Conferencing the International: a cultural and historical geography of the origins of internationalism (1919-1939)

第一次世界大战留下的大部分被遗忘的遗产之一，是相信和平将产生于国家边界之间和跨越国家边界的联系，即战争本身的断层线。在战争的百年纪念结束后，我们将争辩说，我们应该记住，和平的希望是如何与世界各地建立联系的希望联系在一起的；也就是说，建立这些联系和新的世界需要新的互动、会议、学习和友谊的场所。这些地方是两次世界大战期间的国际会议，国际主义在这里被锻造和政治辩论，通过交谈、分歧、舞蹈、歌曲、品味和笑声出现。通过拼凑这些会议的记录，我们将提供国际会议创建和挑战以及它陷入困境的丰富历史。现存的文献表明，会议在19世纪末变得越来越受欢迎，与更广泛的展示活动有关，如世界博览会和世界展览(1900-1910年间35次)，以及社会主义和共产主义左翼明确的国际主义主张。但是，对于专门为利用战后世界提供的和平机会而出现的现代国际会议的研究却很匮乏。对一些人来说，和平是先前存在的殖民帝国的稳定；对另一些人来说，和平是“非战争”；而对另一些人来说，和平需要摧毁战前的政治格局。我们将考察三组展示这些和平愿景及其国际主义形式的会议，这些会议是通过特定国家(英国、法国和美国)产生的，并与特定国家(英国、法国和美国)关系紧张：关于印度在大英帝国的未来的圆桌会议(LEGG)、国际联盟ICIC的国际研究会议(Heffernan)和泛非会议(Hodder)。这些会议中的每一次都就战争带来的变化和新国际秩序的前景发表了公开评论，人们认为战争使新秩序成为可能。正是第一次世界大战前和一战期间的秘密谈判暴露了公开政治会议的迫切需要，来自世界各地的人将前往这些会议；这些会议空间就是国际会议所提供的。我们对这些会议的内部空间知之甚少。国际主义不是集中组织的；它是通过特定地点重叠的团体举行的具体、简短的会议来进行的。结果，现代国际主义的档案变得支离破碎。这个项目将通过分析两次世界大战期间国际会议的基础设施、材料和表演来重新组合和解释这些档案：人们住在哪里；他们的一天是如何计划的；衣着和举止如何促进或阻碍某些会议；他们讨论了什么，以及如何讨论。在第一次世界大战一百年后，人们经常声称，现代数字技术和即时通信将使会议的做法过时。然而，我们的全球化世界仍然由G20会议、气候变化峰会和世界经济论坛塑造，将达沃斯和京都等地嵌入国际地理想象。这个项目将历史性地定位并解释会议在我们当代如何仍然一如既往地重要。我们将通过一本合著的专著和一本编辑过的卷来传达我们的研究，这些专著和编辑的卷产生于皇家地理学会关于国际会议的一个大型国际会议和展览，以及较小的研讨会，这些研讨会将把学者、会议专业人员和对这些会议聚集的全球演员感兴趣的社区团体聚集在一起。

One of the largely forgotten legacies of the First World War was the belief that peace would result from connections between and across national borders, the fault lines of the war itself. After the centenaries of the War have concluded, we will argue that we should remember how hopes for peace were tied to hopes for connections across the earth; that is, for "the international".Forging these connections and new worlds required new sites of interaction, meeting, learning and friendship making. These sites were the international "conferences" of the interwar period, the places in which internationalism was forged and politically debated, emerging through conversation, disagreement, dance, song, taste, and laughter. Through piecing together the records of these meetings, we will provide a rich history of the spaces through which the international was created and challenged, and in which it floundered.Existing literature has shown that conferences had grown in popularity towards the end of the 19th century, connected to wider showcases such as world fairs and universal exhibitions (35 between 1900-1910) and to the explicitly internationalist claims of the socialist and communist left. But there is a dearth of research into modern international conferences that emerged specifically to take advantage of the opportunities the post-war world offered for peace. For some, peace was the stability of pre-existing colonial empires; for others, peace was "not-war"; while to others, peace required the destruction of the pre-war political landscape. We will examine three sets of conferences that demonstrate these visions of peace and their forms of internationalism that were emerging through and in tension with specific nations (Britain, France and the USA): the Round Table conferences on the future of India in the British Empire (Legg), the International Studies conferences of the League of Nations's ICIC (Heffernan), and the Pan-African Congresses (Hodder). Each of these conferences provided a public commentary on the changes brought by the war and the prospects of a new international order which it was seen to make possible. It was the secret negotiations before and during World War I which exposed the urgent need for public political meetings, to which people would travel from around the globe; these meeting spaces are what international conferences provided. We know very little about the internal spaces of these conferences. Internationalism wasn't centrally organised; it took place through specific, brief meetings of overlapping groups in particular locations. As a result, the archives of modern internationalism is fragmented and dispersed. This project will re-assemble and re-interpret these archives through an analysis of the infrastructures, materials and performances of the inter-war international conference: where people stayed; how their days were planned; how clothing and manners facilitated or hindered certain meetings; what they discussed, and how. One hundred years after the First World War it is often claimed that modern digital technology and instantaneous communication will render the practice of conferencing obsolete. Yet our globalised world is still shaped by G20 meetings, Climate Change Summits and World Economic Forums, embedding locations like Davos and Kyoto in the international geographical imagination. This project will historically situate and explain how conferencing in our contemporary period remains as important as ever. We will communicate our research through a co-authored monograph and an edited volume resulting from a major international conference and exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society on international conferencing at the end of the award, as well as with smaller workshops that will bring together academics, conferencing professionals, and community groups with interests in the global cast that these meetings assembled.