Propaganda and Neutrality - by Edward Corse & Marta García Cabrera (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This is the first broad-ranging, comprehensive and comparative study of the concepts of propaganda and neutrality. Bringing together world-leading and early career historians, this open access bookexplores case studies from the time of the First World War to the end of the Cold War in countries such as Belgium, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Switzerland, Vichy France, USA, Argentina, Turkey, Portuguese Macau, Brazil, South Africa, Laos, Yugoslavia, Egypt, India, Malta, and Sweden.

The individual chapters analyse the methods and channels of propaganda utilised in neutral countries, including rumours, newspapers, cartoons, films, pamphlets and magazines as well as radio broadcasts, official reports, diplomatic movements, cultural campaigns and soft power. They look to understand how these methods and channels have been deployed and how effective they have been in changing or reinforcing opinions and outcomes.

Finally the book highlights the interaction between the concepts of propaganda and neutrality. It considers whether neutrality is a form of propaganda in itself, whether it is possible to be truly neutral in any propaganda battle and how the different forms of neutrality, including projected strict neutrality, non-belligerency and non-alignment, have been utilised by neutrals and belligerents to achieve propaganda goals in the last 120 years.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

About the Author

Edward Corse is Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of War, Media and Society, University of Kent, UK. He is also an Expert Adviser at the Centre for the Study of Health, Ethics and Society, University of Hamburg, Germany. He is the author of A Battle for Neutral Europe: British Cultural Propaganda During the Second World War (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012).

Marta García Cabrera is Historical Researcher at University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain and Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of War, Media and Society, University of Kent, UK.