Brazilian Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century

During the 20th century, Brazil developed a specific cultural diplomacy in order to defend its economic and geostrategic interests on the global chessboard. Beginning in the 1920s, the Brazilian Foreign Office - Itamaraty - mapped out tools for a pragmatic cultural promotion, the contents and structures of which fluctuated depending on the actors, political regimes and conceptions of national identity. A first synthesis on the subject, this article examines the genesis of Brazilian cultural diplomacy, considering its institutions, recipients and objectives, and analyzes the meaning of cultural politics for an emerging power of the Western World.