Defining the Atlantic Community ─ Culture, Intellectuals, and Policies in the Mid-Twentieth Century

In this volume, essays by scholars from both sides of the Atlantic open new perspectives on the construction of the "Atlantic community" during World War II and the early Cold War years. Based on original approaches bringing together diplomatic history and the history of culture and ideas, the book shows how atlantism came to provide a solid ideological foundation for the security community of North American and European nations which took shape in the 1940s. The idea of a transatlantic community based on shared histories, values, and political and economic institutions was instrumental to the creation of the Atlantic Alliance, and partly accounts for the continuing existence of the Atlantic partnership after the Cold War. At the same time, this study breaks new ground by arguing that the emergence of the idea of "Atlantic community" also reflected deeper trends in transatlantic relations; in fact, it was the outcome of the re-definition of "the West" due to the rise of the US and the decline of Europe in the international arena during the first half of the Twentieth Century.

Marco Mariano is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Eastern Piedmont in Vercelli, Italy and a member of the Piero Bairati Interuniversity Center for American and European American Studies.

Acknowledgments Introduction, Marco Mariano Part I: American Vistas 1: How Europe Became Atlantic: Walter Lippmann and the New Geography of the Atlantic Community, Ronald Steel 2: Wilsonianism, Pre-Wilsonian American Liberalism, and the Atlantic Community, Frank Ninkovich 3: The Atlantic Community as Christendom: Some Reflections on Christian Atlanticism in America, c.1900-1950, Emiliano Alessandri 4: Re-mapping America: Continentalism, Globalism, and the Rise of the Atlantic Community, 1939-1949, Marco Mariano Part II: Transatlantic Crossings 5: Social Protection and the Promise of a Secure Future in Wartime Europe and America, Maurizio Vaudagna 6: What Winning Stories Teach: The Marshall Plan and Atlanticism as Enduring Narratives, David Ellwood 7: The Congress for Cultural Freedom: Constructing an Intellectual Atlantic Community, Giles Scott-Smith Part III: At the Receiving End 8: The Anglo-American ‘Special Relationship’ in the Atlantic Context During the Late 1940s and 1950s, Kathleen Burk 9: When the High Seas Finally Reached Italian Shores: Italy’s Inclusion in the Atlantic Communitas, Mario Del Pero 10: The Atlantic Community and the Restoration of the Global Balance of Power: The Western Alliance, Japan, and the Cold War, 1947-51, Yuichi Hosoya 11: Old West versus New West: Perón’s ‘Third Position,’ Latin America, and the Atlantic Community, Loris Zanatta Notes on Contributors Index