Foreign cultural policy in the interbellum : the Italian Dante Alighieri society and the British council contesting in the Mediterranean by Tamara van Kessel [Book review]

Abstract

At a time of revived nationalist sentiment, the topic of foreign cultural policy has re-assumed relevance in an otherwise globalised, if multicultural, world. While the prevailing Brexit blues, pompous Trumpism and Kim Jong-un’s rocket science set the current nationalist tone in a most peculiar way, this is not without precedent, nor would it be the last: history is comprised of nationalist cycles of varying degrees which wax and wane over the years, leaving indelible marks. Squashed in between two global wars, the interbellum cycle was one such where the force of nationalism reached an extreme. One of the aspects that was both a result but also a defining aspect of the force of nationalism was the big powers’ foreign cultural policies when used, if unofficially so, as a propaganda tool of soft power. Tamara van Kessel’s Foreign Cultural Policy in the Interbellum explores these political designs in a most gripping way.