Brazil and France have explored each other's geographical and cultural landscapes for more than five hundred years. The Brazilian je ne sais quoi has captivated the French from their first encounter, and the ingenuity à francesa of French artistic and scholarly movements has intrigued Brazilians in kind. Ongoing Brazil-France interactions have resulted in some of the richest cultural exchanges between Europe and Latin America. In Cultural Exchanges between Brazil and France, leading international scholars evaluate these reciprocal transnational explorations, from the earliest French interventions in Brazil in the sixteenth century to the growing mutual influence that the nations have exerted on one another in the twenty-first century. Original interdisciplinary essays examine cross-cultural interactions and collaborations in the social sciences, intellectual history, the press, literature, cinema, plastic arts, architecture, cartography, and sport. The comparative cultural method used in these analyses deepens the collective treatment of crucial junctures in the long history of often harmonious, but also sometimes ambivalent and occasionally contentious, encounters between Brazil and France.

Although published as part of a series on Brazilian studies, central to this collection are not the concepts of nation or nationhood but those of transnational networks and cross-cultural exchanges. The concept of nation is of limited value to account for the periodical print culture as a global phenomenon marked by transnational movements such as those involving capital flows, commodities, people, ideas and editorial models. In this vein, what these chapters explore is not so much the concept of influence – which often plays a central role in Eurocentric analyses – but those of circulation and interaction. The notion of “circulation” here emphasised is more appropriate to the study of cultural exchanges, focusing on the movements of and engagements with ideas and concepts, as well as the appropriated models and the people involved in the publication and consumption of magazines. What the reader will find in these essays are analysis of numerous processes of transnational cultural negotiations.

This dissertation is a case study in the international exchange of ideas. It begins with the 1934-1940 French University Mission to establish the University of São Paulo - Brazil's premier institution of higher learning. I argue that the experiences and intellectual networks that French intellectuals formed with Brazilian social scientists in the 1930s provided a conceptual framework for thinking about France and its role in a postcolonial world. Brazil and its intellectual traditions forced thinkers such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Fernand Braudel, and Roger Bastide to engage race and racial politics in a new key. By demonstrating the substantial links between Brazilian and French intellectuals as well as the influence of Brazilian ideas on French intellectuals, I make the argument that Brazil exported ideas about race-relations and what it means to be a modern multi-racial and post- colonial state. The argument is significant because it challenges the traditional, if simplified, view, of colonial economies and the relationship between the developed and developing world. This standard view held that the West produced knowledge, technical know-how, and manufactured goods out of raw materials supplied by the rest of globe. As a result of the French University Mission, well-defined intellectual networks developed between French and Brazilian intellectuals that were not defined by an easy power differential. By demonstrating the substantial links between Brazilian and French intellectuals, and documenting the influence of Brazilian social scientists on French intellectuals, I invert this traditional model and show that Brazil was a source for thinking about France and its global role going forward. The purpose served by the Franco-Brazilian intellectual network differed according to nationality. This is why I adopt a transnational perspective on the international circulation of ideas. For Brazil, but more specifically, São Paulo, the establishment of the University of São Paulo provided Brazilian thinkers with access to the international social scientific community. While the U.S. certainly supplanted France post-war, Brazilian intellectuals retained affection for French thinkers that they did not confer on U.S. social scientists. As for France, this intellectual network provided French intellectuals with the resources to reinvigorate its own social scientific traditions in an era of increasing specialization. This is an argument that runs counter to the argument of the influential intellectual historian, H. Stuart Hughes, who argued that French social science between 1930 and 1960 suffered from being self-enclosed within a national tradition. What makes the story of Franco-Brazilian intellectual and cultural relations from the interwar era through the mid-1960s particularly compelling, however, is that the interest in Brazil as a model for France's future did not remain a matter of academic interest. Between 1959 and 1964, a brief period of time in which Charles de Gaulle radically shifted gears from waging a bloody colonial war in Algeria to developing a politics of cooperation with the developing world, Brazil became an important site of contention between the French left and right. During this period, André Malraux, Jean-Paul Sartre, and de Gaulle himself visited Brazil. I argue that these visits, which were highly visible international spectacles, call attention to overlooked dimensions of geopolitics. Because most American-based French and Latin American scholars who work on international relations focus their attention on colonial relationships, or interactions with the United States, the relationship between mid-level powers, such as France and Brazil are neglected. In this dissertation, I argue that the cultural policy France developed with Brazil and other Latin American nations is integral to understanding what de Gaulle meant by an independent foreign policy in the Cold War era. This does not deny American hegemony, but rather shows how "soft power" provided room for challenging that dominance. I also argue that the shift to a politics of cooperation with the developing world was only possible given the French government's earlier efforts, such as the French University Mission to Brazil, to establish closer ties to Latin America.

São Paulo, the New Metropolis with a French University -- Atlantic Crossings and Disciplinary Reformulation -- Getting to Know Brazil -- The New Country behind the Methodology -- Four Approaches to Global and Social-Scientific Crisis -- Brazil and the Reconstruction of the French Social Sciences -- Racial Democracy, Métissage, and Decolonization between Brazil and France.

This book analyses the development of geography as a scientific discipline in Brazil, highlighting how the established partnerships with French geographers have helped shape scientific progress in the country. It connects economic development and politics with the study of geography in Brazil. The author, José Borzacchiello da Silva, includes interviews with renowned French geographers, documenting their insight into the French contribution to geography in Brazil. The research partnerships established have been significant to the foundation and growth of the discipline in the country.

The beginnings of what we now call 'globalization' dates from the early sixteenth century, when Europeans, in particular the Iberian monarchies, began to connect 'the four parts of the world'. From the end of the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth centuries, technical advancements, such as the growth of the European rail network and the increasing ease of international shipping, narrowed the physical and imagined distances between different parts of the globe. Books, printed matter and theatrical performances were a crucial part of this process and the so-called 'long nineteenth century' saw a remarkable increase in readership and technological improvements that significantly changed the production of printed matter and its relationship with culture. This book analyzes this sea-change in knowledge and sharing of ideas through the prism of the transatlantic diffusion of French, Brazilian, Portuguese and English print-cultures. In particular, it charts the circulation of printed matter, publishers, booksellers and actors between Europe and South America. Featuring a new original essay from Roger Chartier, The Cultural Revolution of the 19th Century is an essential new benchmark in global and transnational history.

Considers H.R. 5203 and identical H.R. 5204, the Mutual Educational and Cultural Act of 1961, to consolidate and improve U.S. international educational and cultural exchange programs. Includes "Toward a National Effort in International Educational and Cultural Affairs," by Walter H. Laves, Mar. 28, 1961 (p. 213-294).