It was the first publication launched by the Congress for Cultural Freedom which later started other magazines, including Cuadernos, Encounter, Survey, Tempo Presente and Der Monat.
[1][5] Russian-American composer and cultural figure Nicolas Nabokov played a significant role in the establishment of the magazine which was financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) like other periodicals of the Congress.
[5] Major contributors of Preuves included Julian Huxley, Mircea Eliade, André Malraux, Guido Piovene, Herbert Read, Allen Tate, Lionel Trilling, Robert Penn Warren, W. H. Auden, Thornton Wilder and Jayaprakash Narayan who also published articles in another publication of the Congress, Encounter.
[9] For instance, it featured an article by Albert Hourani on Taha Hussein which was originally published in Hiwar's inaugural issue in 1962.
[5] François Bondy left the magazine in 1972 when it turned to be a foreign policy publication losing its original Atlanticist, anti-neutralist and pro-American mission.