Search Results

During the 1920s and 1930s, American minority artists and writers collaborated extensively with the Soviet avant-garde, seeking to build a revolutionary society that would end racial discrimination and advance progressive art. Making what Claude McKay called “the magic pilgrimage” to the Soviet Union, these intellectuals placed themselves at the forefront of modernism, using radical cultural and political experiments to reimagine identity and decenter the West. The Ethnic Avant-Garde draws on Russian archives, travel narratives, and artistic exchanges to establish the parameters of an “ethnic avant-garde.” These writers and artists cohered around distinct forms that mirrored Soviet techniques of montage, fragment, and interruption. They orbited interwar Moscow, where the international avant-garde converged with the Communist International. The book explores Vladimir Mayakovsky’s 1925 visit to New York City via Cuba and Mexico, during which he wrote Russian-language poetry in an “Afro-Cuban” voice; Langston Hughes’s translations of these poems while in Moscow, which he visited to assist on a Soviet film about African American life; a futurist play condemning Western imperialism in China, which became Broadway’s first major production to feature a predominantly Asian American cast; and efforts to imagine the Bolshevik Revolution as Jewish messianic arrest, followed by the slow political disenchantment of the New York Intellectuals. Through an absorbing collage of cross-ethnic encounters that also include Herbert Biberman, Sergei Eisenstein, Paul Robeson, and Vladimir Tatlin, this work remaps global modernism along minority and Soviet-centered lines, further advancing the avant-garde project of seeing the world anew.

In Chimeras of Form, Aarthi Vadde vividly illustrates how modernist and contemporary writers reimagine the nation and internationalism in a period defined by globalization. She explains how Rabindranath Tagore, James Joyce, Claude McKay, George Lamming, Michael Ondaatje, and Zadie Smith use modernist literary forms to develop ideas of international belonging sensitive to the afterlife of empire. In doing so, she shows how this wide-ranging group of authors challenged traditional expectations of aesthetic form, shaping how their readers understand the cohesion and interrelation of political communities. Drawing on her close readings of individual texts and on literary, postcolonial, and cosmopolitical theory, Vadde examines how modernist formal experiments take part in debates about transnational interdependence and social obligation. She reads Joyce's use of asymmetrical narratives as a way to ask questions about international camaraderie, and demonstrates how the "plotless" works of Claude McKay upturn ideas of citizenship and diasporic alienation. Her analysis of the contemporary writers Zadie Smith and Shailja Patel shows how present-day issues relating to migration, displacement, and economic inequality link modernist and postcolonial traditions of literature. Vadde brings these traditions together to reveal the dual nature of internationalism as an aspiration, possibly a chimeric one, and an actual political discourse vital to understanding our present moment.

Black women in the United States and across the African diaspora have historically linked national concerns to global ones. This interdisciplinary collection explores the varied ways black women have engaged in internationalism since the late nineteenth century through political agitation, consumption activities and economic pursuits, leisure and religious practices, as well as performance and artistic expression. The essays in this collection employ diverse and innovative methodological approaches and explore new sites of internationalism, including Australia, Germany, and Spain. By highlighting the range and complexity of black women’s ideas and activities across time and space, this volume expands the contours of black internationalism in the United States and across the globe.

This book is designed to remove Peter Kropotkin from the framework of classical anarchism. By focusing attention on his theory of mutual aid, it argues that the classical framing distorts Kropotkin's political theory by associating it with a narrowly positivistic conception of science, a naively optimistic idea of human nature and a millenarian idea of revolution. Kropotkin's abiding concern with Russian revolutionary politics is the lens for this analysis. The argument is that his engagement with nihilism shaped his conception of science and that his expeditions in Siberia underpinned an approach to social analysis that was rooted in geography. Looking at Kropotkin's relationship with Elisée Reclus and Erico Malatesta and examining his critical appreciation of P-J. Proudhon, Michael Bakunin and Max Stirner, the study shows how he understood anarchist traditions and reveals the special character of his anarchist communism. His idea of the state as a colonising process and his contention that exploitation and oppression operate in global contexts is a key feature of this. Kropotkin's views about the role of theory in revolutionary practice show how he developed this critique of the state and capitalism to advance an idea of political change that combined the building of non-state alternatives through direct action and wilful disobedience. Against critics who argue that Kropotkin betrayed these principles in 1914, the book suggests that this controversial decision was consistent with his anarchism and that it reflected his judgment about the prospects of anarchistic revolution in Russia.

The consumer co-operative movement was one of the most important popular movements in inter-war Europe, but remains under-researched by historians in comparison to other social movements, especially with regard to its international dimensions. From 1895, the co-operative movement also had its own international organisation, the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA). This book explores the transnational history of consumer co-operation from the establishment of the movement in the second half of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the Second World War, focusing in particular on co-operation in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden). The co-operative movement was especially strong throughout the region and the Nordic co-operative federations played a prominent role in the ICA. The fundamental question explored in the book concerns the meaning of co-operation: was it a social movement or an economic enterprise? Did it aspire to challenge capitalism or to reform it? Did it contain at its heart a political vision for the transformation of society or was it simply a practical guide for organising a business? I argue that it was both, but that an examination of the debates over the different meanings of co-operation can also illuminate broader questions about the emergence of consumer interests in the first half of the twentieth century, especially in a transnational context. Studying the Nordic co-operative movement also helps to shed light on the growing international interest in this region and the emergence of a Nordic “middle way” during the 1930s.

This volume provides examines anarchist responses to the First World War. The collection is divided into three sections. The first examines the interventionist debate, focusing on the acrimonious disputes between Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta which split the anarchist movement in 1914. The second discusses the impact of the war and the Bolshevik revolution, presenting a historical analysis of German, Dutch, French and US movements and conceptual analysis of just war and intervention, prefiguration, nationalism, internationalism, transnationalism, anti-colonialism, pacifism and terrorism. The final section focuses on anti-militarism and discusses no-conscription campaigns, anti-war/anti-capitalist cultural resistance and ideas of memory and war myths, centring on the experiences of Herbert Read. The book discusses the impact of the war on anarchism by looking at the social, cultural and geo-political changes that the war hastened, promoting forms of socialism that marginalized anarchist ideas, but argues that even while the war destroyed many domestic movements it also contributed to a re-framing of anarchist ideas. The book shows how the bitter divisions about the war and the experience of being caught on the wrong side of the Bolshevik Revolution encouraged anarchists to reaffirm their deeply-held rejection of vanguard socialism and develop new strategies that drew on a plethora of anti-war activities. The currents of ideas that emerged from anarchism's apparent obsolescence were crystallised during the war.

During the 1920s and 1930s radio was transnational in its reach and appeal, attracting distant listeners and encouraging hopes that broadcasting would foster international understanding and world peace. As a new medium, radio broadcasting transmitted speech, music, news, and a range of exotic and authentic sounds across borders to reach audiences in other countries. In Europe radio was regulated through international consultation and cooperation to restrict interference between stations and to unleash the medium’s full potential to carry programmes to global audiences. A distinctive form of ‘wireless internationalism’ emerged, reflecting and reinforcing the broader internationalist movement and establishing structures and approaches which endured into the Second World War, the Cold War, and beyond. Distant listeners, meanwhile, used new technologies and skills to overcome unwanted noise, tune in as many stations as possible, and comprehend and enjoy what they heard. The BBC and other international broadcasters sought to produce tailor-made programmes for audiences overseas, encouraging feedback from listeners and using it to inform production decisions. The book revises our understanding of early British and global broadcasting, and of the BBC Empire Service (the precursor to today’s World Service), and shows how government influence shaped early BBC international broadcasting in English, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese. It also explores the wider European and global context, demonstrating how fascism in Italy and Germany, the Spanish Civil War, and the Japanese invasion of China, combined to overturn the utopianism of the 1920s and usher in a new era of wireless nationalism.

In this transnational account of black protest, Nicholas Grant examines how African Americans engaged with, supported, and were inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement. Bringing black activism into conversation with the foreign policy of both the U.S. and South African governments, this study questions the dominant perception that U.S.-centered anticommunism decimated black international activism. Instead, by tracing the considerable amount of time, money, and effort the state invested into responding to black international criticism, Grant outlines the extent to which the U.S. and South African governments were forced to reshape and occasionally reconsider their racial policies in the Cold War world. This study shows how African Americans and black South Africans navigated transnationally organized state repression in ways that challenged white supremacy on both sides of the Atlantic. The political and cultural ties that they forged during the 1940s and 1950s are testament to the insistence of black activists in both countries that the struggle against apartheid and Jim Crow were intimately interconnected.

By examining a broad range of individuals and institutions engaged in international cooperation in the Alps in the 1920s and 1930s, this book explains how internationalists constructed and used emotions to attain their goals. It undertakes a journey through the most diverse terrains and venues, from the international art exhibitions and congresses organized by the Union Internationale des Associations d’Alpinisme (also known as UIAA, or the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation), to the summer camps and schools run by transnational bodies such as the League for Open-Air Education, to the international sanatoria for students, workers, and soldiers healing from tuberculosis in the Swiss village of Leysin. Along the way, this study encounters a broad spectrum of state and non-state actors involved a variety of cross-border endeavors, from large-scale infrastructure projects akin to the tunnel under the Mont Cenis, to the League of Nations and its propaganda efforts, to the plethora of smaller international organizations emulating the League’s work in fields as diverse as leisure, health, and education. Through this metaphorical travel, this book thus argues that starting from the nineteenth century and accelerating in the interwar years emotions became a fundamental feature of internationalism, shaped its development, and constitute an essential dimension of international history to this day.

For more than 50 years Cuba has occupied a unique position in global affairs, with a steadfast prominence that at first glance might seem unlikely for a small developing island country nestled in the Caribbean. Indeed, Cuba has long had a significant, highly active place not just in the foreground of international relations—where Cubans found themselves at the center of the three-decade Cold War geopolitical struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union—but, equally important, within the constructs of internationalism—the promotion of increased economic and political cooperation amongst nations—and transnationalism—people-to-people rather than government-to-government relationships. These constructs of international relations, internationalism, and transnationalism are not only intertwined but also central to the country’s revolutionary project. Cuban foreign policy, Cuba’s efforts to establish greater cooperation with friendly powers, and the people-to-people contacts that have occurred despite the policies of its adversaries and even its own government have combined in a process that has seen the country occupy a position greater than its small size and geographical position would otherwise have merited. The revolution is admittedly incomplete; still, despite the recent reforms to its economy and travel for Cubans, and the political transition to post–Fidel Castro governance, its importance will not diminish for the foreseeable future. New domestic considerations and the advent of an evolving new international order simply provide a different setting for how and why the Cuban government, its people, émigré Cubans, and other states and peoples interact.