Category: 10. April 22

Last week Heather Streets-Salter, a Professor at Northeastern University, spoke about the Noulens Affair and how it could have been the start of anti-communism before the Cold War even started. She began the talk by educating the room about the Noulens Affair which took place in Shanghai in 1931. Professor Streets-Salter prefaced the story by guessing that no one in the audience had heard about it before because of the lack of literature surrounding the event.

The Noulens Affair began with the arrival of Joseph Ducroux and Wong Muk Han in Singapore where they were arrested for their role in the communist party. At the time of the arrest, Ducroux was carrying an address book with names of the people involved, which led them to Shanghai. The authorities were led to an apartment which had a key to another apartment, where they hit the “jackpot”, as Streets-Salter described. In the second apartment the French and British authorities found papers of the Far Easter Bureau of the Comintern including payroll documentation, lists of pseudonyms, correspondence and cipher codes. These documents led to 276 arrests and the confiscation of 963,601 copies of communist literature. Additionally, they found links between Moscow and Shanghai and many other parts of Asia. European governments wouldn’t claim the Noulens’, the holders of the apartment, so they were imprisoned in China and sentenced to death. Although there was pushback all over the world, there is a lack of English literature surrounding the events of the Noulens affair and the amount of people that were involved.

Professor Streets-Salter not only aimed to educate us about the Noulens Affair itself, but also to argue the significance in terms of communism pre-cold war and to show the state of the world at that time. She argued that the Noulens affair was a metaphor for thinking about empires in the 1900s, not as bounded territories or specific places but more as communication between different territories and how they were connected. A good example was that the Noulens’ were connecting communist movements in southeast Asia while their captors were working together to question and control the communist movement. The main point of the presentation was to illustrate how the Noulens Affair contradicts the origins of the Cold War. Streets-Salter explained that the commentary on the confiscated papers is a good way to understand the level of threat that the colonial powers and China believed they were facing. They understood that the communist movement was capable of crossing boundaries and that it was aided by a powerful outside source. It is extremely likely that in the Noulens Affair we see the beginnings of the Cold War years before it even started. Additionally, one audience member asked if Streets-Salter was able to obtain the original documents that the authorities found in the Noulens’ apartment and she described that many of them were still protected by the British government. I think the lack of literature surrounding this event also displays the effects that it had on the colonial powers and shows the fear that they felt towards the communist movement years before it came to fruition in the cold war.

Professor Heather Streets-Salter from Northeastern University lecture, “The Chill Before the Cold War: The Roots of Anti-Communism in the Interwar Period” was a very great lecture because she explained a technical historical story that typically would require a lot of context in a way that someone like me without the historical background could understand.

Professor Heather Streets-Salter started off the lecture by introducing it with another title called the Noulens Affair Story. This was a story about Joseph Ducroux a spy that was arrested and was caught with an address book that exposed himself and his network all across the region. When officials investigated each of the locations found in the address book, they found information on payroll, list of pseudonyms, correspondents, and cipher codes which incriminated many people in the network. This discovery led to the arrest of 276 individuals and the confiscation of 963,601 copies of communist literature. Upon further digging, officials were able to discover links between Moscow and Shanghai and Shanghai and Southeast Asia via Hong Kong, along with connections between Java and India via Burma and Thailand.

The lecturer explained that this story was so significant because the Noulens Affair was a metaphor for thinking about empire in the 20th century. She said that Empires were not as firmly bounded territories mainly in communication with the metropole, but as connected territories connected to one another via transitional and global forces. Another reason why this story is so important that I found interesting, was that it sparked so many Pan- movements. According to Professor Heather Streets-Salter, the Noulens Affair made it so that colonial peoples connected to one another and extra colonial people via diasporic movements, like pan-Islam, pan-Asianism, and communism for example.

Pan-Islamic and pan-Asian ideas were highly influential intellectual and political forces during the time leading up to the Noulens Affair. This was non-Western elites’ contribution to the end of European hegemony in Asia. By rebelling against the West these thinkers were shaping and legitimizing their own self-identity. Pan-Islam and pan-Asianism helped to articulate non-Western discourse on civilization, modernity, and internationalism on a global public sphere. The politics of these new civilization identities functioned in relation to rising nationalist movements and changing power relations between Europe and Asia.

Professor Heather Streets-Salter concluded her lecture by arguing that the Noulens Affair Story is an extremely useful case study for exploring transnational and global connections and the violent world of international communism and anti-communism in this period. This story forces us to read in between the lines and connected seemingly unrelated stories together to piece together much greater phenomena occurring around us.

During the questions and answers part of the discussion, someone asked if the prejudice in the colonial era influence the prejudice of the Cold War. Professor Streets-Salter’s answered this by saying that ideas of race leave powerful legacies. She explained that ideas do not die but become entangled in policy and become implicit. The prejudices in the colonial era instead of going away became institutionalized and left lasting marks on the Cold War era.

Dr. Heather Streets-Salter introduced the Noulens Affair & its historical significance. The Noulens Affair took place in Shanghai in 1931- Joseph Ducroux, a spy for the Malaysian Communist Party was arrested for his overt and unlawful actions in Singapore. The authorities seized his address book and tracked down Hilaire Noulens and his wife in Shanghai. In Shanghai, a wealth of information was uncovered leading to 100s of arrests and a greater understanding of the extent of the connections between national communist groups. Dr. Streets-Salter believes that this event deserves more attention and research due to its significance in conceptualizing 20th-century empires, the origins of the Cold War, the intricacies of communism, and race and gender in international communism.

One of the most interesting components of this lecture was the acknowledgment of gender roles in communism. Dr. Streets-Salter explained that although women believed in the mission and at times aided the movement they were rarely named and when paid received considerably less. For example, in the Noulens Affair literature, Hilairie Noulen’s wife is rarely, if ever, mentioned by name. I’m interested to know if women were ever used as “secret weapons” so to speak. Since society and communism more specifically seemed to view their work as primarily a man’s work, women might be uniquely positioned to infiltrate secret societies and gather information unnoticed. I’m very curious about the balance between maintaining and enforcing gender roles and pushing the communist agenda through any means necessary. Would communist groups be willing to overlook their conceptions of a woman to gather information or better spread their messaging? Similarly, Dr. Streets-Salter introduced the role of race in the communist movement. She shared that in her reading she’s found that European sources almost exclusively told the story of the Noulens affair with white men as the main actors. They didn’t believe that colonial subjects would be able to understand communism. This is especially interesting given the pervasiveness of communism worldwide- where people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds bought into it. It’s also a little paradoxical because communism is supposed to afford more equality to its members. Presumably, in an ideal world, both women and colonial people would be included in communism.

An audience member raised a question about Christian missionaries as critics during this time period. Dr. Streets-Salter said that she would need more research to fully answer this question. Both the question and response highlight the complexity of the situation. Even through this short case study of the Noulens Affair, it’s evident that the origins of communism and national disputes far predate the Cold War. I’m inclined to agree with Dr. Streets-Salter’s statement of a need for further, research. I’d also be interested in the gender and race roles that played into possible criticisms of communism.

In conclusion, race and gender affected the way that communist groups. Going forward it would be interesting to further explore these relationships- especially in the context of a case study like the Noulens affair.

Heather Streets-Salter gave an illuminating talk about the Noulens Affair and the events that occurred in the 1930s around Asia. The lecture began by laying out the events of how European communists living in Asia were arrested and the aftermath of their arrest and investigation. The Noulens affair exposed the vast network that existed within Asia and their connections with the Soviet Union. The investigation unearthed important documents that showed direct connections between the Soviets and parts of Southeast Asia and led to hundreds of arrests.

Dr. Streets-Salter talked about the underestimation of colonized people in relation to the Noulens Affair. She mentions how the Noulens, European communists, got the spotlight and the Asian communists that had helped build this vast secret network were underreported, propagating the narrative that colonized peoples are mean to take orders and not think for themselves. In addition, the women involved in this were also sidelined, while the men got all the attention and credit.

The lecture extends the history of the Cold War and exposed the inner mechanisms of empires. Dr. Streets-Salter used the Noulens affair to illustrate how the European colonies in Southeast Asia were secretly and effectively rebelling and building up systems of authority independent of their colonizers. As Dr. Streets-Salter said, empire in the 20th century were loosely defined territories which reported to a “mother country”. Through this lens, we see how the early anti-communist movement, led by the British and French, was fueled by the fight for colonial stability. The origins of the Cold War and anti-communist movement in was created by the possibility of colonial revolt if the colonies decided to side with the Soviets and create a new communist government. This worry of upheaval caused the European colonizers to vilify communism, and consequently caused the United States to jump aboard the anti-communist movement.

Dr. Streets-Salter mentioned that there was not much literature regarding the Noulens Affair, even though it was an international news story at the time. Dr. Streets-Salter’s talk gave insight into the anticommunist movement from the perspective of the European nations, as well as the Southeast Asian nations. This deepens our understanding of the Noulens Affair, and the international relations that existed in the 1930s, and how that effects us today. This makes me think about our biases and how reliable history really is sometimes. It is very possible that the Soviets or communists working in Asia tried to bury this story as to not expose them. In addition, when learning about the Cold War and the anti-communist movement in school, this wasn’t mentioned at all. Learning history in a specific country means that you will hear the narrative that most pertains to that country. This creates history that is one-dimensional and doesn’t show the true intricacies of past events. It is a hard task to ensure that all aspects of a historical event are told and analyzed, but it is important to note that, usually, when learning history we are only getting one piece of the larger picture. I wonder how this the Noulens Affair  is taught in Russia, China, and around the Asian countries who were also involved in this event.

In Dr. Streets-Salter’s lecture, she discussed the origins of the testy relationship that defined the post world war II conflict between the United States and Russia. I found this talk to be really interesting because although I am a STEM major, history is one of my side interests, and I have tried to take at least one history class per year during my time at Colby. The scope of this talk focused on events that transpired in Shanghai, China in 1931, and how these events led to the spread of communism in east Asia long before the end of World War II. In the 1930’s the Shanghai police discovered communist links between China and Russia, with a vast network of communications between these countries and made 276 arrests. These arrests became well known news internationally, and introduced communism as a legitimate threat to certain developed nations.

This talk gives a slight critique on how we study history, and how teachers or professors teach it. The study of history treats historical events often as singular bullet points in time, which makes it hard to study the overlap of certain events, and how different historical events interact with each other over time. There are countless examples of this in history, and usually when discussing wars, this is where this train of thought is most egregious. Oftentimes, the history behind a war starts years behind its officially listed beginning, and the Cold War is no different. Additionally, events in the first world war set into motion what occurred in the Cold War, for example the designation of clear sides to the conflict that lasted through the second world war as well, which introduced a dichotomy of powerful nations. As countries began to become more interconnected, this complicates viewing history as a list of events as well. For example, the correspondence that China had with Russia would have never been as developed in years past, and that made it easier to study countries as individual entities. Nowadays, studying a specific country is impossible without going into its relationships with others, whether it be politically, militarily, commercially or otherwise.

Overall, this talk was an illuminating way to look at events that go unnoticed throughout history. It is obviously very difficult to bring attention to every single event that contributed to the cold war, but it was certainly an interesting way to look at just how far back this conflict did span, as well as how communism made its way through international eyes and ears.