Stewards of Internationalism: United Nations Tour Guides, Gender, and Public Diplomacy, 1952–1977 (2024)

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Dexter Fergie

dexterfergie@gmail.com

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Diplomatic History, dhae028, https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dhae028

Published:

19 April 2024

Extract

“You are now standing on international territory”—so Natalie Brenn began a tour of the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York in 1953.1 Every day, tour guides such as Brenn escorted visitors through the various UN buildings. But this was no ordinary tour. It was more than “an ‘on your right you see such-and-such and to your right is a whatzit’ sort of thing,” boasted another guide.2 For the price of general admission—$1 in the 1950s, $26 in 2023—visitors could glimpse global governance in action. Hailing from around the world, guides explained the UN system, narrated its history, and fielded a dizzying array of questions. It was the UN’s attempt to sell itself to the public. And the public poured into the headquarters. In 1953, a year after the launch of the tour, the UN headquarters welcomed about 1,500 daily visitors, almost a thousand more than the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building combined; by the end of the decade the number of daily visitors doubled.3 By 1959, a total of five million people toured the headquarters, and, in 1964, the ten-millionth visitor arrived.4 The guides, a journalist declared, had turned the UN headquarters into “the most popular show in New York,” more popular than Me and Juliet, Can-Can, or any other Broadway hit.5

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