Cultural Exchange in a Time of Global Conflict: Colonials , Neutrals and Belligerents during the First World War


Project Summary

This project has sought to understand and analyse how the First World War created new spaces for, as well as put pressures on, encounters between peoples and cultures from belligerent, colonised and politically neutral countries.

Within the framework of this project, researchers suggested that the First World War – conventionally defined as a military ‘clash of empires’ – could be conceptualised as a watershed event in the history of cultural encounters.

CEGC also sought to unravel the lasting consequences – social, cultural and literary memory – of these encounters for Europe, as well as for its former colonies. Over a three-year period, it brought together a cross-disciplinary and multilingual team of researchers and eight cultural institutions from across Europe to examine these areas of research during the centennial years of the war’s commemoration.

The researchers adopted a comparative, interdisciplinary and culturally nuanced methodology to study a complex range of material, such as archival documents, newspapers, journals, literary texts, book trade practices, films, photographs, paintings and sound-recordings.

Research for the project was divided along two main strands: the war experience of the ‘colonials’ and ‘neutrals’, in various combinations with the belligerent states. About four million soldiers with diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds from British, French and German colonial empires served in the war. During the war battlefields, hospitals, towns, prisoner-of-war camps became sites of encounter between different cultures and ethnicities.

Simultaneously, within Europe, a different kind of cultural encounter was being engineered. The belligerent states were each trying to win over the neutral nations by funding cultural institutions and trying to influence artists, writers and opinion makers from Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands. This cultural propaganda included:

  • art exhibitions
  • theatre and music performances
  • film distribution and screenings
  • the founding and funding of magazines, cinemas and bookstores
  • the flooding of the book market with imported books and translations to address mass audiences as well as to influence opinion.

The neutral countries soon became regions of international cultural encounters with a long-lasting impact.

Collectively, members of CEGC asked: what is the relation between the personal, ‘direct’ encounters in wartime – battlefield, POW camps, hospitals – and these state-sponsored, ideologically motivated ‘indirect’ encounters, through literature, film, propaganda?

Dr Santanu Das

Project Leader

King’s College London
United Kingdom


Project Partners

Dr Santanu Das

Project Leader

King’s College London
United Kingdom

Email

Prof. Geert Buelens

Utrecht University
Netherlands

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Dr Heike Liebau

Centre for Modern Oriental Studies
Germany

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Prof. Hubert Van Den Berg

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
Poland

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Associate Partners

Rommy Albers

EYE Film Institute Netherlands
Netherlands

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Suzanne Bardgett

Imperial War Museum
United Kingdom

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Prof Wolfgang Schäffner

Humboldt University
Germany

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Dominiek Dendooven

In Flanders Fields Museum
Belgium

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Frank Herrebout

Stichting De Jazz Van Het Bankroet
Netherlands

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Anna Kinder

Deutsches literatur archiv Marbach
Germany

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Dr Elisabeth Tietmeyer

Museum Europaeische Kulturen
Germany

Email

Dorian Van Der Brempt

deBuren Vlaams Nederlands Huis
Belgium

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  • King’s College London

    King’s College London

  • Utrecht University

    Utrecht University

  • Centre for Modern Oriental Studies

    Centre for Modern Oriental Studies

  • Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

    Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

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