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Cultural Diplomacy and International Cultural Relations in Twentieth-Century Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

CHARLOTTE FAUCHER
CHARLOTTE FAUCHER*
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London, School of History, Arts 2 Building, London E1 4NS; [email protected]
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Extract

In a 2004 review essay on transnational history published in the pages of this journal, Akira Iriye discussed the ‘internationalisation of scholarship’ and concluded that ‘historians easily cross oceans and traverse national boundaries’. The books under review here offer a striking example of this internationalisation, not only in their geographical remit but equally in the transnational interests and collaboration of their authors. Three of them are edited volumes – which, in their showcasing of different approaches, methodologies and topics, are particularly suited to addressing the hybrid nature of cultural diplomacy. Their rich variety of case studies reveals the interplay of micro and macro history, as well as the complex relations between local, national and transnational, as well as between governmental and non-governmental historical actors. The fourth volume is a jointly authored work by François Chaubet and Laurent Martin that presents a synthetic approach to cultural exchange, the relations between culture and policy and cultural globalisation. Together these recent books represent the evolution of a cultural approach to diplomatic history and international relations, epitomised by an interest in ‘soft power’ and closely shaped by the development of transnational history, entangled history (histoire croisée) and the study of cultural transfers. As such, they allow a more cumulative consideration of the roles and meanings of cultural diplomacy in twentieth-century Europe.

Type
Review Article
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 25 , Issue 2: Agents of Internationalism , May 2016 , pp. 373 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

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2 See Iriye, ‘Transnational History’.

3 Christophe Charle, and more recently Caroline Barrera, have reminded us in their studies of academics and higher education institutions how easy it is to lose sight of the individuals within studies dealing with institutions and policies. These volumes play an important role in redressing the balance. Charle, Christophe, Les Professeurs de La Faculté des Lettres de Paris: Dictionnaire Biographique (Paris: Institut national de recherche pédagogique, 1985)Google Scholar; Charle, Christophe, Dictionnaire Biographique Des Universitaires Aux XIXe et XXe Siècles (Paris: Institut national de recherche pédagogique, 1985)Google Scholar; Barrera, Caroline, ‘Edito’, Les Cahiers de Framespa. Nouveaux Champs de l'Histoire Sociale, 6 (2010), available at http://framespa.revues.org/460 (last visited 20 Jan. 2016.)Google Scholar.

4 Practices such as the establishment of a language policy, or the sending of writers to foreign courts (Descartes went to both Sweden and the Netherlands in the first decades of the seventeenth century), are, for example, indicative of the beginnings of cultural diplomacy.

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8 Nye, Bound to lead, ch.1, note 11.

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10 These ideas are developed in Nye's Soft Power.

11 This contradiction is further developed within the French discourses on cultural diplomacy that relied on the ‘desire to separate the nation's cultural policies from its political agenda while at the same time using culture as a political tool’. During the interwar period, as France realised that the projection of culture abroad was more efficient if the targeted nation was not aware of the politics behind the process, Dueck shows that ‘French cultural diplomacy . . . consisted of nurturing the institutional structures that allowed to disseminate its culture overseas’. Dueck, Jessica, ‘International Rivalry and Culture in Syria and Lebanon under the French Mandate’ in Gienow-Hecht, J. C.E. and Donfried, M., eds., Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 139Google Scholar.

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15 Contrary to the three other edited volumes under review, Histoire des Relations Culturelles dans le Monde Contemporain has the additional merit of offering an overview of the development of international cultural relations in the Western context, emphasising major changes such as the liberal internationalisation of cultural policies through the United Nations, to name but one institution.

16 See, for example, Philippe Urfalino's book in which he discusses cultural policy as a creation of the the Malraux ministry. The international context is conspicuously absent from his study. Urfalino, Philippe, L'invention de la Politique Culturelle, Comité d'histoire du Ministère de la culture, ed. (Paris: La Documentation française, 1996)Google Scholar.

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18 Martin gives the example of air transport, which supposes agreements between international companies and governments.

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20 The acculturation process, through cultural transfers and appropriation, is described in detail by Sophie Jacotot who looks at American dance in Paris during the interwar period. In her chapter, she argues that amateur dance groups as well as specialised journals and the rise of mass media offered a favourable ground for the appropriation of new embodied dance techniques that everyone could potentially adopt.

21 Original version: ‘. . .l'adoption durable de comportements, d'idées issus d'autres sociétés.’ Didier Francfort, Introduction to ‘Transferts et acculturation’ Les Relations Culturelles Internationales au XXe Siècle. De la Diplomatie Culturelle à l'Acculturation, Dulphy, A., Frank, R., Matard-Bonucci, M.-A., Ory, P. (eds), (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010), 203–208, 203Google Scholar.

22 Martínez, Fernando Valderrama, A History of UNESCO (Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 1995)Google Scholar; Maurel, Chloé, Histoire de l'UNESCO: Les Trente Premières Années 1945–1974 (Paris: Éditions L'Harmattan, 2010)Google Scholar.

23 Carr, E. H., The Twilight of the Comintern, 1930–1935 (London: Macmillan, 1983)Google Scholar, quoted in Jean-François Fayet, ‘VOKS: The Third Dimension of Soviet Foreign Policy’ in Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C.E. and Donfried, Mark C., eds., Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy (Oxford, New York: Berghahn, 2010)Google Scholar.

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28 Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Les Conditions Sociales de la Circulation Internationales des Idées’, Actes de la Recherche en Science Sociale, vol. 145 (2002), 3–8. Available at http://disciplinas.stoa.usp.br/pluginfile.php/182630/mod_resource/content/1/article_arss_0335-5322_2002_num_145_1_2793-fich.pdf (last visited 15 May 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/collections/bdohp/ (last visited 19 May 2014).

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34 SOFE to Bonnet, 10 May 1938, 378 PO CH 607 Propagande, CADN.

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