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Aerial view of National Mall

United States

Aerial view of National Mall

Popular Documents

June 11, 1981

Telegram from Washington Embassy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 'Evron-the President'

The Israelis were concerned and disappointed by the administration’s initial response to the raid, which consisted of a freeze on the shipment of F-16 jets to Israel until a legal review was conducted. The Israeli ambassador to Washington conveyed this sentiment to President Reagan in a meeting on 11 June 1980 in this telegram.

July 6, 1981

Conversation between SPD chairman Willy Brandt and the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev on 30 June 1981 in Moscow

Memorandum of a conversation between Brandt and Brezhnev. Among other things, Brezhnev focused on the increased hostility between members of the international community. He pointed to debate over missiles in Europe as an example of that tension.

October 2, 1959

Discussion between N.S. Khrushchev and Mao Zedong

Khrushchev and Mao discuss current political situations in Tibet, India, Indochina and Taiwan.

June 6, 1919

Letter, Saad Zaghloul to His Excellency President Woodrow Wilson

In January 1918, US President Woodrow Wilson in a speech to Congress outlined Fourteen Points to undergird the postwar peace and international politics. Vis-à-vis European empires’ interests and against Soviet anti-colonialism, he asserted a panorama of (actually self-interested) US ideals. Thus, point 5 called for “A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable government whose title is to be determined;” and point 14 insisted that “A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike.”

Around the world, many anti-colonialists rejoiced. They insisted these points apply to their case, and hoped Wilson would agree. Neither of these two things came to pass, as Erez Manela has shown in The Wilsonian Moment: Self-determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (2007). In Paris during the 1919 Peace Conference, Wilson rebuffed the advances of many, including the Egyptian delegation, which wrote and self-published, in Paris in 1919, the booklet containing the two letters below. While conceding British supervision of Egypt’s debt and of the Suez Canal, leading Egyptian nationalists had just after the end of World War I demanded independence and the right to address the upcoming Paris Peace conference. Britain rejected these demands and offers. An uprising ensued, which Britain tried to suppress, in March 1919 exiling leading nationalists, including Sa’d Zaghlul (1959-1927), to Malta. As this only worsened the uprising, the Britain’s new High Commissioner in Cairo, Edmund Allenby (1861-1936) released the nationalists—who made haste to Paris.

March 22, 1990

Working Record of a Conversation of Prime Minster Tadeusz Mazowiecki with Vice President of the United States D. Quayle

Mazowiecki, Quayle, and Dabrowski discuss Poland’s economy, inflation, and the IMF.