This article examines the origins of Norwegian development aid in the early 1950s and the institutional structure, the geographic spread and the goals of the Norwegian aid effort until the early 1970s. The article argues that Norwegian aid must be seen as the outcome of broad set of considerations of an altruistic, geopolitical and domestic political nature. Both domestic and international pressures from within the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development contributed to substantially increasing Norwegian foreign economic assistance from modest beginnings. It is argued that oil wealth played a minor role in this transition.
The introduction to this special issue on peace in twentieth-century Europe develops a novel interpretation of twentieth-century European history. Rather than focusing on the question of the impact of war and violence within European societies, it seeks to examine what we can gain from exploring how peace was established and maintained in the wake of wars in various European societies. In particular, it focuses on the manifold ways in which different social and international actors negotiated peace, both literally and symbolically. Taken together, the contributions to this special issue thus present a much more complex picture of twentieth-century Europe than the one of a 'Dark Continent' (Mark Mazower) ravaged by violence or that propagated by European institutions of a peaceful Europe.
TOGETHER AGAIN
Anglo-Norwegian relations and the early Cold WarThis article discusses the archival materials published in the volume The Nordic Countries: From War to Cold War, 1944-1951 within the context of the existing literature on early Cold War relations between Britain and Norway. While many of these sources have been exploited by Norwegian historians for well over a quarter of a century, the publication of a judiciously selected body of documents significantly adds to our understanding of in particular the conceptual framework of the main actors, their misperceptions and the networks providing information. The roles of Trygve Lie and King Haakon merit particular attention.
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