Women, Gender and the Professionalisation of French Cultural Diplomacy in Britain, 1900–1940

Abstract

Abstract This article traces the evolution of French cultural diplomacy in Britain from the early twentieth century to the end of the inter-war period; it argues that this field of international relations could not have developed at this time without the intervention of a handful of determined women who undertook activities outside official diplomatic circles. In the first decades of the twentieth century, these women designed cultural strategies and ran institutions that aimed to promote positive images of France in Britain at a time when strong Franco-British relations formed a cornerstone of French diplomatic strategies against mounting German geopolitical ambitions. However, none of these women enjoyed diplomatic status and many were subject to gender-based criticism on the part of official male diplomats. After the First World War, processes of professionalisation made it extremely difficult for the women who had shaped cultural diplomacy in an unofficial capacity to continue acting at the fore of this field, all the more so as they were forbidden at the time to take the entrance exam of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The inter-war professionalisation of diplomacy, however, did not lead to the complete exclusion of women. This article argues that, on the one hand, professionalisation carved out official spaces for women who abided by the criteria outlined by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; on the other hand, the non-state nature of much of inter-war cultural diplomacy meant that some women could continue to pursue cultural diplomatic strategies as part of unofficial networks of diplomacy.