British Ambitions in International Postwar Cultural Reconstruction: The European Inheritance (1954)

During the Second World War, the rebuilding of Europe was envisioned not only in terms of bricks and mortar, but also books. Between November 1942 and December 1945, the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education repeatedly met in London to discuss the role of culture and education in postwar reconstruction. One of the projects it led to was The European Inheritance (1954), a multi-authored publication that was meant to communicate as impartially as possible the history of Europe and its influence on the world. The CAME meetings have so far rarely been studied and are usually perceived as having laid the groundwork for the creation of the far more influential United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (November 1945). This paper instead argues that CAME and the activities that ensued from it deserve to be studied in their own right. The European Inheritance, in particular, provides a prism through which to analyse the slow transition from the ‘imperial internationalism’ of the early twentieth century to a burgeoning postcolonial world order, alongside which new forms of European intergovernmental cooperation emerged. Furthermore, the vicissitudes of this history book provide insights into the cultural ambitions and the international position Britain was seeking for itself during and shortly after the Second World War. As chairman of the commission in charge of this project, the classicist and political theorist Ernest Barker reveals the moral, intellectual and pragmatic motivations and negotiations that steered the production of this book through the push and pull of national and internationalist interests.