Abstract

The jeep was one of the most important pieces of equipment used by the US American army in the Second World War and was heroized accordingly during and after the war. At the same time, the post-war use of hundreds of thousands of jeeps was unclear. Repurposing them as agricultural equipment proved to be difficult. Instead, Jeeps were often put to new uses in different geographical contexts and represented a form of late and post-colonial infrastructure, especially in parts of the world with little access to transportation and road networks. However, jeeps were far more than simple transportation devices. They enabled access to remote regions and villages, with the aim of allowing them to participate in a seemingly global information society. At the same time, the Jeep began its rise as a status symbol of the upper American middle class. Design played a decisive role in bringing the Jeep together with the changing mental maps of the post-war period. Brooks Stevens and Henry Kaiser in particular played an important role in giving the former military vehicle a completely different use, although in many respects it remained part of the modernizing mission of the Postwar period. This essay understands these two uses of the Jeep not as coincidental parallel developments, but reads them as two sides of the same coin.