Search

Between the wars, the British fishing industry faced an invidious economic climate. Costs rose, over-fishing and falling prices depressed incomes, and structural faults that had mattered little in the years of growth prior to 1914 became serious handicaps. Government was thus obliged to intervene in a small but strategically important industry to a far greater extent than before, and did so in ways that reflected the broader thrust of interwar industrial policy. The Herring Industry Board has been well studied but the short-lived parallel body established to develop the bulk of the sea-fishing industry, the White Fish Commission, is all but forgotten, perhaps unsurprisingly since it did not even publish a report before it was suspended on the outbreak of the Second World War. This article surveys the situation facing the fishing industry between the wars and examines in detail the establishment of the White Fish Commission and its activities during its short life. It argues that, while the commission's powers and resources were insufficient for the scale of its task, it laid the groundwork for much further-reaching intervention in the changed climate after 1945. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on archival sources, the author highlights one of the innovative elements of the era, namely the use of the automobile in the second largest city of Romania as a whole, by population. The vehicle is presented from the perspective of social etiquette, of the realities of daily life in the city, which comes in unison with the economic and cultural development of the city. Car use comparisons are made in Romania with other countries. The difficulties generated both by vehicle maintenance (fuel, consumables, poor condition of roads, maintenance and repair of equipment, etc.) and accident cases are presented. In order to drive, drivers had to have licenses (issued by the Chișinău Police Prefecture) and medical records. The establishment and activity of the Professional Union of Drivers from Bessarabia and the Society of Moldovenilor Automobilisti also tell us about the development of the automotive industry. Within the Chișinău City Hall, an Automobile Section has been activated. As a case study, the garage of the delegated minister of the Romanian Government in Bessarabia was presented. Special attention was paid to the condition of the infrastructure, an inherent element of the use of automobiles.

The central debate over the Blueshirt movement has centred on whether the movement can be classified as fascist. The two most significant accounts of Blueshirtism, by Maurice Manning (1971) and Mike Cronin (1997) have largely avoided explicit comparisons between the Blueshirts and other European fascist movements. While John Newsinger (2001) has argued that the Blueshirts may be usefully compared to the British Blackshirts, and Fearghal McGarry (2005) has highlighted aspects of Eoin O'Duffy's engagement with Italian Fascist ideas and practices, there is still more work to be done in exploring transnational links and possible comparisons between the Blueshirts and continental European fascist movements. This article argues that by interrogating the political culture of Blueshirtism, we can better understand its place within the spectrum of European fascisms. This article considers both the "high" and "low" aspects of Blueshirt culture. It examines the links between the Blueshirts and European fascist movements by analysing both political thought and political uniforms. By applying a transnational lens, we can thus gain a more holistic understanding of one of the most controversial political movements in modern Irish history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the second half of the 19th century, emigration was part of the daily life of almost all Eastern Europeans. According to Lithuanian census data from 1923, the Jewish community accounted for 150,000 (7%) of Lithuania's total population of 2 million people (excluding the Vilnius region). During the period 1928–1938, Jews made up about 34% of all Lithuanian emigrants. The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between Jewish emigrants and the Lithuanian government from 1918 to 1940. The article will attempt to show how those who have already emigrated are connected to Lithuania, both at a governmental and personal level. Correspondence between the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Lithuanian Jewish communities shows connections related to economic, cultural, and political networks. In addition, the Lithuanian government sought to strengthen ties with the Lithuanian Jewish diaspora, but personal perspective of emigrants does not reflect this tendency. By combining the personal and governmental perspectives, it becomes clear whether these different viewpoints provide similar or different answers to the research questions, and allows us to see the Jewish emigration process in its entirety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the lattice of dynamics, networks, and perceptions underpinning the blanket label of 'tourism' in Lebanon and the broader Arab East during the interwar (mandate) era. It analyses guidebooks, pamphlets, government correspondence and travelogues published in the Middle East and Europe. Hoteliers, tour operators, merchants, and journalists distinguished between siyaha (tourism) and istiyaf ('summering') to create different tourist publics – one western, the other regional Arab. Separate guidebooks were written for each, pinpointing different sites of interest, cuisines, and leisure destinations, based on assumed cultural attributes, travel practices, and desires. While historiography argues that Europeans created mass tourism as an industry, istiyaf was rooted in a legacy of indigenous travel practices and economies. By drawing Arab travellers to Mount Lebanon's village resorts, istiyaf enabled residents to produce, narrate, and exhibit Lebanon–not just aesthetically or geographically, but also climatologically and gastronomically. Different classes and genders could claim ownership of this new Lebanon. Making interwar Lebanon a regional leisure destination cemented its connection to new neighbours while simultaneously distinguishing it from them. This research thus reveals how tourism, leisure, and mobility both undergirded and undermined nation and state-building efforts in these germinal postwar decades of the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When George Bernard Shaw described Dartington Hall as a 'salon in the countryside', he was referring to the maelstrom of ideas, conversations, and experimentation around psychology, mysticism, and spirituality within the estate's larger ethos of community living and rural reform. Disenchanted with the effects of industrialization and the ravages of the First World War, American railway heiress Dorothy Whitney Elmhirst and her second husband, Leonard Elmhirst, purchased the extensive Devonshire estate in 1925 and began to encourage regular visits and social and spiritual advice from prominent British interwar intellectuals such as Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard. As the estate's activities expanded during the 1930s, Dorothy enlisted the help of visiting American constitutional psychologist William Sheldon to assess and advise upon the well-being of children attending Dartington's experimental school. Sheldon's 'Promethean Psychology' and 'Somatotyping' body classification system offered the Dartington group, a social, spiritual, and 'scientific' alternative to Freudian understandings of the mind. Visitors such as Huxley, decades later, relied on Sheldon's somatotyping system to fashion a utopian education in Pala (in his last novel, Island) where the population might live in nonmaterialistic cooperative harmony. Dartington's attraction to the use of Sheldon's Promethean psychology in supporting a utopian view of progressive education was as short-lived as were Pala's utopian ambitions decades later. In years to come, however, elements of Sheldon's views continued to find an audience among physical educators and sports scientists, who saw in somatotypes a useful guide for assessing talent identification and future sporting success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the interrelations between age and gender in the Romanian Legionary Movement. The Legionary Movement, also known as Iron Guard, was an ultranationalist and antisemitic movement founded by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu in 1927. The movement was one of the major protagonists on the Romanian interwar political scene. Its political development followed a complex path marked by extraordinary successes and dramatic crises. Several works have explored the Legionary Movement's history, but a systematic analysis from the standpoint of gender relations and women's participation is still at an incipient stage. This article wants to contribute to this analysis by following the development of the legionary women's section during the movement's political history. Gender is used as a category of analysis in its interaction with age, in particular by exploring the concept of youth and its practical consequences for women's participation. After the introduction, the first section analyses the concept of youth and its importance in the construction of legionary ideology. The second section will explore the foundation and development of the women's section through the lenses of youth and gender. Women's participation and political activity was often the result of the gendered elements constitutive of the concept of youth. From the ideological standpoint, the construction of women's youthfulness interacted with and was limited by marriage and motherhood; at the same time, however, in the movement's political practices these limits proved to be more flexible and reshaped by experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The administrative documents produced in Transjordan during the first decades of the British Mandate concerning the Banu Sakhr Bedouin tribe offer a detailed case study of state-making and the consequent disruption of autonomous nomadic pastoralist society. In the late Ottoman period, the tribe remained largely self-sufficient and beyond the reach of the authorities by virtue of their flocks of camels. But the extension of state-making into the desert regions during the Mandate, associated above all with the activities of one British army officer, John Bagot Glubb, served to undermine Banu Sakhr camel husbandry and alter the power dynamics between tribe and state. Taxation, control of mobility, border regimes and an end to inter-tribal raiding, combined with drought and economic depression, forced the tribe to diversify away from camel pastoralism. This process altered the Banu Sakhr social system and solidified the encapsulation of the tribe within the nascent state.

Hanne Wassermann's contributions to teaching gymnastics and body culture during Vienna's interwar period took place within the rich contexts of ongoing developments in radium research, psychology, physiology and anatomy, and gynecology. This paper explores the movement theories she developed for her classes as well as the ways in which she distinguished her teaching from other renowned female physical culturalists of the time. In 'Tägliche Gymnastik', a workbook on daily gymnastics that Hanne co-edited with Jewish gynecologist Oskar Frankl in 1934, and other published and unpublished manuscripts, she described the psychological theories supporting her 'Gymnastik Methode'—mainly the principles of Gestalt psychology learned from psychologists Karl and Charlotte Bühler at the Vienna Institute of Psychology. She was able to tap into a remarkable network of associates and acquaintances, including celebrated physicians, scientists, movie stars, multi-millionaires, and royalty—and use their influence and status to popularize and begin to commercialize her 'Gymnastik Methode', as well as to assist her escape from Vienna following the Anschluß Österreichs (Annexation of Austria) and develop a successful career in massage and remedial gymnastics in North America. She took with her copies of 'Tägliche Gymnastik' and the as yet unpublished 'Methode' which became important supports to her future livelihood in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are journalists born or made? During the interwar period (1919–1939), the British National Union of Journalists (NUJ) grappled with this question, as the first university course for journalism was founded and more university-educated staff entered newsrooms. This article is the first to consider interwar journalists' opinions on whether and how British journalists should be educated. Debates on journalism education continued until the 1990s, when university education became the norm for British journalists. This article explores the emergence of this contentious argument. Through the articles published in the pages of the NUJ's monthly member magazine the Journalist, two strands of the NUJ's activities on education are explored: the Union's stance on the University of London Diploma for Journalism and the work of the NUJ's Education Committee. During the interwar period, the National Union of Journalists developed educational output for its members. Unlike other British trade unions, the NUJ focused on providing its members with education that was directly related to their careers. These activities raised fundamental questions that went to the heart of the profession during a period when journalism's professional identity in Britain was still evolving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, scholars have re-examined the impact of the interwar League of Nations (LON), exploring the contributions of a range of different component bodies. This article contributes to the historiography of the LON's cooperative legacy by examining the work of an overlooked female intellectual within the LON's history: Virgínia de Castro e Almeida (1874–1945). De Castro e Almeida, born in Portugal and of aristocratic origin, played a distinctive and high-profile role in advocating transnational intellectual cooperation in the interwar years through her diplomacy work in association with the LON. In negotiating the field of internationalism and patriotism, her case illuminates the need to consider the divergent ways in which nations were involved in international cooperation in the interwar years, reorienting the narrative away from histories that focus on a small group of nations to include those of less well-known countries. The article also explores the additional difficulties that a female intellectual who did not live within her country of origin had in persuading those in a conservative country to recognize the benefits of internationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The difference between the representation of German femininity in the 1920s and the 1930s is striking: while glamorous flappers with bob haircuts ruled the beginning of the interwar period, its end is characterized by serious and earnest—and often longhaired—young women. Rather than taking the obvious route of relating this change to the political changes in Germany, most importantly the rise of the Nazis, this article argues that the changing representation of interwar femininity in Germany was always embedded in a transnational, transatlantic process. The transformation of flappers into humble girls started well before the Nazis came to power and was fueled by a wide variety of voices, from communist to bourgeois actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring the interwar exhibition histories of four civic art galleries in the East Midlands, this article demonstrates how such institutions in Britain became active agents in the production of interwar art exhibition cultures. It argues that networked curators were instrumental in moulding the practices and structures that fed civic exhibition production, and that their active involvement in wide-reaching professional networks such as the Museums Association meant that they also shaped art exhibition practices at a national level. By promoting public consumption of a wide range of artistic periods and styles, highlighting regional cultural assets, and supporting local art production, civic galleries in the 1920s and 30s helped to build regional capacity, ultimately providing a fertile basis for the centralisation of public and governmental support for the arts in Britain after 1940. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The article contributes to the understanding of thematic and stylistic patterns displayed in, and publication practices associated with, foreign-reportage journalism focused on European geopolitics, economy, and urban life in the interwar period. This is done by exploring a selection of Swedish modernist writer Eyvind Johnson’s journalistic correspondence articles from Germany and France for domestic newspapers and magazines, published between November 1921 and November 1925.

The administrative documents produced in Transjordan during the first decades of the British Mandate concerning the Banu Sakhr Bedouin tribe offer a detailed case study of state-making and the consequent disruption of autonomous nomadic pastoralist society. In the late Ottoman period, the tribe remained largely self-sufficient and beyond the reach of the authorities by virtue of their flocks of camels. But the extension of state-making into the desert regions during the Mandate, associated above all with the activities of one British army officer, John Bagot Glubb, served to undermine Banu Sakhr camel husbandry and alter the power dynamics between tribe and state. Taxation, control of mobility, border regimes and an end to inter-tribal raiding, combined with drought and economic depression, forced the tribe to diversify away from camel pastoralism. This process altered the Banu Sakhr social system and solidified the encapsulation of the tribe within the nascent state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interwar period ushered in economic and social transformations that triggered a shift in societal needs. Both Lithuania and Latvia experienced a demand for new furnishings in both public and private interiors. The infusion of modern equipment and stylish furniture reflected the influence of Western European ideas and fashion trends of the time. A blend of modernism, art deco, and national style resonated with the ideological orientation of interwar Lithuania and Latvia. Additionally, in both countries, folk art traditions played a significant role, interwoven with a contemporary quest for form in an effort to establish a distinct national style. Modernism, synonymous with progress and the embrace of new living standards, was associated with the rejection of antiquated modes of expression. Conversely, the national style served as a vehicle for the dissemination of patriotic ideas, fostering the development of national self-confidence and identity. These tendencies were evident in the artistic endeavours of both Lithuania and Latvia. A comparison between the two countries reveals disparities in their industrial situations, subsequently influencing artists involved in designing furniture. Latvia, being more industrially developed than Lithuania, experienced a quicker recovery after the First World War and established stronger connections between artists and furniture makers. In contrast, Lithuania lacked such collaboration and did not boast a prominent lead figure in interior or furniture design, such as Ansis Cirulis in Latvia. Nonetheless, notable figures like Jonas Prapuolenis and Jonas Vainauskas, among others, contributed to the field of furniture design in Lithuania. In Latvia, renowned artists such as Ansis Cīrulis and Jūlijs Madernieks played pivotal roles in shaping furniture and interior design. They followed contemporary art trends, skilfully combining ethnographic heritage and symbols to craft unique and innovative furniture designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the first examination of competitive devaluation in the 1930s using data on exchange rates. It analyses the impact of currency changes on foreign trade flows of fourteen industrialized countries 1929–1939. It reviews the development of nominal and real effective exchange rates together with trade and economic growth and conducts a disaggregated analysis of trade and bilateral exchange rates with trade partners. Tests show that the beggar-thy-neighbour effects of exchange rate adjustments were few and temporary. Moreover, it is argued that currency depreciations were expansionary not only for countries that devalued but for the international economy as a whole. This argument draws on Ragnar Nurkse (Nurkse, International currency experience, Lessons of the Inter-War Period. League of Nations, 1944) who undeservingly has been associated with the notion of "competitive devaluation". Nurkse showed that currency depreciations increased global monetary reserves, an observation that has gone remarkably overlooked in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the three journeys undertaken by the Greek writer and intellectual Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) to the Soviet Union during the 1920s. It also investigates his involvement with communism during the interludes between these journeys and his subsequent activities. By scrutinising the conditions under which these journeys were conducted, this paper sheds light on the influence of communism on Nikos Kazantzakis, his receptivity to communist ideology, and its integration into his distinctive worldview. Furthermore, this examination elucidates the communist movement's strategic planning regarding the travels of intellectuals from Western countries, and the incorporation of these journeys into the cultural diplomacy of the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to tell an emotional history of car use through the genre of life-writing, a source whose use in historical mobility research has recently been advocated by Colin Pooley. It focuses on two diarists, Hugh Miller and Victor Klemperer, to uncover what automobility looked and felt like in interwar Britain and Germany, when modern mass motorisation was emerging. It highlights that experiences of automobility were heterogeneous and dependent on social position, combining the excitement and liberty popularly associated with interwar car use with the banal, frustrating and terrifying. Motorists like Miller and Klemperer felt conflicted about automobility and what it represented. Their inner ambivalence points to a unique emotional engagement with the car, which may help to explain its persistence in twentieth-century society and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is mounting evidence of extreme gender-discriminatory practices in the European past, resulting in excess female mortality («missing girls»). These phenomena were most persistent in Southern Europe, though they seemingly disappeared by the turn of the twentieth century. This paper documents the occurrence of gender discrimination in the allocation of resources within households in Italy, long after previously thought. It uses a collection of household budgets detailing the incomes, expenditures, and nutrition of Italian households active in agriculture during the late 1920s and 1930s. An empirical test for gender bias in the allocation of household expenditures delivers evidence of pro-boy bias among older children (around 7 to 14 years old). This result suggests that excess material deprivation of girls and women might have lingered until the eve of Italy's economic miracle, and contributes to the debate on the long-run evolution of the wellbeing of Italians, by exploring within-household inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the follow-up to the 1926 political and monetary crisis in France, a new government led by Raymond Poincaré attempted to restore monetary stability by restructuring public debt. A sinking fund was missioned to withdraw short-term public bills from money markets. This policy disorganized the largest Parisian banks of the time, as they relied on these bills to manage their liquidity. Without developed domestic money markets, no other asset could absorb the excess liquidity freed by the withdrawal of these bills, and these leading banks faced a low-rate environment. In search of yield, they expanded their activities abroad a few months before the 1929 crash. These findings renew our understanding of the expansion of France's banking sector in the 1920s. In addition, they shed new light on the role of public debt in financial stability in an open economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the authors have made a detailed sphragistic and historical analysis of the matrix seals that were found on the territories of the former Khotyn County (Northern Bessarabia). Most of them are made of bronze and belong to the interwar period when the region was part of the Kingdom of Romania. The material under consideration has a significant factual and illustrative potential, especially in museum work. It testifies that the interwar activities of many organizations and institutions in the Khotyn County remain insufficiently studied or have not become the object of scientific research at all, which poses the issue in a new light.

The article presents the perception of Indian culture and everyday life, formed by the interwar Lithuanian press of the Catholic missions, which received little attention in historiography. Based on the articles published in the Jesuit magazine “Misijos” and the Salesian magazine “Saleziečių žinios” in 3rd and 4th decades of the 20th century, three main images that represented India in Lithuania are examined: Indian spirituality and religiosity, social problems of society, primarily the caste system and women’s rights, and finally the ferocious nature of the land. The analysis of periodicals revealed that the creation of images of India was influenced by the Christian tradition, the European orientalist attitude and the comparison of East-West civilizations.

This article explores women's experiences of local government in Worcester between 1907 and 1939. The city saw a limited suffrage movement, and to date has never elected a female MP. Yet while women in Worcester arguably played little role in 'national' politics, they were active in local government, first through wartime local authority committees, and then, in the interwar years, when seeking election as Labour, Liberal, Conservative or Independent candidates, with Conservative women being most successful. Drawing on city council records and local newspaper reporting, the article considers the ways in which women made an impact on Worcester's government, particularly as elected councillors. Some women were also involved with more ceremonial – and consequently more visible – roles in local government, though these were generally the preserve of elite women. As such, the article contributes to wider debates about the changing nature of women's political activism post-enfranchisement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the hitherto overlooked contribution of military charities to veteran welfare and reintegration after the First World War. I use the records of the King's Own Scottish Borderers Association War Memorial Fund (KOSB WMF), which operated similarly to other regimental charities, to argue that the scale of this apparatus -- its social reach and its funding capacity -- may be comparable to the better-known and nationally recognised British Legion. It thus represents an important arena to examine processes that informed veteran reintegration, especially for the wider, non-disabled veteran population whose experiences have been largely omitted from histories of veteran welfare. These archives not only demonstrate the interventions of military associational life in veteran welfare. They also provide an entry point to examine how the system worked holistically. Military charities, like the KOSB WMF, represented one of a range of agencies that cooperated to support veterans in the 'mixed economy of welfare'. Their bureaucratic archival traces provide a productive route to illuminate the relationships behind fund allocation and delivery and to assess what politics animated these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how the interwar French suffragist organization la Femme nouvelle used the platform of the newsreel to make political claims through its collaboration with Pathé's newsreel magazine Actualités féminines or Women's News. Through the filming of their political actions and educational segments edited together in their newsreel compilation film, Le film de la Femme nouvelle (dir. la Femme nouvelle, France, 1935), the suffragists, led by Louise Weiss, frame themselves as essential workers, fearless political actors, and perfect housewives. These contradictions reveal a strategic manipulation of their gender identity to obtain the vote at all costs. Newsreel making provided the feminists an avenue for political claimsmaking beyond electoral politics. These filmed accounts of their actions give the spectator a sense of being present at the event, which is missing from written accounts of la Femme nouvelle's history. Through this aesthetic liveness, achieved through camera placement and staging in crowd scenes, the suffragists were able to portray themselves as vital political actors. One such filmed protest from 12 May 1935 provides a compelling account of their filmmaking practice, in which the activists march on la place de la Bastille in chains, then break their chains and put them in a bonfire. The French Revolution, referenced by this action, was a popular analogy for the Left, as seen in the film La marseillaise (dir. Jean Renoir, France, 1937). Le film de la Femme nouvelle is significant because it allows for an alternate, feminist history of political filmmaking in the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than a decade before Hitler became the leader of the Nazi party, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Ladies' Home Journal hit on the perfect insignia for their new "Girl's Club": a swastika. This was far from anomalous; an examination of American fashion and lifestyle publications shows that the swastika was a fashionable motif for dress, home decor, and particularly jewelry from the turn of the twentieth century until the outbreak of World War II. Moreover, the swastika continued to be used as a decorative motif even as news of life under the Third Reich was published in American newspapers. This regular use in fashion and consumer goods suggests that Americans did not want to recognize the dissonance between the way that they wore the swastika and the symbol in its German context. This distinction began to disintegrate in the mid-1930s, as conflict over the use of the symbol revealed fracture lines between those affected by its anti-Semitic connotations and those who thought that these connotations were either acceptable or easy enough to ignore. The lifecycle of the swastika in American culture in the first four decades of the twentieth century offers a unique case study of how a sign can gain and lose meaning; after arising as a seemingly superficial fad, the persistence of the motif took on increasingly problematic associations raising difficult questions of how to contend with new readings of old signs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic emigration from Poland to Latvia was a consequence of the socio-economic situation in both countries. The internal determinants of emigration were agrarian overpopulation and poverty in the Polish countryside. In this situation, many people saw a chance to improve their lives abroad. The problem of the overabundance of labourers in rural Poland coincided with a period of economic growth in Latvia. At a time when Poland was struggling with overpopulation and an excess of labour in the countryside, the Baltic country faced scarcity of hands in agriculture. The emigration movement to Latvia lasted from 1928 to 1939. The number of Polish workers employed in Latvian agriculture is estimated at over 100,000 people. The aim of the article is to analyse the origins, course and consequences of economic emigration from Poland to Latvia during this period.

Copyright of Studies of Lithuania's History is the property of Lietuvos Istorijos Studijos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Oikos: Lithuanian Migration & Diaspora Studies is the property of Lithuanian Emigration Institute and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Codrul Cosminului is the property of Codrul Cosminului and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Menotyra is the property of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In August 1921, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officially created the 'Department of Information' (Gaimushō Jōhōbu, DOI), to better perform MOFA's propaganda and information management going forward. This was deemed necessary because the Ministry since the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) had failed to create comprehensive and coherent propaganda strategies. This article argues that the DOI was a significant addition to the structure of MOFA, by examining the period from the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) until the Washington Naval Conference (1921–1922) via the research concept of 'mediatization'. The department allowed MOFA's propaganda-making capabilities to reach a higher plateau going forward, and for the first time gave it a tool to perform propaganda in a centralized and professionalized way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cristóbal Balenciaga's initial period in Spain (1917–1936), when he was working to develop himself as a couturier and consolidate his business in the luxury sector, is less known than his Parisian period (1937–1968), due to the scarcity of available information. This article analyses the designer as a buyer of haute couture licenses during that initial period. His biographers claim that in the early years of his professional development Balenciaga would attend to the presentations of prestigious French Maisons where he acquired pieces that he later sold in his establishment in San Sebastián, and that he studied to improve his own technique. Among these Maisons is that of Madeleine Vionnet. However, the restrictive licensing policy applied by the French couturière , puts in doubt the idea that Balenciaga had once been authorized to acquire pieces from her collections. Based on research in the archives of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris and the Archives de Paris, and in the Spanish, French and North American press published between 1920 and 1930, this article provides new findings that confirm the existence of just such a commercial relationship. It reveals when it emerged, specifies which Vionnet pieces Balenciaga acquired and studies the influence of Vionnet's technique and aesthetics on some of the Basque couturier 's creations prior to his establishment in Paris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders the success of Alvar Aalto in interwar Britain through the perspective of P. Morton Shand. As a journalist fluent in French and German, Shand introduced European Modernism to British architects. From 1930, he focused his efforts on Aalto, leading to the seminal exhibition of the Finnish designer's furniture in 1933. By viewing the exhibition through the lens of Shand, this article points to the role of critics as active participants in interwar design culture, leading the promotion of modern design and blurring the lines between journalism and commercialized propaganda. While historians are productively describing the roles of consumers, critics and other nondesigners in design history, Shand has remained unappreciated, despite operating at the heart of many interwar exchanges. With the use of an uncataloged collection of his correspondence, this article reveals his individual impact in popularizing the furniture of Aalto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]