Giles Scott-Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 983168 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Giles Scott-Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Giles |
| FAMILY NAME | Scott-Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SCOTT-SMITH G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leiden University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9089-7194 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 63 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 61 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 59 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the Globe by Ross Melnick (review)
Of the utmost importance for the survival of mankind’: The Alerdinck Foundation, the Media, and Citizen Diplomacy to End the Cold War, 1984–1992
In 1985, Dutch businessman Frans Lurvink created the Alerdinck Foundation and its Centre for East-West Communications.A private venture, Alerdinck set out to achieve greater understanding between Eastern and Western media to reduce Cold War tensions.An example of citizen diplomacy aimed at promoting peace, Alerdinck's story illustrates the strengths of a private initiative in creating spaces for dialogue and relationship-building, and the limitat…
Fragile Victory: The Making and Unmaking of Liberal Order
Journal Article Fragile Victory: The Making and Unmaking of Liberal Order Get access Fragile Victory: The Making and Unmaking of Liberal Order. By James E Cronin. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023. xviii, 346 pp. $40.00.) Giles Scott-Smith Giles Scott-Smith Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 111, Issue 1, June 2024, Pages 164–165…
Transatlanticism: A fading paradigm
In 2018, the first full year of the Trump presidency, it became abundantly clear that the transatlantic relationship had entered a period of intense discord, causing a series of pessimistic reports and commentary in the mainstream Anglo-American media. With this as the starting point, the article re-examines the study of the 'transatlantic' as a region. It engages with thinking of time (periodisation), space (scale), and discipline (methodology) …
Eternal Return
Writing this review a few weeks into a mindless, catastrophic return to inter-state war in Europe, the initial impulse is to contrast that debacle with the high-tech manoeuverings with which Moyn concludes his book. If there is to be war at all, let it be “clean,” and let the innocents escape the wrath of unhinged belligerents. And if it cannot be “clean,” then at least garner the means to punish those for their use of illegitimate violence. In t…
Global Exchanges: Scholarships and Transnational Circulations in the Modern World
Exchanges between different cultures and institutions of learning have taken place for centuries, but it was only in the twentieth century that such efforts evolved into formal programs that received focused attention from nation-states, empires and international organizations. Global Exchanges provides a wide-ranging overview of this underresearched topic, examining the scope, scale and evolution of organized exchanges around the globe through t…
Unofficial peace diplomacy: Private peace entrepreneurs in conflict resolution processes
Can private citizens serve as self-appointed peacemakers and influence diplomatic relations between parties to a conflict? The book analyzes the international phenomenon of private peace entrepreneurs (PPEs) – private citizens with no official authority who initiate channels of communication with official representatives from the other side of a conflict in order to promote a conflict resolution process. It combines theoretical discussion with hi…
No More Heroes Any More
Liminal Liberalism? Ivan Kats, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and the Obor Foundation in Cold War Indonesia
The story of the Obor Foundation is important for several reasons. Firstly, it covers the contribution of an up-till-now largely overlooked Western philanthropic enterprise to promote a cohesive national cultural identity for Indonesia in the wake of the fall of Sukarno. Secondly, Obor was an attempt to move beyond previous Cold War efforts to spread liberal ideas globally, most notably by the Congress for Cultural Freedom. To overcome critiques …
Some Notes on Mobility
Some Notes on Mobility"I expect digitalisation to replace mobility in every possible way." 1 I think we'd all agree that our experience of movement, of mobility-of which cross-border travel is just one element-has changed since February-March 2020.At the time of writing (November 2020), the experience with Covid-19 is affecting our understanding of mobility in daily life, with great differences in how restrictions are enforced across the globe.Th…
How Knowledge Moves: Writing the Transnational History of Science and Technology ed. by John Krige
Published fortuitously just before the onset of a global pandemic and the resulting competitiveness among nations to secure a COVID-19 vaccine, the volume provides a critical assessment of not only transnational approaches but also our understanding of the mobility of ideas and how this shapes the direction of knowledge accumulation over time [ ]the connectiveness of the English language for linking local developments to a global context is a vit…
Israelpolitik: German–Israeli relations, 1949–69
The rapprochement between Germany and Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust is one of the most striking political developments of the twentieth century. German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently referred to it as a 'miracle'. But how did this 'miracle' come about? Drawing upon sources from both sides of the Iron Curtain and of the Arab–Israeli conflict, Lorena De Vita traces the contradictions and dilemmas that shaped the making of German–Israe…
Diplomatic Tenses: A Social Evolutionary Perspective on Diplomacy
Precarious Equilibrium: Human Rights and détente in Jimmy Carter's Soviet Policy
Le transatlantisme: Un paradigme sur le déclin
En 2018, première véritable année de la présidence de Trump, il devint parfaitement clair que la relation transatlantique était entrée dans une phase de profond désaccord, suscitant quantités de témoignages et de commentaires pessimistes dans la presse anglo-américaine. A partir de ce constat, l’article reconsidère l’étude du « transatlantique » en tant qu’aire géographique. Il aborde la manière d’appréhender le temps (la périodisation), l’espace…
The UN and the Postwar Global Order: Dumbarton Oaks in Historical Perspective after 75 Years
The history of 'Dumbarton Oaks' is overshadowed in the formation of the postwar order, most notably by the San Francisco conference of April 1945 that gave birth to the United Nations Organisation.Yet in a number of important ways it was the Dumbarton Oaks conference, or the "Washington Conversations on International Peace and Security Organization" to give it its full and formal title, that fundamentally shaped a "postwar international organisat…
Sport and diplomacy: Games within games
Exploring Culture in and of the Cold War
The Cold War used to be portrayed as a global struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. Even if this image has been challenged many times, the main images that come to mind when speaking of the Cold War, are often linked to superpower rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States, the threat of a military conflict, and nuclear armament. These images have proved tenacious regardless of scholarship underlining cooperation ac…
Entangled East and West: Cultural Diplomacy and Artistic Interaction during the Cold War
Despite increasing scholarship on the cultural Cold War, focus has been persistently been fixed on superpowers and their actions, missing the important role played by individuals and organizations all over Europe during the Cold War years. This volume focuses on cultural diplomacy and artistic interaction between Eastern and Western Europe after 1945. It aims at providing an essentially European point of view on the cultural Cold War, providing f…
Pan-Americanism: A Non-State Approach
What makes a region a region? Since the 1990s there has been a vibrant debate in International Relations literature on this very question. Security studies has focused on the importance of “regional security complexes” for providing order, while Ernst Haas’s foundation for a functionalist take on incremental institution-building has been revived.1 Much of this work has given a leading role to states in these processes.2 An alternative tack, fuell…
U.S. Foreign Policy and the Other
Foreign policy necessarily needs an object on which to concentrate its attention, and that object is necessarily not here but elsewhere, of another ilk. Foreign policy is thus the policies dealing with the foreign—how to deal with territories, cultures, and threats other than oneself. In the Realist (Rankean) tradition, the processes involved can be relegated to the painstaking reconstruction of reality through relevant documents. Questions of id…
Global Exchanges: Scholarships and Transnational Circulations in the Modern World
Exchanges between different cultures and institutions of learning have taken place for centuries, but it was only in the twentieth century that such efforts evolved into formal programs that received focused attention from nation-states, empires and international organizations. Global Exchanges provides a wide-ranging overview of this underresearched topic, examining the scope, scale and evolution of organized exchanges around the globe through t…
Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War
This book explores the lasting legacy of the controversial project by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, funded by the CIA, to promote Western culture and liberal values in the battle of ideas with gl
Nancy Jachec, European Intellectuals and the Cold War: The European Society of Culture, Post-War Politics and International Relations
Sport Diplomacy Forum Introduction
It is worth a good bet that the next edition of Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations will include a chapter on sports. 1 As the introductory essay to a recent collection on sport and international relations has argued, there is a “compelling case for the utility of using sport as a lens to better understand foreign relations and vice versa.” 2 Sports history, of course, has a proud pedigree of its own, but new vistas are now being…
Mapping the Undefinable: Some Thoughts on the Relevance of Exchange Programs within International Relations Theory
This article examines the importance of exchange programs as channels of political influence and the value that can be gained from examining their impact via various theoretical positions in international relations (IR). Although there are clear possibilities for linking the study of public diplomacy with IR theory, so far this has not occurred to any real extent. Following World War II, a whole swathe of social scientific and behavioralist resea…
The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the End of Ideology and the 1955 Milan Conference: `Defining the Parameters of Discourse'1
The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), an institution that fostered an international anti-communist consensus amongst intellectuals during the Cold War, represents a fascinating meeting-point between politics and culture, or, more broadly, between power and ideals.3 In particular, its links with the CIA have led some observers to disparage it as little more than a tool of US foreign policy, its intellectual-cultural interests being regarded as …
A Radical Democratic Political Offensive’: Melvin J. Lasky, Der Monat, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom
The Congress for Cultural Freedom, formed in 1950 and lasting until 1979, was a major international institution based in Paris and dedicated to freedom of the intellect in the arts and sciences. However, since the late 1960s, revelations about its close links with the CIA have clouded its position within post-war cultural history. Yet, without an appreciation of its cultural origins its relevance becomes reduced to being merely a major example of…
Searching for the Successor Generation: Public Diplomacy, the US Embassy's International Visitor Program and the Labour Party in the 1980s
This article looks at the influence of US public diplomacy in the UK, in particular the use of the International Visitor Program as a channel for encouraging dialogue and the introduction of new ideas into the Labour party during the 1980s. The drift towards the left and the adoption of unilateralism caused great concern for the Americans. What was at stake was the future direction of the party and the need to realign its international stance wit…
From Symbol of Division to Cold War Asset: Lyndon Johnson and the Achievement of Hawaiian Statehood in 1959
After its annexation in 1898, Hawaii remained a territory of the United States, lacking full democratic representation in Washington, DC for sixty‐one years. While there were various factors that led to this delay, the overwhelming reason was the consistent opposition of the Southern Democrats to the admission of a new state with an integrated mixed‐race population. By the early 1950s the statehood question was largely being fought out in the Uni…
Mending the “Unhinged Alliance” in the 1970S: Transatlantic Relations, Public Diplomacy, and the Origins of the European Union Visitors Program
This article examines in depth the foundation of the EU’s one explicit example of public diplomacy, the European Union Visitors Programme. The narrative covers the historical background to the EUVP, the main individuals involved, and its significance for the development of the EU as an international actor. Public diplomacy relies on personal contacts, and the intention here is to demonstrate the importance of this petit histoire. The contribution…
Maintaining Transatlantic Community: US Public Diplomacy, the Ford Foundation and the Successor Generation Concept in US Foreign Affairs, 1960s–1980s
This article explores the role of public–private partnerships in promoting transatlantic unity during the Cold War. Focusing predominantly on the combined activities of American state and private initiatives, it tracks in particular the meaning of the concept of "successor generations" and what this meant in practice in US public diplomacy. A key role was played in these activities by philanthropic organisations such as the Ford Foundation, which…
Her Rather Ambitious Washington Program’: ‘Margaret Thatcher's International Visitor Program Visit to the United States in 1967
In 1967 Margaret Thatcher, then Shadow Spokeswoman for Treasury and Economic Affairs, was invited to visit the United States as a participant in the US State Department's International Visitor Program. Originating from the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act and offering each ‘grantee’ from another country an expenses-paid trip of several weeks to the United States, the Program aimed to acquaint up-and-coming and influential individuals from the political, econ…
Transatlanticism: A fading paradigm
In 2018, the first full year of the Trump presidency, it became abundantly clear that the transatlantic relationship had entered a period of intense discord, causing a series of pessimistic reports and commentary in the mainstream Anglo-American media. With this as the starting point, the article re-examines the study of the 'transatlantic' as a region. It engages with thinking of time (periodisation), space (scale), and discipline (methodology) …
New paradigms, old hierarchies? Problems and possibilities of US supremacy in a networked world
We Are All Undesirables: May 68 and its Legacy
Once again, we pass through another anniversary year of 1968, offering a further opportunity to reflect on why that year is seared onto the collective memory, why it continues to resonate within the popular political and cultural imagination. The images of the Latin Quarter in Paris, hazy through the tear gas, or pictures of Soviet tanks being hemmed in by Czech protestors, or the harrowing frames taken just after Robert Kennedy’s assassination, …
The Ties that Bind: Dutch-American Relations, US Public Diplomacy and the Promotion of American Studies since the Second World War
This article examines the linkages between diplomacy and public diplomacy activities by tracing the promotion of American Studies in the Netherlands against the backdrop of US-Dutch diplomatic relations. The development of American Studies within the university systems of other nations has been a central part of US public diplomacy strategy since the Second World War. The belief has always been that this will contribute towards foreign publics be…
Confronting Peaceful Co-existence: Psychological Warfare and the Role of Interdoc, 1963–72
Interest in Cold War psychological warfare and propaganda operations by both East and West, and the institutions that have pursued them, has increased among diplomatic historians over the last decade.1 [1] See Osgood Osgood, Kenneth A. Total Cold War: US Propaganda in the ‘Free World’ 1953–1960. Ph.D. diss. University of California at Santa Barbara. [Google Scholar], Total Cold War; Defty Defty, Andrew. 2004. Britain, America, and Anti-Communist …
The US State Department's Foreign Leader Program in France During the Early Cold War
Régi par la loi Smith-Mundt de 1948 sur les échanges culturels américains à l’étranger, le Foreign Leader Program a permis aux services culturels des ambassades américaines à partir de 1950 d’organiser pour les élites étrangères des séjours aux États-Unis sous l’égide du département d’État. Bien que le programme fût envisagé à l’échelle mondiale, l’Europe occidentale, et notamment la France, en furent les principaux bénéficiaires, les objectifs o…
A Radical Democratic Political Offensive’: Melvin J. Lasky, Der Monat, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom
The Congress for Cultural Freedom, formed in 1950 and lasting until 1979, was a major international institution based in Paris and dedicated to freedom of the intellect in the arts and sciences. However, since the late 1960s, revelations about its close links with the CIA have clouded its position within post-war cultural history. Yet, without an appreciation of its cultural origins its relevance becomes reduced to being merely a major example of…
The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the End of Ideology and the 1955 Milan Conference: `Defining the Parameters of Discourse'1
The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), an institution that fostered an international anti-communist consensus amongst intellectuals during the Cold War, represents a fascinating meeting-point between politics and culture, or, more broadly, between power and ideals.3 In particular, its links with the CIA have led some observers to disparage it as little more than a tool of US foreign policy, its intellectual-cultural interests being regarded as …
The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Political Economy of American Hegemony 1945-1955
This book analyses a key episode in the cultural Cold War - the formation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Whilst the Congress was established to defend cultural values and freedom of expression in the Cold War Struggle, its close association with the CIA later undermined its claims to intellectual independence or non-political autonomy. By examining the formation of the Congress and its early years of existence in relation to broader issues…
Her Rather Ambitious Washington Program: Margaret Thatcher's International Visitor Program Visit to the United States in 1967
Her Rather Ambitious Washington Program’: ‘Margaret Thatcher's International Visitor Program Visit to the United States in 1967
In 1967 Margaret Thatcher, then Shadow Spokeswoman for Treasury and Economic Affairs, was invited to visit the United States as a participant in the US State Department's International Visitor Program. Originating from the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act and offering each ‘grantee’ from another country an expenses-paid trip of several weeks to the United States, the Program aimed to acquaint up-and-coming and influential individuals from the political, econ…
From Symbol of Division to Cold War Asset: Lyndon Johnson and the Achievement of Hawaiian Statehood in 1959
After its annexation in 1898, Hawaii remained a territory of the United States, lacking full democratic representation in Washington, DC for sixty‐one years. While there were various factors that led to this delay, the overwhelming reason was the consistent opposition of the Southern Democrats to the admission of a new state with an integrated mixed‐race population. By the early 1950s the statehood question was largely being fought out in the Uni…
A Serious Business: The State Department's Foreign Leader Program in the Netherlands Under Ambassador William R Tyler 1965–69
This article reflects on the period 1965–69 when William R. Tyler was US ambassador in The Hague. With the Vietnam war escalating throughout these years, one of Tyler's main occupations was to manage Dutch-American relations in a situation where increasing criticism of US foreign policy was developing in Dutch politics and across society as a whole. In terms of the methods used by the US embassy to influence Dutch opinion, one of the embassy's mo…
Mending the “Unhinged Alliance” in the 1970S: Transatlantic Relations, Public Diplomacy, and the Origins of the European Union Visitors Program
This article examines in depth the foundation of the EU’s one explicit example of public diplomacy, the European Union Visitors Programme. The narrative covers the historical background to the EUVP, the main individuals involved, and its significance for the development of the EU as an international actor. Public diplomacy relies on personal contacts, and the intention here is to demonstrate the importance of this petit histoire. The contribution…
Searching for the Successor Generation: Public Diplomacy, the US Embassy's International Visitor Program and the Labour Party in the 1980s
This article looks at the influence of US public diplomacy in the UK, in particular the use of the International Visitor Program as a channel for encouraging dialogue and the introduction of new ideas into the Labour party during the 1980s. The drift towards the left and the adoption of unilateralism caused great concern for the Americans. What was at stake was the future direction of the party and the need to realign its international stance wit…
The US State Department's Foreign Leader Program in France During the Early Cold War
Régi par la loi Smith-Mundt de 1948 sur les échanges culturels américains à l’étranger, le Foreign Leader Program a permis aux services culturels des ambassades américaines à partir de 1950 d’organiser pour les élites étrangères des séjours aux États-Unis sous l’égide du département d’État. Bien que le programme fût envisagé à l’échelle mondiale, l’Europe occidentale, et notamment la France, en furent les principaux bénéficiaires, les objectifs o…
The Ties that Bind: Dutch-American Relations, US Public Diplomacy and the Promotion of American Studies since the Second World War
This article examines the linkages between diplomacy and public diplomacy activities by tracing the promotion of American Studies in the Netherlands against the backdrop of US-Dutch diplomatic relations. The development of American Studies within the university systems of other nations has been a central part of US public diplomacy strategy since the Second World War. The belief has always been that this will contribute towards foreign publics be…
Confronting Peaceful Co-existence: Psychological Warfare and the Role of Interdoc, 1963–72
Interest in Cold War psychological warfare and propaganda operations by both East and West, and the institutions that have pursued them, has increased among diplomatic historians over the last decade.1 [1] See Osgood Osgood, Kenneth A. Total Cold War: US Propaganda in the ‘Free World’ 1953–1960. Ph.D. diss. University of California at Santa Barbara. [Google Scholar], Total Cold War; Defty Defty, Andrew. 2004. Britain, America, and Anti-Communist …
Networks of Empire: The US State Department's Foreign Leader Program in the Netherlands, France, and Britain 1950-70
Introduction: The Name Looms Large: The Legacies of Theodore Roosevelt
Mapping the Undefinable: Some Thoughts on the Relevance of Exchange Programs within International Relations Theory
This article examines the importance of exchange programs as channels of political influence and the value that can be gained from examining their impact via various theoretical positions in international relations (IR). Although there are clear possibilities for linking the study of public diplomacy with IR theory, so far this has not occurred to any real extent. Following World War II, a whole swathe of social scientific and behavioralist resea…
We Are All Undesirables: May 68 and its Legacy
Once again, we pass through another anniversary year of 1968, offering a further opportunity to reflect on why that year is seared onto the collective memory, why it continues to resonate within the popular political and cultural imagination. The images of the Latin Quarter in Paris, hazy through the tear gas, or pictures of Soviet tanks being hemmed in by Czech protestors, or the harrowing frames taken just after Robert Kennedy’s assassination, …
Entries
American hegemony and the postwar reconstruction of science in Europe
John Krige, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, viii +376 pp Hegemony, like empire, is a word that tends to get used a lot in Diplomatic History and International Relations circles without the benefit of a p
David Farber, The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History
In the wake of the recent mid-term elections, this book makes interesting reading. David Farber's overall argument here, as emphasised by the title, is that conservatism as a recognisable political movement, ranging from Robert Taft in the 1930s through to George W. Bush in the 2000s, has entered a period of decline. This could be a strong dose of (academic, liberal) wishful thinking, or, possibly, the author is on to something, but the American …
Special Issue: The North-West Pacific in the 18th and 19th Centuries
The texts in this Special Issue represent an interesting combination, covering as they do two contrasting historical studies of the North West Pacific: the sweeping ambitions of Russian imperial designs on the western coast of North America, and the closely-observed ethnographic studies of native peoples in that region by the Norwegian explorer Johan Jacobsen. I hope that the publication of these articles further confirms the value of EJAS as a p…
Mutual interests? US public diplomacy in the 1980s and Nicolas Sarkozy's first trip to the United States
New paradigms, old hierarchies? Problems and possibilities of US supremacy in a networked world
Divided Dreamworlds: The Cultural Cold War in East and West
While the divide between capitalism and communism, embodied in the image of the Iron Curtain, seemed to be as wide and definitive as any cultural rift, Giles Scott-Smith, Joes Segal, and Peter Romijn have compiled a selection of essays on how culture contributed to the blurring of ideological boundaries between the East and the West. This important and diverse volume presents fascinating insights into the tensions, rivalries, and occasional coope…
Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network: Cold War Internationale
Interdoc was established in 1963 by Western intelligence services as a multinational effort to coordinate an anti-communist offensive. Drawing on exclusive sources and the memories of its participants
America's Cold War: The politics of insecurity
Craig Campbell and Fredrik Logevall, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Belknap Press, 2009, ISBN10 0674035534, ISBN13 9780674035539 (hbk), 448 pp The views of two prominent realists permeate this volume fr
Political science (52 works) · Law (44 works) · Politics (40 works) · History (30 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Law (29 works) · Political economy (19 works) · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics (16 works) · History (16 works) · Communism, Protests, Social Movements (15 works)