As a government major and someone who is extremely interested in the politics and ideologies behind the Cold War, Professor Streets-Slater’s speech about the Noulens affair was especially fascinating. What occurred was the arrest of several communist operatives in Singapore sent by the Comintern , which is essentially the international council of the communist party, to Southeast Asia who were meant to act as missionaries, spreading the word of communism, and trying to rally support for the cause in Asia. Upon the arrest, authorities discovered multiple lockboxes filled with comintern documents with names of a large amount of communists in Asia, their codenames, and all other pertinent information.
Following this, there was a crackdown by Chinese, French, and British authorities whose goal was to stem the spread of communism. Many times, when a communist was captured by this coalition of anti-communists, the prisoners were sent to China to be interrogated rather than in Europe. This was done because many of the Western European countries had many laws that restricted how “strongly” they could interrogate those that they held in custody. China, however, did not have these restrictions, so much of the information was found out there before being sent back to Europe.
The discovery of such a wide-ranging network of communist conspirators, was a massive realization for the imperialist nations like France, China, and Great Britain. It showed a major threat to colonialism, and led to great fear among colonial, capitalist countries, especially in Southeast Asia.
An interesting aspect of this incident is that it occurred in 1931, well before World War Two and the post World War Two period that many attribute to being the time period that led to the start of The Cold War. If anything, this story shows us that the roots of the Cold War go much deeper. It is a narrative that tells us that when we step back and look at a situation, the things that caused it are often times much more complex than what we thought. In this instance, we let our Eurocentric view of the world convince us that the only true reasons for the beginning of The Cold War came out of Europe. Instead, when we look at the bigger picture, events were occurring all over the world that led to one of the most infamous, and studied events in modern history. As Professor Streets-Slater talked about, The Noulens affair is an event that is rarely talked about and to this day only has three articles discussing the situation, including her’s. I believe that this illustrates this fact. People are so focused on their preconceived notions of why something is or why something occurs that we fail to look at alternative causes. History is no exception to this.
So far, I think that this was my favorite speech. I really loved being exposed to an idea and an event that I, like many others, had never given much thought to. That is essentially why I took this course, and this talk could not have been a better example.