The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) has awarded Thomas Field (PhD, London School of Economics) the Betty M. Unterberger Dissertation Prize |for his thesis entitled "Conflict on High: Revolutionary Bolivia and the United States, 1961-1964",
The Betty M. Unterberger Prize is intended to recognize and encourage distinguished research and writing by graduate students in the field of diplomatic history. The Prize of $1,000 is awarded biannually to the author of a dissertation, completed during the previous two calendar years, on any topic relating to the history of US foreign relations. The Prize, established in 2004, is announced at the annual SHAFR conference and honours Betty Miller Unterberger, a founder of SHAFR and long-time professor of diplomatic history at Texas A&M University.
Thomas Field's dissertation argues that despite receiving massive injections of US foreign aid in 1961-1964, Bolivia has escaped the attention of scholars of American foreign policy toward Latin America during early 1960s. Only a thorough analysis of the Alliance for Progress can properly account for the reasons why Bolivia, as highest per capita recipient of Alliance aid funds, entered a long period of military rule on 4 November 1964. Most previous accounts have blamed the military coup on the CIA, or the Pentagon and thus have acquitted the Kennedy-era aid programs of any complicity. This thesis argues that, on the contrary, Alliance programs played the central role in building up the Bolivian armed forces, both through civic action programs in the countryside and harsh labour reforms implemented through military force. The narrative suggests that aggressive ideologies of Third World development can often fuel foreign interventions that rely heavily on authoritarian regimes. Rather than being a work of US imperialism, the narrative proposes that the 1964 coup d'état was actually a reaction against the heavy-hand wielded by the politicized intervention represented by Kennedy's Alliance for Progress.
Thomas Field is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the United States and the Cold War at New York University. In August 2011, he will be taking up a position as Assistant Professor of International Relations, Intelligence Studies, and National Security Affairs at the Prescott, Arizona campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.