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  • The Irish Free State and Public Diplomacy:The First Official Visit of William T. Cosgrave to the United States
  • Francis M. Carroll

The contemporary use of the term "public diplomacy" is generally attributed to the retired diplomat Edmond A. Gullion, when, as dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy he opened the Edward R. Murrow Center in 1965. By public diplomacy Dean Gullion meant the attempts by a state to carry out a foreign policy objective by reaching directly to the public, rather than the traditional approach of diplomats of a government working exclusively with their diplomatic counterparts.1 In particular, the circumstances of the Cold War led to the great powers attempting to influence both foreign populations and their own communities in favor of their policy objectives. However, the practice of attempting to win favorable support both at home and abroad was by no means unique to the Cold War era. Indeed, it might be said that the publication in 1861 of The Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States was an effort to win both international and domestic public support for the Union's diplomatic policies in the American Civil War. The British, too, undertook a form of public diplomacy in 1934 with the establishment of offices and programs of the British Council (originally called the British Council for Relations with Other Countries) in numerous countries, through which it hoped to show that British culture and interests would be shown in a sympathetic light. The Voice of America, created during the World War II, and the United States Information Agency, founded in 1953, performed similar functions.

It should not be surprising, therefore, to find the fledgling Irish Free State also engaged in a form of public diplomacy. The Dáil Éireann government from [End Page 77] 1919 to 1922 carried out a program of public diplomacy to win popular support abroad in the face of the refusal of great powers to extend diplomatic recognition to the revolutionary government. Eamon de Valéra's controversial trip to the United States in 1919 and 1920, as well as the work of various Dáil envoys, appealed directly to the American public rather than to the Department of State. Once established in 1922 and 1923, the Free State was in a position to pursue conventional and public diplomacy, and Ireland did both. The visit of William T. Cosgrave, the first president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, to the United States and Canada in 1928 was undertaken within both the established tradition of conventional diplomacy, and in what would today be described as public diplomacy.

Michael Kennedy, in Ireland and the League of Nations (1996). has argued that the Free State's foreign affairs developed along three overlapping lines: Commonwealth relations, League of Nations activity, and bilateral relations. Within the Commonwealth, Ireland worked closely with such like-minded dominions as Canada and South Africa, particularly at the Imperial Conferences of 1926 and 1930, to establish the autonomy and equality of status of the dominions and Great Britain. Ireland applied for membership in the League of Nations in the autumn of 1923 and became an active member over the next decade, emerging in the 1930s in the position of president of the Assembly.2 As for bilateral relations, the links with the United States were the first and most important established by Ireland. The Free State government turned first to the United States to have its envoy—Professor Timothy A. Smiddy—officially recognized as a minister plenipotentiary on October 7, 1924.3 As Joseph P. Walshe, the secretary of the Department of External Affairs, emphasized to Kevin O'Higgins (then vice-president of the executive council and minister for justice) just two weeks later, establishing diplomatic relations with the United States was "the main accomplishment of our foreign relations." In a thinly veiled reference to Britain and the other Commonwealth countries, Walshe concluded, "America is the only country with [End Page 78] which our relations are entirely free and independent from any outside control."4 Ireland's sovereignty and independence could be demonstrated through relations with the United States. The Irish government expected to...

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