Heather Streets-Salter began her talk by discussing the Noulens Affair in 1931 in Shanghai. I appreciated that she did not jump right into her presentation, but rather took the time to explain what the Noulens Affair was and who was involved in it. I had never heard of the Noulens Affair before this lecutre, so all of this information was new to me and quite interesting.
Heather Streets-Salter went into detail about the events in Shanghai and how the events spread communism across Asia. She explained the networks within Asia and their connections with the Soviet Union, and how these connections led to hundreds of arrests and an intense investigation. This investigation spread around the world, threatening other countries by the introduction of communism.
I thought it was interesting what Nathaniel Dowd touched on his post when he said this talk gives a slight critique on how we study history, and how educators teach it. He said 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 events interact with each other over time. I found this particularly interesting, for I think that is my difficulty with studying history, that I can’t just look at something on it’s own, but need to understand the situation in it’s larger context. We could not understand the Noulens Affair without understanding the magnitude of the situation and the Cold War. Going along with this thought, I think it’s very interesting to think about the larger context for our Presence of the Past lecture series. A professor or lecturer can’t just introduce a topic without giving the background to it, or else we would not understand the full extent of the situation. It is very difficult when teaching a topic that we may not be familiar with, such as a few weeks ago when we learned about genetics and genomes, since that topic was new for many students. Understanding the larger context is necessary when teaching a topic, especially for interrelating and connecting ideas.
After this discussion, I tried to do some research on the Noulens Affair and there was very little information available. I know Dr. Streets-Salter mentioned that there was not much literature regarding the Affair, but it is shocking being that it was such an prominent and important story at the time and there is so little documented about it. This also relates to my previous point about teaching history, since having information on the Noulens Affair deepens our understanding of the Cold War and international relations at the time. We can’t fully understand the present if we do not understand the past, so having limited information on such an important topic in history is detrimental to our whole current understanding. I appreciate that Dr. Streets-Salter was able to research such an un-researched event, giving us the information to build on top of the information we already know about the Cold War and the spread of communism.