We The Peoples: Democratizing International Relations in Britain and Beyond, 1870-1950
We The Peoples: Democratizing International Relations in Britain and Beyond, 1870-1950
St. John’s College, Cambridge, 8-9 Jan. 2010
Overview
From the late 19th century, the idea that international relations involved the interactions of peoples as well as states began to take root across Europe and North America. Amidst franchise extensions and the rise of the mass media, governments of liberal democracies became increasingly sensitive to ‘public opinion’ and faced growing demands for transparency and accountability in the making of foreign policy. At the same time, new understandings of nations as psychological entities entered the discourse of international politics, inflecting debates about self-determination, representative government and the causes of war. The experience of World War I appeared to offer further proof that the existing system of international relations was fundamentally unfit for purpose. The time had come to abandon the ‘old’ diplomacy, identified with ‘balance-of-power’ doctrines and unlimited national sovereignty, and to establish in its place a new world order based on publicity, openness and co-operation amongst nations and peoples.
Inspired by these ideas, some placed their hopes in the collective system embodied in the League of Nations, an institution which seemingly enshrined these democratic values. Some focused on cultivating non-state expertise through the founding of institutes and journals of foreign affairs, whilst others sought to educate and mobilize a mass public opinion, often making skilful use of new technologies of mass communication. Some pioneered innovative ways of projecting national values overseas, paying greater attention to the social, cultural and economic dimensions of diplomacy and drawing on new knowledge about national character and national differences. For others, the creation of a harmonious international society rested on growing inter-cultural contact and the establishment of ‘trans-national’ social movements.
However, if the interest in supranational institutions, political accountability, and the actions and interactions of national publics struck a fresh note in international politics, the ‘new’ diplomacy never fully displaced the ‘old.’ As the immediate flush of post-war idealism gave way to more sober analysis in the 1920s and 1930s, progressives had to face some uncomfortable questions: was ‘public opinion’ sufficiently informed?
Could the judgment of the ‘peoples’ be trusted, and were some peoples more fitted than others for the task? Were there not sensitive areas where secrecy remained crucial to national interests? Might openness, paradoxically, make harmonious co-existence in practice harder to achieve? And where did the nationalist aspirations of non-democratic regimes fit into post-war narratives of liberalization and democratization? If the peoples could be mobilized for international co-operation and peace, might they not also be mobilized for nationalism and war?
The outbreak of World War II appeared to realize this latter fear, yet in the process crucial lessons were learnt. The founding of the United Nations in 1945 renewed the democratization project, but generated a more cautious idealism than that accompanying the earlier armistice. Schooled in the collective security failures of the 1930s, the architects of the new post-war settlement were faced with the task of refashioning internationalism for a nuclear, bi-polar world. Under Cold War conditions, it was still the hearts and minds of peoples that were at stake, including those belonging to nations experiencing self-government for the first time. Yet the original radical vision of a democratized world order was largely absent, inspiring neither the decisive political struggles nor the key intellectual paradigms which shaped this new, arguably less hopeful, era of international relations.
Aims and Objectives
This conference will explore the varied locations and formulations through which the broad notion of ‘democratization’ found expression in international politics between c.1870 and 1950. Its primary focus will be Britain, where thought and action on this theme were particularly rich and multifaceted, with complex implications for politics and diplomacy and for wider social, cultural and intellectual life. However, the conference will seek to set current research on Britain in a broader comparative and global context, drawing on imperial, European and North American perspectives as well as new work on ‘transnational’ movements and processes. The conference will thus bring together a diverse group of scholars, engaging historians of Britain, Europe and America and scholars from the fields of International History and International Relations in a shared conversation around a broad yet coherent theme.
Organisers: Helen McCarthy (Queen Mary, University of London) and Peter Mandler (Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge)
Location: Fisher Building, St John’s College, Cambridge
Programme
Friday 8th January
9.30 Coffee and Registration
10.00 Welcome
10.15 Panel 1: Trouble-making: Critics of Foreign Policy before 1914
Eugenio Biagini (Cambridge): Liberalism and the Politics of Human Rights
Rebecca Gill (Huddersfield): ‘New humanitarianism’: foreign relief missions and the politics of compassion in Britain, 1876
Bertrand Taithe (Manchester): Threshold of Inhumanity? The fin-de-siècle of Humanitarianism, c.1895-1910
Chair: Duncan Bell (Cambridge)
11.45 Break
12.00 Panel 2: Safe for Democracy: World War I and the New Diplomacy
John Thompson (Cambridge): Woodrow Wilson and the ambiguities of a ‘democratic peace’
Gaynor Johnson (Salford): Lord Robert Cecil and the democratisation of British diplomacy after the First World War
Chair: David Milne (UEA)
13.0 Lunch
14.00 Panel 3: Foreign Policy and Public Opinion (I): Intellectuals, Ideologies and Political Education
Daniel Laqua (Northumbria): Socialism, Democracy and International Relations: the Labour and Socialist International between the Wars
Scott Anthony (Manchester): The Projection of England: Stephen Tallents and the New Art of National Promotion
Christian Haase (Nottingham): Laboratory of Liberal Internationalism? Chatham House between the Wars
Chair: Katharina Rietzler (UCL)
15.30 Break
16.00 Panel 4: Foreign Policy and Public Opinion (II): Governments, Internationalists and the Mass Media
Charlotte Alston (Northumbria): Politics and Public Opinion: British reporting on Russia in the early 20th century
Martin Ceadel (Oxford): Internationalism and the Media: The Great Disillusion of Norman Angell
Frank Beyersdorf (Mannheim): Education through Information: Diplomacy, Press and Publicity at the League of Nations
Chair: Phil Taylor (Leeds)
17.30-18.30 Reception
19.00 Conference Dinner
Saturday 9th January
9.30 Panel 5: Projecting Nations: Culture and Character in International Relations
Peter Mandler (Cambridge): The Idea of ‘Intercultural Relations’ from the 1920s to the 1950s
Tamara Van Kessel (Amsterdam): Intercultural Diplomacy and National Self-Representation during the Interbellum: Italianità and Britishness as promoted abroad
Jose Harris (Oxford): Visions of Europe in British ‘Reconstruction’ Debates During World War II
Chair: Helen McCarthy (QMUL)
11.0 Break
11.30 Panel 6: Whose Democracy? (I) Foreign policy, empire and race
Susan Pedersen (Columbia): A Whole World Talking: Petitions and Peoples before the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations
Priya Satia (Stanford): Interwar Empire and the Production of Ignorance
Chair: Mark Mazower (Columbia)
12.30 Lunch
13.30 Panel 7: Whose Democracy? (II) Foreign Policy, Gender and Citizenship
Helen McCarthy (QMUL): Feminising foreign policy? Gender, Diplomacy and International Relations in Britain, c.1918-1946
Marie Sandell (Royal Holloway): ‘A special inclination for peace, justice and tolerance’: international women’s organisations and peace activism in the 1930s
Julie Gottlieb (Sheffield): British Women and the ‘Fascist Encounter’: Feminists and the Totalitarian Challenge in the 1930s
Chair: Barbara Metzger (Cambridge)
15.00 Break
15.15: Panel 8: We The Peoples: 1945 and the New World Order
Glenda Sluga (Sydney): World Citizenship, World Consciousness, and World Government: The Twentieth Century as the Great Age of Internationalism
Marc Stears (Oxford): Conceptions of Democratic Victory in Britain and the United States, 1945-51
Jessica Reinsch (Birkbeck) ‘You are internationals now...’? International Relations in the Displaced Persons camps of Europe, 1945-1948
Chair: Peter Mandler (Cambridge)
16.45: We the Peoples: Themes and Reflections
David Reynolds (Cambridge)
17.30 Close
http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/seminars_events/conferences/democratizing.html