africa, 1945–1968. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56666-9_2
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