Towards Cultural Diffusion: The Rockefeller Foundation and Archives Abroad, 1936-1946

In 1936 the Rockefeller Foundation awarded a grant to the Department of Middle American Research at Tulane University, Louisiana, for a survey of the holdings of libraries and archival repositories in Central America and the West Indies. This was the first Foundation funded project with a specific archival component. The interaction between project participants and Foundation officials reflected deeper concerns about the function and purpose of archives. The project director, Arthur E. Gropp, stood for the principle of archives in service to scholarship, whereas Foundation officials were groping toward a concept of cultural diffusion, the using of acquired knowledge as a medium of social, political, and cultural influence. The published guide ended up being narrow in focus and scope, emphasizing the needs of North American scholars, rather than those of indigenous societies, and important political lessons that might have been learned from the project remained unrecognized for decades to come.