Page 94 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol Two

contraception and birth control 443

First Law of Socio-Genetics:
Celibacy is not hereditary. • Unknown

Further Reading No history is complete without a set of historical
Ambrose, S. (1994). Eisenhower. New York: Simon and Schuster. actors; important participants in the debates on birth
Dunbabin, J. (1994). The Cold War:The great powers and their allies. New control dating from the 1920s onwards included such
York: Longman.
Gaddis, J. (1982). Strategies of containment: A critical appraisal of post- players as Mary Burgess, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay,
war American national security policy. New York: Oxford University Raghnunath Dhondo Karve,A. R. Kaufman, Edith How-
Press.
Gaddis, J. (1987). The long peace: Inquiries into the history of the Cold Martyn, Eileen Palmer, Narayan Sitaram Phadke, Aliyap-
War. New York: Oxford University Press. pin Padmanabha Pillay, Margaret Sanger, Ursala Scott,
Hogan, M. (1989). The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the recon- Kato Shidzue, Marie Stopes, and Elsa Woodrow. As the
struction of Western Europe, 1947–1952. Cambridge, UK: Cam-
bridge University Press. above list—which does not purport to be complete—
Immerman, R. (Ed.). (1990). John Foster Dulles and the diplomacy of the suggests, far from being a solely Western phenomenon,
Cold War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Judge, H., & Langdon, J. (1996). A hard and bitter peace:A global history the demand for birth control was a complex interconti-
of the Cold War. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. nental movement, with an active cohort that supported
Kennan, G. (1947). The sources of Soviet conduct. Foreign Affairs, 25, and sometimes competed with one another’s work across
570–582.
Kennan, G. (1967). Memoirs: 1925–1950. Boston: Little, Brown. national boundaries. This cohort of activists collectively
Kissinger, H. (1994). Diplomacy. New York: Simon and Schuster. created a global propaganda effort to gain acceptance for
May, E. (1993). American Cold War strategy: Interpreting NSC 68.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. their controversial demand both within and beyond their
Mayers, D. (1990). George Kennan and the dilemmas of U.S. foreign pol- nations.
icy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Steel, R. (1981). Walter Lippmann and the American century. New York: Domestic resistance and political realities made it
Vintage. important for many advocates to seek a larger global plat-
Ulam,A. (1968). Expansion and coexistence:The history of Soviet foreign form to win support for their cause. For instance, inter-
policy, 1917–1967. New York: Praeger.
Yergin, D. (1977). Shattered peace: The origins of the Cold War and the national prominence and recognition greatly facilitated
national security state. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. the work of Margaret Sanger, a U.S. activist, since she
faced strong opposition against birth control in the
United States due to the Comstock Act (1871), which for-
bade any dissemination of contraceptive knowledge
Contraception through the postal system. A similar law banning birth

control was passed in Canada in 1892 and was not
and Birth Control repealed until 1969. There were no legal bans imposed
on birth control in India, Japan, or Great Britain during
he history of birth control enables us to understand this time.
Tthe global reverberations of an agenda for wider dis-
semination of contraceptive information in the early International Conferences
twentieth century. For most part, advocates of birth con- and Publications
trol in countries such as India, Japan, South Africa, The early advocates of birth control worked on a global
Canada, Great Britain, and the United States came from platform and were in dialogue with one another from as
privileged social, cultural, and economic backgrounds. early as the 1920s, exchanging and borrowing ideas.
Advocates of birth control found eugenic, Malthusian, Their modes of intellectual exchange included organizing
and demographic arguments most compelling in making international conferences such as the International Birth
a case for national and international support for birth Control Conference, held in London in 1922 and in New
control and contraception. Some advocates also linked York in 1925. Indian advocates such as Gopaljee
the demand for birth control to improved maternal Ahluwalia attended both these conferences, as did many
health and national well being. other participants from across the globe. Another large