American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (review)

Having made a horrific mess of the world in the first half of the twentieth century, Europe saw its leadership status diminish relative to that of the United States, which was twice its savior and, at the end of World War II, all that stood between it and domination by the Soviet Union. The power shift had many dimensions—military, political, and economic being the most obvious and important—but as Krige describes, included also was leadership in science. The United States had the resources, the facilities, and the motivation to dominate postwar science globally. European science, much devastated by the war, gave up willingly, though not without some envy and distrust.

The motivation for the reconstruction effort lay largely in America's Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union. The United States did not want Western Europe's potential strength to be absorbed by the Soviets, whose sympathizers among the European Left included academic scientists. Krige notes that the support the United States provided was welcomed by many in Europe who both feared the triumph of Communism and admired the energy and initiative of Americans. His analysis stresses the political purpose of the assistance that the United States offered European science, but also the underlying generosity and sensitivity that attended its distribution.

The mechanisms used to aid European science involved direct government assistance, the Marshall Plan, American foundations, universities, and individual scientists. Krige is necessarily selective, focusing attention on a few cases and examples. He provides good descriptions of Isidor Rabi's involvement in the creation of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (cern); the Rockefeller Foundation's role in decentralizing French science and helping it to reduce the influence of Communists; the Ford Foundation's participation in efforts to temper anti-American beliefs among European intellectuals; the various initiatives to expand and reform the training of scientists and engineers in Europe, including the arrogant attempt to establish a European MIT; and the largely frustrated effort by Philip Morse to establish operations research as a field in Europe.

The American hegemony was soft, and because, in Krige's view, it was consensual, it was inevitably co-produced. The language of European science became English, but its values were a mixture of American and European. What was gained or lost in the process, however, is not clear in this narrowly focused account.