Translation Rights Matter: Wartime Cultural Diplomacy and the Italian Book Trade

While identifying the underlying causes of the short lifespan of publishers’ agencies, the previous chapter highlighted that both Britain and the US employed books as propaganda tools in the war effort. However, the Allies did not limit themselves to the distribution of books and periodical publications overseas; on the contrary, they aided local publishing houses willing to issue new works in translation. In the aftermath of the conflict, when copyright negotiations were still hindered by the lack of dollar and pound allocations, the lapse of prewar contracts, and the caution of British and US writers in entering into new agreements, the Allies instituted governmental channels for exporting translation rights. These initiatives were envisioned on a spectrum that ranged from “cultural” to “political” propaganda. The cultural dimension was prevalent on the British end in 1945 and 1946, when the Embassy and the British Council oversaw copyright work. A more clearly political understanding of the value of translation rights emerged between 1946 and 1947, with the transfer of these activities to the COI. These goals were shared by the US agencies involved in the operation, which anticipated Cold War cultural strategies. Overall, these initiatives were of paramount importance for the recovery of the Italian publishing industry, even when the results veered wide of the goals for which these copyright facilitations were designed.