Soft Power
Robert Winder
- 20 augustus 2020
- 9781405547864
Samenvatting:
Praise for Bloody Foreigners
'Enlightened and illuminating. Winder goes a long way towards defining what we are as a nation' Independent
'A breath of fresh air in a foul and fetid room' Sunday Times
'A fascinating attempt to find the sources of Englishness . . . Well-crafted, reflective and quite personal, The Last Wolf is also original and deeply researched'
Robert McCrum, Guardian
'This is digestible, friendly, whimsical history: Winder is clearly allergic to boring history books and makes it his business not to write one' Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Times Literary Supplement
In recent years the modern world has developed a brave new concept: 'soft power'. It is the power of friendly persuasion rather than command, and it invites nations to compete (as they did in the nineteenth century) to expand their 'sphere of influence' as brands in a global marketplace.
In Bloody Foreigners and The Last Wolf, Robert Winder explored the way Britain was shaped first by migration, and then by hidden geographical factors. Now, in Soft Power he reveals the ways in which modern states are asserting themselves not through traditional realpolitik but through alternative means: business, language, culture, ideas, sport, education, music, even food - the texture and values of history and daily life.
Moving from West to East, the book tells the story of soft power by exploring the varied ways in which it operates - from an American sheriff in Poland to an English garden in Ravello, a French vineyard in Australia, an Asian restaurant in Spain, a Chinese Friendship Hall in Sudan; the fact that fifty-eight modern heads of state were educated in Britain; the student exchange that took a teenage Deng Xiaoping to a small town on the Loire; the way that Japan could seduce the world with chic food and smart computer games.
Now there may be a new twist in this Great game. With soft power's quiet ingredients - education, science, trade, cultural values - and a new emphasis on shared mutual interest, it may be the only force supple enough to tackle the challenges the future looks likely to pose - not least the slam-the-door reflexes pulling in the other direction.