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Abstract:
The libraries at top private and public research universities in the United States hold some of the most comprehensive collections in the world for studying other regions and their modern histories. Yet how this came to be has been largely overlooked. This article unearths the history of the Public Law 480 Program, also known as Food For Peace or PL-480, and how it came to support the large-scale acquisition of Arabic books through a center opened for this purpose in Cairo, Egypt. The article explores the changes in US food exports, specifically wheat, and links these changes to PL-480, US foreign policy, and finally Arabic book acquisitions for US research libraries. By drawing on a variety of publicly available primary sources, as well as a series of interviews with the current and former directors of the Cairo acquisitions center, this article lays out the history of this unorthodox program and its outsized impact on area studies programs in the United States, with a specific focus on Middle East Studies.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Michael Albin, Alex Boodrookas, Heather Hughes, William Kopycki, Ahmed Ramadan, Michael Sims and two anonymous reviewers for their help in the process of researching and writing this article. I also would like to thank the Nordic Society for Middle Eastern Studies for providing me the opportunity to present a version of this paper at its 2019 conference in Helsinki, Finland.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Alex Boodrookas (Citation2019) Total Literature, Total War: Foreign Aid, Area Studies, and the Weaponization of US Research Libraries, Diplomatic History, 43(2), pp. 332–352.
2 Food For Peace Bulletin (Citation1963) (Washington, DC: Food For Peace Office, April), p. 1.
3 Osamah F. Khalil (2016) America's Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
4 Vicente Rafael (Citation1994) The Cultures of Area Studies in the United States, Social Text, 41 (Winter), pp. 91–111.
5 Timothy Mitchell (Citation2002) The Middle East in the Past and Future of Social Science, in David Szanton (ed) The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, p. 8 (Berkeley: University of California Press).
6 Ibid, p. 9.
7 Zachary Lockman (Citation2016) Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press), pp. 149–150.
8 Osamah F. Khalil (Citation2016) America’s Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
9 Susan B. Epstein (Citation1984) Primer on PL-480—Program History, Description, and Operations: A Brief Compilation of Explanatory Documents (Washington D.C.: Congressional Research Service, the Library of Congress), p. 2.
10 Ibid.
11 Congressional Research Service (Citation1979) Food For Peace, 1954-1978: Major Changes in Legislation. Report prepared for the Subcommittee on Foreign Agricultural Policy (Washington D.C.: US Government Printing Office), p. 1.
12 Epstein, Primer on PL-480, p. 1.
13 Congressional Research Service, Food For Peace, 1954-1978- Major Changes in Legislation, p. 3.
14 Ibid.
15 Title II was specified for donations of food aid to needy countries; Title III was a barter program to exchange for key raw materials the USA needed; Title IV was added in the late 1950s, enabling the sale of commodities on credit, denominated in US dollars.
16 Epstein, Primer on PL-480, p. 2.
17 Willard W. Cochrane (Citation1960) Public Law 480 and Related Programs, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 331(1), pp. 14–19.
18 Hubert Humphrey (Citation1958) Food and Fiber as a Force for Freedom: Report by Senator Hubert H. Humphrey to the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry US Senate (Washington DC: U S Government Printing Office), pp. 8–15.
19 Ibid, p. 55.
20 Epstein, Primer on PL-480, p. 3.
21 Food for Peace Newsletter (March 1963), p. 2.
22 See for example, Theodore W. Schultz (Citation1960) Value of US Farm Surpluses to Underdeveloped Countries, Journal of Farm Economics, 42(5), pp. 1019–1030.
23 Vijay Prashad (Citation2007) The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York, NY: The New Press), p. 39.
24 Office of the Historian (1969) USAID and PL480, 1961-1969, Available at: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/pl-480, accessed 23 May 2021.
25 Food For Peace Newsletter (1963) October, p. 6.
26 Food for Peace Newsletter (1963) March, p. 2.
27 Ibid.
28 George McGovern (Citation1964) War Against Want: America’s Food For Peace Program (New York: Walker and Co.).
29 Such a PL-480 agreement was initiated with Iraq, for example. For a brief period in 1963, the Iraqi Ba‘th acted in quiet lockstep with the US, and joined the PL-480 program to receive various forms of food aid. Public records of US foreign aid show approximately $13 million in PL-480 loans made to Iraq in 1963, which ended shortly thereafter and did not restart in the 1970s or 1980s. These loans were characterized as being repayable in dollars, so they were Title IV, not Title I as discussed above. This temporary match was not to last; the Iraqi Ba‘th was pushed out of power in less than one year and President Kennedy, whose administration aligned its policy with the Iraqi Ba‘th, was assassinated in late November 1963. On Iraq loans, see USAID (N.D.) US Overseas Loans and Grants and Assistance from International Organizations: Obligations and Loan Authorizations, July 1, 1945 to September 30, 1976 (Washington DC: United States Agency for International Development), p. 18.
30 Indeed, an analyst for the Environment and Natural Resources Policy Division concluded as much in her 1984 study of PL-480 policies to that date; see Epstein, Primer on PL-480, p. 1; see also Mitchell B. Wallerstein (Citation1980) Food for War, Food for Peace (Boston, MA: MIT Press).
31 Epstein, Primer on PL-480, p. 3.
32 Office of the Historian, USAID and PL480, 1961-1969, Available at: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/pl-480, accessed 23 May 2021; see also Kristin Ahlberg (Citation2008) Transplanting the Great Society: Lyndon Johnson and Food for Peace (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press).
33 Epstein, Primer on PL-480, p. 6.
34 Ibid, pp. 5–6. By 1984, when this report was written, more than 70% of PL-480 sales were under Title I.
35 Office of the Historian, USAID and PL480, 1961-1969.
36 Robert C. Eggleston (Citation1987) Determinants of the Levels and Distribution of PL 480 Food Aid: 1955-1979, World Development, 15(6), p. 801.
37 Jeffry Frieden (Citation2006) Global Capitalism (New York: W.W. Norton and Co.), pp. 343–345; and Vijay Prashad (Citation2012) The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (London: Verso), p. 17.
38 NACLA (Citation1975) Food Exports, NACLA’s Latin America and Empire Report, 9(7), p. 3.
39 Office of the Historian (1973) Nixon and the End of the Bretton Woods System, 1971–1973, Available at: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/nixon-shock, accessed May 23, 2021.
40 Prashad, The Poorer Nations, p. 18.
41 Ibid.
42 NACLA (Citation1975) Food Exports in NACLA’s Latin America and Empire Report, 9(7), p. 3.
43 Eckart Woertz (Citation2014) Historic Food Regimes and the Middle East, in Suzi Mirgani & Zahra Babar (eds) Food Security in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
44 NACLA, Food Exports, p. 4.
45 Clifton B. Luttrell (Citation1973) The Russian Wheat Deal- Hindsight vs. Foresight, in Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, October, p. 2.
46 Ibid.
47 NACLA, Food Exports, p. 8.
48 Congressional Research Service (Citation1979) Food For Peace, 1954-1978- Major Changes in Legislation. Report prepared for the Subcommittee on Foreign Agricultural Policy (Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office), p. 13.
49 Ibid, pp. 14–15.
50 Jose M. Garzon (Citation1984) Food aid as a tool of Development: The Experience of PL-480 Title III, Food Policy, August, 9(3), pp. 232–234.
51 Ibid, p. 234.
52 Ibid.
53 Susan B. Epstein (Citation1984) Primer on PL480: Program History, Description, and Operations (Washington, DC: Library of Congress Research Service, Environment and Natural Resources Policy Division).
54 James Bovard, “Free Food Bankrupts Foreign Farmers,” Wall Street Journal, July 2, Citation1984.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 John Waterbury (Citation1983) The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press), p. 29.
58 Marvin G. Weinbaum (Citation1985) Egypt’s Infitah and the Politics of US Economic Assistance, in Middle Eastern Studies, 21(2), p. 207.
59 Ibid, p. 208.
60 William J. Burns (Citation1985) Economic Aid and American Policy Toward Egypt 1955-1981 (Albany: State University of New York Press), p. 121.
61 139–140.
62 Burns, Economic Aid and American Policy Toward Egypt 1955-1981, p. 32. The entire first chapter provides detail about the tense relationship between the US and Egypt in this period.
63 Khalil, America’s Dream Palace, pp. 139–140. Despite the need for funding at the American University of Beirut (AUB), and the desire of the State Department to use PL-480 funds to help AUB, the language of the legislation prohibited this and only AUC benefited from PL-480 funds because of its location in Egypt.
64 Jean-Jacques Dethier & Kathy Funk (Citation1987) The Language of Food: PL-480 in Egypt, in MERIP, 145, January, p. 23; and Weinbaum, Egypt’s Infitah and the Politics of US Economic Assistance, p. 208.
65 Dethier & Funk, The Language of Food, p. 23.
66 Dethier and Funk, The Language of Food: PL-480 in Egypt, p. 23.
67 Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat, p. 30.
68 Weinbaum, Egypt’s Infitah and the Politics of US Economic Assistance, pp. 208–209.
69 Timothy Mitchell (Citation1991) America’s Egypt: Discourse of the Development Industry, MERIP, March–April, p. 21.
70 Congressional Research Service, Food For Peace, 1954-1978: Major Changes in Legislation, p. 16.
71 Mitchell, America’s Egypt, p. 21.
72 See Hossam el-Hamalawys for one of the best in-depth looks at these events: Hossam el-Hamalawys (Citation2001) January 18 and 19, 1977: “Uprising of Thieves” or an Aborted Revolution?” MA Thesis, American University of Cairo. Available at: https://archive.org/details/1977-uprising/mode/2up.
73 Boodrookas, “Total Literature, Total War,” p. 12. Boodrookas goes into considerable detail about these lobbying efforts in this article.
74 Donald Jay (Citation1967) The Impact of the Public Law 480 Program on Overseas Acquisitions by American Libraries, William L. Williamson (ed) (Madison, WI: University Wisconsin Library School), p. 2. U.A.R here refers to the United Arab Republic, a union of Egypt & Syria, which dissolved in 1961; only Egypt remained in the program after 1961.
75 Boodrookas, Total Literature, Total War, p. 15.
76 Ibid, pp. 1–2.
77 Tahany Said al-Erian (Citation1972) The Public Law 480 Program in American Libraries, PhD Dissertation, Columbia University, New York, p. 1.
78 Boodrookas, Total Literature, Total War, p. 10.
79 Ibid; see the entire article by Boodrookas for more on these efforts, as they are not the focus here.
80 Carol Mitchell & James Armstrong (Citation2005) Understanding the World: The Library’s Operations Overseas, Information Bulletin, May; Available at: https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0505/overseas.html
81 Details on the book collection practices of the LOC Cairo Office are based on Author’s Skype interview with Michael Albin, August 5, 2020.
82 Said al-Erian, The Public Law 480 Program in American Libraries, p. 4.
83 UAR here refers to the United Arab Republic, the name taken on by the union of Egypt and Syria beginning in 1958. After Syria left the union in 1961, Egypt held onto the name until 1971.
84 Chief Acquisitions Officer, Memorandum for CIA Librarian, re: Library of Congress PL-480 Program, April 30, Citation1962. CIA-RDP68-00069A000100030046-5.
85 Ibid.
86 See the various texts of speeches given in William L. Williamson (ed) (1967) The Impact of the Public Law 480 Program on Overseas Acquisitions by American Libraries (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Madison Library School).
87 Said al-Erian, The Public Law 480 Program in American Libraries, p. 3.
88 Email correspondence with William Kopycki, Field Director for LOC Cairo Office, August 12, 2020. He helped to clarify that Iraqi books and publications indeed were being acquired in the 1970s through a bookseller in Cairo named Livres de France, which apparently provided a wide variety of publications including Lebanese titles and others to the LOC Cairo office. After the end of PL-480 funds, the Cairo office successfully established a relationship with al-Muthanna bookstore in Baghdad to act as the main source of LOC acquisitions for Iraq. Al-Muthanna was destroyed, along with several other bookstores in 2014 when ISIS bombed Al-Mutanabi street in Baghdad.
89 Said al-Erian, The Public Law 480 Program in American Libraries, p. 60.
90 Boodrookas, Total Literature, Total War, p. 16.
91 Ibid, p. 15.
92 Michael Albin (Citation1980) LC’s Middle East Cooperative Acquisitions Program: A progress report by Michael W. Albin, Field Director, LC Cairo, MELA Notes, 22, February, p. 6.
93 Carol Mitchell & James Armstrong (2005) Understanding the World: The Library’s Operations Overseas, Information Bulletin, May. Available at: https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0505/overseas.html, accessed May 23, 2021.
94 Boodrookas, Total Literature, Total War, p. 13.
95 Notably, in my interview with him, Mike Albin was clear in his rejection of the idea that there was anything imperialist or pernicious about PL-480, insisting that the program was cultural and not imperial.
96 By impoverishing, I mean the combined impact of the PL-480 sales in Egypt that fostered dependence on US aid without effectively addressing hunger. Egyptian leaders played their own role in these problems and were not passive victims.
97 Ahlberg, Transplanting the Great Society: Lyndon Johnson and Food for Peace, pp. 147-207.
98 Ibid, pp. 106-147.