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.

No abstract

No abstract

At the end of the Second World War, British society's hostility and resentment towards France's military defeat and the French state's collaboration with Germany were strong. In order to deflate this enmity and thus prepare the ground to forge western European co-operation, the French and British governments co-operated and developed gendered public and media strategies within which citizens, and, in particular, former female resistance fighters, were central to the dissemination of positive images of France. This article takes seriously these strategies and adds nuance to understandings of modern foreign policy in terms of methods and actors. The article elaborates on neglected agents of diplomacy, such as female members of civil society, and the significance of rhetoric, gendered performance, and appearances that contributed to the restoration of the image of France in Britain. By doing so, the article also sheds light on the efforts of French and British authorities to construct a narrative of binational unity that disrupted the tenacious idea that Britain had fought alone during the war.

Propaganda, Gender and Cultural Power: Projections and Perceptions of France in Britain c1880–1944 tells the story of the gendered methods, policies, and institutions that contributed to the making of French cultural diplomacy in Britain, against the dramatic backdrop of war, changing Franco-British relations, growing European tensions and the global transformation of what ‘foreign affairs’ meant to states. This book analyses the powerful motivations that fuelled members of civil society, and in particular women, to dedicate their resources in the pursuit of improving the image of France in Britain through cultural strategies. By tracing the origins and development of this new diplomatic method, this book reveals how French citizens, British Francophiles, and eventually the French state, promoted French culture in Britain. At the same time, it discusses interwar gender-based discrimination in the field of cultural diplomacy; the political contests over ownership of cultural production; and wartime catalysts for change – in particular the arrival of child refugees and the creation of Charles de Gaulle's Free French movement in London. By studying the projections and perceptions of France in Britain, and examining French cultural institutions in Britain as transnational European spaces, this book also paints a new picture of cultural cosmopolitanism in Britain.