Explorations in Culture and International History Series

Public diplomacy, neglected following the end of the Cold War, is once again a central tool of American foreign policy. This book, examining as it does the Marshall Plan as the form of public diplomacy of the United States in France after World War Two, offers a timely historical case study. Current debates about globalization and a possible revival of the Marshall Plan resemble the debates about Americanization that occurred in France over fifty years ago. Relations between France and the United States are often tense despite their shared history and cultural ties, reflecting the general fear and disgust and attraction of America and Americanization. The period covered in this book offers a good example: the French Government begrudgingly accepted American hegemony even though anti-Americanism was widespread among the French population, which American public diplomacy tried to overcome with various cultural and economic activities examined by the author. In many cases French society proved resistant to Americanization, and it is questionable whether public diplomacy actually accomplished what its advocates had promised. Nevertheless, by the 1950s the United States had established a strong cultural presence in France that included Hollywood, Reader’s Digest, and American-style hotels.

Recent studies on the meaning of cultural diplomacy in the twentieth century often focus on the United States and the Cold War, based on the premise that cultural diplomacy was a key instrument of foreign policy in the nation’s effort to contain the Soviet Union. As a result, the term “cultural diplomacy” has become one-dimensional, linked to political manipulation and subordination and relegated to the margin of diplomatic interactions. This volume explores the significance of cultural diplomacy in regions other than the United States or “western” countries, that is, regions that have been neglected by scholars so far—Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. By examining cultural diplomacy in these regions, the contributors show that the function of information and exchange programs differs considerably from area to area depending on historical circumstances and, even more importantly, on the cultural mindsets of the individuals involved.

Bringing together scholars from the fields of musicology and international history, this book investigates the significance of music to foreign relations, and how it affected the interaction of nations since the late 19th century. For more than a century, both state and non-state actors have sought to employ sound and harmony to influence allies and enemies, resolve conflicts, and export their own culture around the world. This book asks how we can understand music as an instrument of power and influence, and how the cultural encounters fostered by music changes our ideas about international history.

Whether rising up from fiery leaders such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro or from angry masses of Brazilian workers and Mexican peasants, anti U.S. sentiment in Latin America and the Caribbean today is arguably stronger than ever. It is also a threat to U.S. leadership in the hemisphere and the world. Where has this resentment come from? Has it arisen naturally from imperialism and globalization, from economic and social frustrations? Has it served opportunistic politicians? Does Latin America have its own style of anti Americanism? What about national variations? How does cultural anti Americanism affect politics, and vice versa? What roles have religion, literature, or cartoons played in whipping up sentiment against ‘el yanqui’? Finally, how has the United States reacted to all this? This book brings leaders in the field of U.S. Latin American relations together with the most promising young scholars to shed historical light on the present implications of hostility to the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean. In essays that carry the reader from Revolutionary Mexico to Peronist Argentina, from Panama in the nineteenth century to the West Indies’ mid century independence movement, and from Colombian drug runners to liberation theologists, the authors unearth little known campaigns of resistance and probe deeper into episodes we thought we knew well. They argue that, for well over a century, identifying the United States as the enemy has rung true to Latin Americans and has translated into compelling political strategies. Combining history with political and cultural analysis, this collection breaks the mold of traditional diplomatic history by seeing anti Americanism through the eyes of those who expressed it. It makes clear that anti Americanism, far from being a post 9/11 buzzword, is rather a real force that casts a long shadow over U.S. Latin American relations.

A recent coinage within international relations, “nation branding” designates the process of highlighting a country’s positive characteristics for promotional purposes, using techniques similar to those employed in marketing and public relations. Nation Branding in Modern History takes an innovative approach to illuminating this contested concept, drawing on fascinating case studies in the United States, China, Poland, Suriname, and many other countries, from the nineteenth century to the present. It supplements these empirical contributions with a series of historiographical essays and analyses of key primary documents, making for a rich and multivalent investigation into the nexus of cultural marketing, self-representation, and political power.

In Cold War historiography, the 1960s are often described as a decade of mounting diplomatic tensions and international social unrest. At the same time, they were a period of global media revolution: communication satellites compressed time and space, television spread around the world, and images circulated through print media in expanding ways. Examining how U.S. policymakers exploited these changes, this book offers groundbreaking international research into the visual media battles that shaped America's Cold War from West Germany and India to Tanzania and Argentina.

From the Napoleonic Wars to the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, via the great world conflicts of the 20th century, Music and Postwar Transitions in the 19th and 20th Centuries is the first book to highlight the significance of ‘postwar transitions’ in the field of music and to demonstrate the influence that musicians, composers, critics, institutions, and publics have had on the period that follows conflict. Leading historians, political scientists, psychologists and musicologists explore the roles of music and culture in demobilization, reconstruction, memory, reconciliation, revenge, and nationalist backlash. Moving beyond the popular conception of music as an agent of peace, this study reveals music’s more complex and ambivalent role in the process of transition from war to peace.

This book offers a critical reflection of the historical genesis, transformation, and problématique of “humanity” in the transatlantic world, with a particular eye on cultural representations. “Humanity,” the essays show, was consistently embedded in networks of actors and cultural practices, and its meanings have evolved in step with historical processes such as globalization, cultural imperialism, the transnationalization of activism, and the spread of racism and nationalism. Visions of Humanity applies a historical lens on objects, work, and sounds to provide a more nuanced understanding of the historical tensions and struggles involved in constructing, invoking, and instrumentalizing the “we” of humanity.

Intimate Histories focuses on intimate relations as sites of shared pasts connecting African American and German history in the years between 1933 and 1990. By tracing topics that include anti-miscegenation laws, forced sterilization, casual sexual encounters, marriage, and friendships, Intimate Histories broadens our understanding of African American–German relations during the so-called “century of extremes.”