University of Montana graduate student James Compton will present Mansfield, Marines, and Mothers: Montanans and the Politics of American Intervention in the Chinese Civil War from 1945 to 1946. At the conclusion of World War II, American citizens reasserted the democratic freedoms they had sacrificed to win the war. The
American intervention in North China during the Chinese Civil War presented a ripe opportunity for civic restoration in late 1945. Compton’s presentation examines how ordinary Montanans—deployed Marines, their families, and their congressman—impacted American foreign policy through participatory democracy.