Suchergebnisse

This essay uses the personal archives of Clive Morrison-Bell (1871-1956), a campaigning Conservative politician who made extensive use of maps and cartographic models, to consider the entangled histories of cartography, economics and geopolitics in early twentieth-century Britain. Particular attention is paid to Morrison-Bell's Tariff Walls Map (TWM), a large three-dimensional model of Europe on which international borders were represented by actual physical walls, the varying heights of which indicated average tariff restrictions imposed on traded goods by each European country. The TWM was one of the most widely debated maps of the 1920s and 1930s. Versions were exhibited in national parliaments, government ministries, chambers of commerce, and at international conferences across Europe and the United States, part of an ultimately unsuccessful campaign against economic protectionism. By depicting nation-states as volumetric spaces separated by physical barriers, the TWM contributed significantly to the idea of the 'wall' as an economic and geopolitical division.

This introduction to a special issue on historical geographies of internationalism begins by situating the essays that follow in relation to the on-going refugee crisis in Europe and beyond. This crisis has revealed, once again, both the challenges and the potential of internationalism as a form political consciousness and the international as a scale of political action. Recent work has sought to re-conceptualise internationalism as the most urgent scale at which governance, political activity and resistance must operate when confronting the larger environmental, economic, and strategic challenges of the twenty-first century. Although geographers have only made a modest contribution to this work, we argue that they have a significant role to play. The essays in this special issue suggest several ways in which a geographical perspective can contribute to rethinking the international: by examining spaces and sites not previously considered in internationalist histories; by considering the relationship between internationalism in the abstract and the geographical and historical specifics of its creation; and by analysing the interlocking of internationalism with other political projects. We identify, towards the end of this essay, seven ways that internationalism might be reconsidered geographically in future research: through its spatialities and temporalities, the role of newly independent states, science and research, identity politics, and with reference to its performative and visual dimensions.

Exploring how modern internationalism emerged as a negotiated process through international conferences, this edited collection studies the spaces and networks through which states, civil society institutions and anti-colonial political networks used these events to realise their visions of the international.Taking an interdisciplinary approach, contributors explore the spatial paradox of two fundamental features of modern internationalism. First, internationalism demanded the overcoming of space, transcending the nation-state in search of the shared interests of humankind. Second, internationalism was geographically contingent on the places in which people came together to conceive and enact their internationalist ideas. From Paris 1919 to Bandung 1955 and beyond, this book explores international conferences as the sites in which different forms of internationalism assumed material and social form. While international permanent institutions such as the League of Nations, UN and Institute of Pacific Relations constantly negotiated national and imperial politics, lesser-resourced political networks also used international conferences to forward their more radical demands.Taken together these conferences radically expand our conception of where and how modern internationalism emerged, and make the case for focusing on internationalism in a contemporary moment when its merits are being called into question

"Exploring how modern internationalism emerged as a negotiated process through international conferences, this edited collection studies the spaces and networks through which states, civil society institutions and anti-colonial political networks used these events to realise their visions of the international. Using an interdisciplinary approach, contributors explore the spatial paradox of two fundamental features of modern internationalism. First, overcoming limitations of place to go beyond the nation-state in search of the shared interests of humankind, and second the role of the spaces in which people came together to conceive and enact their internationalist ideas. From Paris 1919 to Bandung 1955, this book shows how modern internationalism interacted with the ongoing influence of nation-states and imperial sovereignty through international conferences. While international 'permanent institutions' such as the League of Nations, UN and Institute of Pacific Relations constantly negotiated national and imperial politics, lesser-resourced and more radical political networks more frequently targeted states. Taken together these conferences radically expand our conception of where and how modern internationalism emerged, and make the case for focusing on internationalism in a contemporary moment when its merits are being called into question"--