The Invention of Cultural Diplomacy: cooperation and transnational competition in European and transatlantic international relations 1870-1940

Cultural diplomacy has gained extraordinary significance in European international relations since the end of the nineteenth century as countries faced challenges in their Empire and as military force on foreign soil became increasingly contested.

This project examines the making of this new aspect of foreign policy from the late nineteenth century until the beginning of the Second World War, with a focus on three case studies: Britain, France and Germany. The US will also be analysed as a battled ground for the cultural diplomacies of these western European countries.

Employing an interdisciplinary approach – drawing on diplomatic and political history, cultural studies, transnationalism and textual analysis, the project will examine a broad range of private and diplomatic documents, as well as published pamphlets and media sources.

The project’s first objective is to evaluate why European countries turned to foreign cultural policies as a new element of their diplomacy.

Secondly it aims to reassess the chronology of the rise of cultural diplomacy, which the historiography conventionally sets to the 1920s (when cultural diplomatic bureaux opened in European foreign offices). Thirdly the project aims to renew our understanding of the policy making practices in this domain.

These objectives will be met by transcending bi-national approaches that dominate the historiography of cultural diplomacy to assess the influence of entangled national competitions and asymmetric ways in which France, Germany and Britain conceptualised the significance of culture for their European and transatlantic diplomacies.

Building upon theories of new diplomatic history that have stressed the significance of non-state actors, this research also goes beyond Foreign Office-centred approaches to examine the role of civil society individuals (including emigrants and transnational networks of private citizens), in shaping this area of diplomacy.