Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France (review)

With Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France, Christopher Endy adds to the growing body of scholarship examining Cold War–era foreign relations from the perspective of the citizenry. Although Endy discusses the plans and perspectives of government officials in both the United States and France, he breaks new ground by expanding the circle of foreign relations participants to include not only American tourists abroad but also French service workers. He argues, "While American tourists never quite 'owned' the world even at their peak influence in the quarter century after World War II, they did occupy a significant place in postwar international relations. Their travels in France became a branch of Cold War foreign policy for both countries" (p. 12). Endy, an associate professor of history at California State University, Los Angeles, bases his work on four main points: first, that public-private collaboration on travel and tourism in both the United States and France contributed to the increase in American visits to France; second, that American tourism was not just the result of growing prosperity but was also connected with the development of a "transnational travel constituency"; third, that travel by U.S. citizens to France helped reinforce American and French national identities rather than encourage intercontinental syncretism; and fourth, that the French carefully analyzed American hotel methods and middle-class tastes and adapted these preferences to French culture (p. 4).

Throughout the book, the delicate nature of Franco-American relations asserts itself. Recent works such as Jessica Gienow-Hecht's Transmission Impossible: American Diplomacy and Postwar Journalism in Postwar Germany 1945–1950 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999) have shown that Americans were concerned about the image they projected abroad. But Endy makes clear that the French, too, had worries. As American tourists began to return to France in the postwar years, French officials had to walk a fine line. Although they wanted to supply American visitors with enough food and amenities to make them eager to return, they did not want to give the impression that France had resources enough to forgo American aid. The reestablishment and expansion of the hotel industry also proved challenging. Endy shows that hotels became sites of intense ideological battles for both the French and the Americans. According to Endy, Americans understood hotels as places in which they could test modernization theories currently en vogue. "French hoteliers needed to modernize and increase their productivity by learning from American hotels," Endy writes. "The Marshall Plan tourism program thus bore the stamp of modernization ideology, with its focus on middle-class consumer power, rationalized labor practices, investment in new technology, and the application of American business techniques" (p. 84). The French hoteliers struggled to provide the "luxuries" demanded by American tourists, such as private bathrooms, while still ensuring that their hotels retained a distinctly French identity. This effort was greatly complicated by ongoing labor woes, outspoken criticism of American tourists, and, by the 1960s, growing foreign hotel investments.

The book moves chronologically as well as thematically, beginning with the tourism programs funded by the Marshall Plan and moving to the 1950s, which saw the birth not only of tourist-class airfare and service but also of the "vacations, not donations" tourism policy of the fiscally conservative Eisenhower administration (p. 129). Endy continues his exploration through the 1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson repeatedly attempted to curtail American tourism abroad in hopes of stanching the flow of American dollars abroad. Although the Cold War, as expected, hovers throughout the book, Endy argues that the East-West standoff failed to influence the attitudes and actions of American tourists. Instead, Americans largely ignored the Cold War backdrop—whether the diplomatic tensions of the 1960s or the economic concerns of the Johnson administration—and significantly increased their travels to France over the decades.

In addition to challenging the importance of the Cold War for understanding this era, Endy also breaks new ground by drawing important connections among consumerism, globalization, and the Cold War...