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From international to inter-allied: transatlantic university relations in the era of the First World War, 1905–1920

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Abstract

In the early twentieth century, inter-university connections flourished internationally, the result of action by state and non-state actors. Exchange professorships thrived in the pre-war period and could simultaneously serve the desires of the universities, states, and individuals concerned. When war broke out in 1914, these networks were utilised by national governments in France and Germany to communicate their version of the truth to neutral communities in the USA, with Columbia University prominent in this process. The war split the international scholarly community with the Germans isolated by late 1914. Into this void the allied nations increasingly sought to create permanent links between their universities, a process which intensified as the USA moved towards war from late 1916. Inter-allied university connections literally embodied the new alliance of wartime, which was at the same time political, military, and cultural, but it also presented an opportunity for Britain and France to usurp the traditional dominance of German universities internationally. While the inter-allied emphasis of wartime was largely undone by the mid-1920s with Germany re-entering the international fold, the war experience did have important consequences, such as the rise of American studies in Europe and the entrenchment of Western Civilisation courses at American universities.

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Notes

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  103. In 1929 the Deutsches Haus was re-opened at Columbia and in 1931the Roosevelt Professorial exchange was re-established. ‘Deutsches Haus, New York,’ Lloyd Post, 4, 1929, Deutsches Haus Files, Box 2, RMBL, and Butler to Woodbridge, 31 July 1931. CF 342/ 8, CUA.

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  1. Department of History and Classics, Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Tomás Irish

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Tomás Irish is lecturer in Modern History at Swansea University. He received his Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin and is the author of The University at War 1914–25 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and Trinity in War and Revolution 1912–1923 (Royal Irish Academy Press, 2015).

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Irish, T. From international to inter-allied: transatlantic university relations in the era of the First World War, 1905–1920. J Transatl Stud 13, 311–325 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2015.1088328

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