{"id":40342,"date":"2021-02-09T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=40342"},"modified":"2025-08-07T11:58:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T10:58:32","slug":"cultural-diplomacy-and-europes-twenty-years-crisis-1919-1939","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2021\/02\/09\/cultural-diplomacy-and-europes-twenty-years-crisis-1919-1939\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Diplomacy and Europe\u2019s Twenty Years\u2019 Crisis, 1919\u20131939"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong>This introduction accompanies a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/contemporary-european-history\/collections\/european-cultural-diplomacy-and-the-twenty-years-crisis-1919-1939\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">special collection of articles<\/a> published in <em>Contemporary European History<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Cultural diplomacy \u2013 the effort to advance a country\u2019s interests using the so-called \u2018soft power\u2019 of culture, rather than the hard power of military threats or economic coercion \u2013 is a major theme in international relations today. Ironically, most of the core practices of modern cultural diplomacy emerged in a period of desperate military and economic danger: the period between the world wars that E. H. Carr famously called \u2018the twenty years\u2019 crisis\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was then that the foreign ministries of European states \u2013 dictatorships and democracies alike \u2013 founded cultural departments, established institutions like the German Academic Exchange Service and the British Council, sponsored international cultural festivals and expanded the worldwide activity of language-promotion organisations like the Alliance Fran\u00e7aise. Through such efforts, states mobilised broad swaths of civil society in new ways, engaging artists, architects, scholars, religious leaders, advertising executives and schoolchildren in projecting the nation\u2019s culture abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A high point of the interwar period\u2019s new emphasis on cultural diplomacy was the 1937 International Exposition in Paris. Visitors to the event, like the ones we see in this image, were targeted by new forms of \u2018cultural\u2019 messaging at every turn. From the architecture of the national pavilions to the packed schedule of nationally typical performances, states went to great lengths to highlight elements of culture, rather than simply economic, technological or military power, as a factor of strength on the international stage. At the same time, the event took place under the shadow of Europe\u2019s interwar crisis, marked by economic fragility, ideological conflict and the mounting threat of war. Indeed, the prominence of the Soviet and Nazi pavilions that we see here was itself a sign of the weakness of liberal democracy and laissez-faire capitalism, now challenged by rivals on the left and right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This image \u2013 offering evidence of European states\u2019 great investment in cultural diplomacy even as it documents the period\u2019s terrible crisis \u2013 raises an intriguing question. Why did European states, struggling with the overlapping political, economic and social crises of the 1920s and 1930s, choose to invest resources into a field as \u2018soft\u2019 and elusive as cultural relations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/contemporary-european-history\/collections\/european-cultural-diplomacy-and-the-twenty-years-crisis-1919-1939\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">upcoming special issue<\/a> of <em>Contemporary European History<\/em>, co-editors Benjamin Martin and Elisabeth Piller bring together a collection of cutting-edge research exploring this conundrum. The issue\u2019s nine articles probe the relationship between Europe\u2019s interwar crisis and the emergence of modern cultural diplomacy by exploring cases drawn from France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Soviet Union and Sweden. Taken together, these allow us to see that interwar Europe was a laboratory for the testing of new \u2018cultural\u2019 tools in international politics \u2013 one that produced ideas and practices that have continued to shape diplomatic practice to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the next several weeks, a series of blog posts will present these articles. We are proud and excited to bring you this new research and look forward to the discussion we are sure it will stimulate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/tag\/european-cultural-diplomacy-and-the-twenty-years-crisis\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Read all blogs in the series<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/contemporary-european-history\/collections\/european-cultural-diplomacy-and-the-twenty-years-crisis-1919-1939\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Read all articles in the collection<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>most of the core practices of modern cultural diplomacy emerged in a period of desperate military and economic danger: the period between the world wars that E. H. Carr famously called \u2018the twenty years\u2019 crisis\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":40343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[6560,3500,11807,247,7694,6391,8490,9279,3713],"coauthors":[8506],"class_list":["post-40342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-humanities","tag-20th-century","tag-ceh","tag-cehblog","tag-contemporary-european-history","tag-cultural-history","tag-diplomatic-history","tag-european-cultural-diplomacy-and-the-twenty-years-crisis","tag-european-cultural-diplomacy-introduction","tag-european-history"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40344,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40342\/revisions\/40344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40342"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=40342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}