Internationalists in European History: Rethinking the Twentieth Century

Description

Representing a crucial intervention in the history of internationalism, transnationalism and global history, this edited collection examines a variety of international movements, organisations and projects developed in Europe or by Europeans over the course of the 20th century. Reacting against the old Eurocentricism, much of the scholarship in the field has refocussed attention on other parts of the globe. This volume attempts to rethink the role played by ideas, people and organisations originating or located in Europe, including some of their consequential global impact. The chapters cover aspects of internationalism such as the importance of language, communication and infrastructures of internationalism; ways of grappling with the history of internationalism as a lived experience; and the roles of European actors in the formulation of different and often competing models of internationalism. It demonstrates that the success and failure of international programmes were dependent on participants' ability to communicate across linguistic but also political, cultural and economic borders. By bringing together commonly disconnected strands of European history and 'history from below', this volume rebalances and significantly advances the field, and promotes a deeper understanding of internationalism in its many historical guises. The volume is conceived as a way of thinking about internationalism that is relevant not just to scholars of Europe, but to international and global history more generally.

Jessica Reinisch is Professor of Modern European History at Birkbeck, London, UK, where she is also the Director of the Centre for the Study of Internationalism. She is also the editor of Contemporary European History and was Principal Investigator of a research group on the history of internationalism, The Reluctant Internationalists (2013-2017). Her first book, The Perils of Peace, was published in 2013 and she has edited two special issues and five volumes, most recently Refugees in Europe, 1919-1959: A Forty Years' Crisis (Bloomsbury, 2017). David Brydan is a Lecturer at King's College London, UK. He was previously a postdoctoral researcher on the Reluctant Internationalists project, and then Lecturer in Modern History at Birkbeck, University of London. His first book Franco's Internationalists (2019).

This volume is essential reading on internationalism because for the first time it provocatively interrogates various European internationalisms and their afterlives in the global system. * Alanna O'Malley, Professor of United Nations Studies in Peace and Justice, Leiden University, The Netherlands. *