Ploughshares and Swords

India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War

Jayita Sarkar (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

300 Seiten

2022
Cornell University Press (Verlag)
978-1-5017-6501-8 (ISBN)

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India's nuclear program is often misunderstood as an inward-looking endeavor of secretive technocrats. In Ploughshares and Swords, Jayita Sarkar challenges this received wisdom, narrating a global story of India's nuclear program during its first forty years. The book foregrounds the program's civilian and military features by probing its close relationship with the space program. Through nuclear and space technologies, India's leaders served the technopolitical aims of economic modernity and the geopolitical goals of deterring adversaries.

The politically savvy, transnationally connected scientists and engineers who steered the program obtained technologies, materials, and information through a variety of state and nonstate actors from Europe and North America, including both superpowers. They thus maneuvered around Cold War politics and the choke points of the nonproliferation regime. Hyperdiversification increased choices for the leaders of the nuclear program but reduced democratic accountability at home. The nuclear program became a consensus-enforcing device in the name of the nation.

Ploughshares and Swords is a provocative new history with global implications. It shows how geopolitical and technopolitical visions influence decisions about the nation after decolonization.

Thanks to generous funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Jayita Sarkar is Senior Lecturer in Global History of Inequalities at the University of Glasgow. Follow her on X @DrJSarkar.

Introduction: Freedom of Action

Part One: World War and Decolonization

1. Atomic Earths and State-Making, 1940s–1948

2. Radium to Reactors, 1948–1953

Part Two: Cold and Hot Wars

3. Nuclear Marketplace Opens for Business, 1953–1962

4. Plutonium, Power Reactors, and Space Projects, 1962–1964

5. The Plowshare Loophole, 1964–1970

Part Three: Unmaking and Making of India

6. Fractured Worlds, 1970–1974

7. Explosion and Fallout, 1974–1980s

Epilogue: The Anti-Dissent Machine

Erscheinungsdatum	04.06.2022
Zusatzinfo	13 Halftones, black and white; 3 Maps
Verlagsort	Ithaca
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	454 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
ISBN-10	1-5017-6501-9 / 1501765019
ISBN-13	978-1-5017-6501-8 / 9781501765018
Zustand	Neuware