Transatlantic cultural embassies: Georges Clemenceau in Buenos Aires and Paul Groussac in Paris, 1910-1911. Intellectual relations and university life

Abstract

This article analyses Georges Clemenceau’s visits to Buenos Aires, undertaken in 1910, and their connections with Paul Groussac’s visit to Paris, in 1911. The text aims to show the dynamics that were established between the two events and proposes consideration of the visits that they made as a means of studying transatlantic intellectual connections at a moment immediately before the interwar period, which has been studied in historiography with categories such as scientific or academic exchanges and mobility, intellectual cooperation, and so on. That is, it tries to show how the links between France and a Latin American country were consolidated in circumstances not yet clearly institutionalized and formalized by state entities or agencies. The notion of “cultural ambassadors” is proposed to address the role played by visitors, following the proposal made by the bibliography in reference to the overlaps between official and non-governmental missions in the processes of building exchange ties, intellectual relationships, and other forms of contact between nations.