Foreign Cultural Policy in the Interbellum: The Italian Dante Alighieri Society and the British Council Contesting the Mediterranean [Hardcover]

This book considers the growing awareness in the wake of World War I that culture could play an effective political role in international relations. Tamara van Kessel shows how the British created the British Council in support of those cultural aims, which took on particular urgency in light of the rise of fascist dictatorships in Europe. Van Kessel focuses in particular on the activities of the British Council and the Italian Dante Alighieri Society in the Mediterranean area, where their respective country's strategic and ideological interests most evidently clashed.

Tamara van Kesselis assistant professor in the Department of Art and Cultural Studies and a member of the Amsterdam School of Cultural Heritage and Memory at the University of Amsterdam.
 

Introduction
The development of Foreign Cultural Policy
The Allegemeiner Deutscher Schulverein (1881)/ Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland (1908) and the Deutsche Akademie (1925)
                Uniting the Volksdeutschen
                Accommodating Hitler’s regime
The Alliance Française (1883)
                Mission civilisatrice and France’s new orientation after 1870
                Greater involvement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the impact of the Great War
The Fante Alighieri  Society (1889)
                Italian irredentism, emigration, and national expansion
Effects of the Italo-Turkish War and the First World War
Competition with the Fasci Italiani all’Estero and the Istituti di Cultural“(