Tag: communism

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The Importance of an Untold Story

Professor Street-Slater’s lecture on the Noulens Affair ranks among one of my top lectures thus far. The biggest reason for this is because I had no prior information of this event or its’ influence, which is really why I signed up for this course in the first place: to be exposed to new information that I would not get otherwise. I had never heard of the Comintern, Joseph Ducroux, Wong Muk Han, or any other people Professor Street-Slater mentioned. Yet, what I learned was essentially that the Comintern, the international council of the communist party in the early to mid 20th century, had sent operatives to Singapore to garner support and spread the word of the communist party. On June 1st, 1931, many of these individuals were arrested and detained for further questioning. Upon research, police officials discovered various lock-boxes filled with communist paraphernalia and Comintern documents. The documents contained information with names of Comintern members that were dispersed all throughout Asia and Europe. This led to immediate uproar amongst Asian citizens and it led to governments crackdowns many, including the French, British, and Chinese.

Professor Street-Slater explained how many the of apprehended individuals were sent to China to be questioned as the Chinese did not have the same laws and regulations as did the West when it came to interrogations. Much of the information being passed to European governments was being extracted and obtained in China, something that I had no prior knowledge of. Regardless, the reality of the situation is that the discovery in Singapore, what became known as the Noulens Affair, was incredibly threatening at the time. At this very time in history, which was the early 1930’s to 40’s, imperialists nations such as France, Great Britain, and China made it their priority to stem the spread of communism throughout the East. Communism poised a direct threat to colonialism and capitalism, and it was gaining traction among several different communities. Today, the significance of this event cannot be undervalued. Professor Street-Slater emphasized how very few times do we see the whole picture. The United States had yet to really get involved in its’ brigade against communism, yet what was so fascinating about this discussion was the fact that the Noulens Affair is just a small piece to the puzzle of what eventually would be the Cold War. It is intriguing to learn about the smaller, more detailed versions of the story that we now know played a huge role in the end. The Noulens Affair is pretty much an entirely untold story; Professor Street-Slater mentioned there are only three articles written about the event. For an event this impactful, this fact was very surprising, yet also enlightening as I realized how much we forget to remember from the past. Too often we look at the big picture and only remember the monumental changes. That is why, overall, I found Professor Street-Slater’s lecture truly captivating as it perfectly tied together the presence of the past, and its’ importance and impact in understanding the present.

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Noulen’s Affair and the Relevance of History

This last weeks lecture from Professor Heather Streets-Salter was extremely interesting and made me want to know more about this topic and other related topics throughout history dealing with international networks. This specific discussion was about the Noulens Affair in Shangai and how it might have been the start of anti-communism before the Cold War. This was extremely exciting to hear about because it was a topic that I knew very little about but also dealt with topics that are relevant to my studies and interest me.

 

With Joseph Ducroux’s arrest his address book was exposed and it revealed a large network across multiple countries. Upon further investigation into these residences officials found information on payroll, pseudonyms, correspondents, cipher codes, and more. Streets-Salter mentioned this truly was the “jackpot” of evidence and it led to over 200 people getting arrested and hundreds of thousands of copies of communist literature being confiscated. This is incredible to hear about because its something the majority of people haven’t heard about and yet it is so incredibly important and relevant to our modern history and our contemporary society.

 

The Noulens Affair was not only important for its historical significance and broader reach impacting so many people from many different countries, but it also was a metaphor for thinking about empires in the 20th century. Professor Streets-Salter said that territories don’t bind empires but they are connected as territories via transitional and global forces, and therefor can be compiled with people from multiple different countries scaling the globe. I think it is interesting to consider that this is such a well-documented example of communism and empires reaching across countries in large networks of spies, and yet there is very little literature on it that I have seen and there really hasn’t been a discussion of it that I can recall until I attended this lecture.

 

The really fascinating part about this is it truly did change the course of history and yet isn’t well known. This in all likelihood did lead to a large uproar and commentary surrounding all of these arrests and likely heightened the fear of communism from colonial powers. This Noulen’s Affair proved that communism could cross borders and boundaries like an empire and it also proved that it had very powerful backing from influential people. This lecture also really emphasized the importance and relevance of history within this presence of the past lecture series. The Noulen’s Affair is a prime example of this because although it is very important, very little people likely know about it or would even understand the significance of this event without background knowledge about communism or Asia during this time period. It also demonstrates how history is forever expanding and there is always more to learn about our roots and our predecessors. I remember during the post-discussion question and answer section Professor Streets-Salter mentioned that the British government still has many of the original documents and I honestly wonder how many people know about this in Britain in comparison to the United States because I think that would be really interesting to see the difference.

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Teaching History

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.

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Women’s Role and Strength in Numbers

Last week, Heather Streets-Salter’s talk about the Noulens Affair and the associated events in the 1930’s very much opened my eyes to the happenings during the Cold War and implications of communism throughout the world. At the beginning of her talk, I struggled to understand the associations between ethnic background and experience of communist fear, but she made it easier to conceptualize how country association was impactful in regards to treatment and consequences when convicted. In reflection, two points that Dr. Streets-Salter made proved particularly interesting to me were the gendered division of convict behavior during the Cold War and the collectivist mentality that is highlighted between nations in time of international conflict.

Continue reading “Women’s Role and Strength in Numbers”

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Wars Like Dominoes

I think that often when we learn about the twentieth-century world wars in primary and secondary school, a lot of the nuance and complexity of the situation is brushed over in favor of succinct lists of memorize-able facts and causes. Of course, the period is extremely complicated and there is some necessity to leave out some things just to make it manageable for a high school class to cover, but as per usual, the final product in many high school curriculums is decidedly America-centric. When a wider, more global scope is used when looking at this war-ridden era, the multifaceted nature of the conflicts and the international parallels begin to become very clear. The separation between World War I and II was already decidedly shaky, as the two sides of the war were mostly consistent and the first war in many ways directly caused the second one. Dr. Streets-Salter’s lecture on the roots of Anti-Communism in 1930s South and Southeast Asia really brought the Cold War into even closer contact with the two previous wars, making me question why we even divide them into three separate conflicts, when other violent encounters, like the off-and-on battles of the English Hundred Years’ War, is merged into and titled as a single conflict. Continue reading “Wars Like Dominoes”