Revisiting transnational actors from a spatial perspective

Actor-centred approaches feature prominently in transnational history. Studying transnational actors has helped to better grasp the extent, dynamics and mechanisms of particular cross-border connections, and has highlighted the entanglement and mutual constitution of cultures and societies in a more general sense. While empirical research continues to reveal more forms of their interaction, the general notion of ‘transnational actors’ has been gradually flattened out: the transnational sphere is now often studied in isolation and conceived of as a rather homogeneous space, while transnational actors are largely viewed solely in their border-crossing capacities and activities. The authors argue that while such a focus successfully captures their mobility, it overlooks another important dimension, namely their embeddedness in local, national, imperial or regional contexts. To reconnect these aspects, the authors situate transnational actors in their diverse socio-spatial relations. Investigating them in this way brings out their important role not only as connectors, but also as producers of various kinds of spaces. The contributions to this dossier highlight that transnational fields of activity are heterogeneous and deeply entangled with other spaces of action and belonging.     

Political humanitarianism in the 1930s: Indian aid for Republican Spain

Abstract

This article examines Indian humanitarian help for Republican victims during the Spanish Civil War. It focuses in particular on aid initiatives by the Indian national movement, which were embedded in the larger quest for independence from British colonial rule. By creating their own humanitarian programme in favour of Republican Spain, Indian nationalists dissociated themselves from Britain’s foreign policy and tried to orchestrate a politics of moral superiority for themselves. The article also explores Indian participation in transnational networks of Left solidarity. Established to generate political and humanitarian support for Republican Spain, Indian actors concurrently utilized these networks to enhance their status in the international community and to advance their own end of an independent state.     

Memory that governs by itself? Appropriations of Versailles memory

Abstract

Versailles memory has been a cornerstone of the traditional paradigm of lieux de mémoire. However, its transnational dimension has never been fully explored. Covering more than three centuries, this article identifies three antagonistic patterns of transnational Versailles memory that carry ambivalent references to ‘Europe’: war versus peace; monarchical versus republican legitimization; and universalistic versus particularistic conceptions of power. Actors referred to Versailles’ architecture to substantiate their positions toward French hegemonic ambitions: from counter-buildings by the Sun King’s rivals; political redefinitions during changing regimes after 1789 via Franco-German rivalries in the War of 1870; international reactions to the Peace Conference in 1919; and up to Versailles as a World Heritage Site. Analysing these three constitutive patterns, this article challenges the dominant Franco-centrist Versailles master narrative as non-French actors contested such hegemonic views. References to Versailles as a symbol of both American and Brazilian national independence also bring out global dimensions of Versailles memory.     

Transnationalism and the Evolution of Post-National Citizenship in Japan

This article argues that transnational activism has been an important factor in both the evolution of Japanese civil society and the identity formation of civil society actors over the past half century. It reconsiders the Japanese experience in light of recent theorisations on deterritorialised and transnational citizenships which challenge the monopoly of the national state in defining civic identity by proposing novel alternatives based on cross-border affiliations among non-state actors. Different from existing endogenous and institutional explanations of the emergence and development of civil society in Japan, the article highlights the transformative impact of activists’ transnational activities. Until around the late 1960s Japanese activists tended to imagine their situation within a framework of victimised citizens versus a pernicious alliance of the state and industry. The state and corporations were the aggressors and citizens were always the victims. But transnational engagements in the anti-Vietnam War and environmental movements disrupted such assumptions, forcing activists to rethink their victimisation status and consider their complicity in the actions of the Japanese state and industry abroad. The result was an enriched and more broad-minded conceptualisation of post-national citizenship in which victim consciousness was tempered by a concern for those beyond the borders of Japan. This transnational sensitivity in turn contributed to the maturation of Japanese civil society.     

From Imperialism to Internationalism: British Idealism and Human Rights

ABSTRACT

The article provides a historical account of the younger generation of British Idealists’ (1880–1930) approach to international relations and human rights. By focusing on pre-Great War and post-Great War periods, it reveals the shift that occurred in their approbation of T. H. Green's theory of rights. It shows that the Great War put an end to perceptions of the Empire as a plausible and sustainable international order for the younger generation of British Idealists, as it did for the significant majority of liberal British intellectuals. Their work, especially in the post-Great War period, reveals an attempt at translating Green's theory of rights into an internationalist human rights theory, which they saw as being indispensable to maintain a stable international order. As an alternative to contemporary attempts to locate Green's rights theory within the cosmopolitan–communitarian divide in human rights theories, this study draws attention to the younger generation of British Idealists’ long neglected internationalist approach to human rights as a middle way position.     

‘Globalization with hardware’: ITER’s fusion of technology,policy, and politics

This article explores the history of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a fusion energy megaproject currently being built in southern France. It examines three main aspects of the project’s history, focusing largely on the European research community’s perspective. First, it explores how European scientists and science managers constructed a transnational research community around fusion energy after 1960 that was part of Europe’s larger technological integration. This article also expands Gabrielle Hecht’s concept of ‘technopolitics’ to the larger international dimension and explores how the political environment of the late Cold War and the post‐9/11 era helped shape ITER’s history, sometimes in ways not entirely within researchers’ control. Finally, this essay considers ITER as a technological project that gradually became globalized. At various stages in the project’s 30‐year history, we discover processes whereby national borders became less important while social, economic, legal and technological linkages created a shared social space for fusion research on an expanding scale.     

Freethinkers,anarchists and Francisco Ferrer: the making of a transnational solidarity campaign

This article examines the transnational solidarity campaign for Francisco Ferrer, the Catalan anarchist and educator who was sentenced to death for his alleged involvement in Barcelona's ‘Tragic Week’ of 1909. The international scale of the protests against Ferrer's execution was much remarked upon by his contemporaries. While historians have examined both the nature of demonstrations in support of Ferrer and the way in which he was commemorated, they have mostly focused on specific national contexts. This article takes a different approach: it investigates the transnational dimensions of the campaign. It places the protests within the framework of the ‘culture wars’ surrounding church–state relations. These cleavages were inherently transnational, and the structures developed by the international freethought movement, for example, played a significant role in sustaining the Ferrer campaign. The article also draws attention to other factors that shaped the protests and transcended national categories: from widespread images of Spanish ‘despotism’ to the way in which a foreign case could be adopted for domestic political mobilisation.     

War veterans and the transnational origins of Italian Fascism (1917–1919)

This article explores the origins of the historical relationship between war veterans and Fascism. Transcending the predominant paradigm of the controversial ‘brutalization’ thesis (George L. Mosse), the article relies on a transnational perspective that focuses on the interconnections between historical events and on processes of political communication and symbolic appropriation. Examining historical processes taking place in different European countries, as well as their effects on Mussolini and the Italian interventionists, the article argues that a transnational process of symbolic appropriation of the notion of the ‘veteran’, taking place between 1917 and 1919, is crucial to understand how the Fascist ideology and movement were born.     

Home-rule versus non-territorial autonomy? Western European national movements and their views on the minority question, 1919–1939

The leading elites of the ethnonationalist movements that developed in the aftermath of World War I in Western Europe usually refused to see their nations and territories as ‘national minorities’. In their view, they were stateless nations or nationalities. However, in the aftermath of World War I, the prior international discussion on the nationality principle was increasingly replaced with the notion of ‘minority rights’, enhanced by the implementation of the Minorities Treaties by the League of Nations. Thus, the term ‘national minority’ emerged as a label that permitted ethnonationalist activist to present their claims on the international stage. This became evident in the participation of some Western European national movements in the activities of some transnational non-governmental organisations, such as the Congress of European Nationalities (1925–1939). However, the general programme advocated by the most influential leaders of East-Central ethnic minorities, based on the extension of the personal principle and the implementation of non-territorial autonomy all over Europe, was hard to accept for ethnonationalist elites from Western Europe, which were interested in territorial home-rule and believed that their homelands did not fit in the category of ‘minority’. This article explores the modalities and limits of that cultural and political dialogue.     

The importance of difference in the making of transnationality: biographies and networks of the Benedictine mission in Tanganyika (1922–65)

The Missionary Benedictines of Saint Ottilien were the first Roman Catholic mission house in imperial Germany. During the heyday of European imperialisms, colonialisms and Christian missions the monastic community began its engagement in ‘German East Africa’. To enable and promote its proselytization efforts in the imperial colony until the end of the Great War, the Missionary Benedictines had to respond to shifting political conditions and to rearrange their networks as and when required. This orientation became even more pronounced during the renewal of the Benedictine Mission in the British mandated territory of Tanganyika up until the Second Vatican Council and the political independence of Tanzania. From 1922 to 1965 at least 379 members of the Congregation lived and worked in Tanganyika. Their biographies were closely linked to the complex transboundary system of their religious community. This article will portray them as a highly institutionalized group of transnational actors. It argues that to maintain its activities and organizational structures, the leaders of the Benedictine Mission established a dynamic multi-level network connecting a variety of scales, spaces and actors. To ensure its continued existence under constantly changing conditions they constituted a hierarchic system of difference and diversity.     

Collective Trauma and the Evolution of Nehru's Worldview: Uncovering the Roots of Nehruvian Non-Alignment

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on Nehruvian non-alignment often assumes an artificial continuity between Jawaharlal Nehru's pre-independence thinking and post-independence decision, as India's prime minister, to pursue a policy of rejecting any international blocs or military alliances. This article demonstrates that, in fact, the ideas that constituted Nehruvian non-alignment were largely absent from Nehru's pre-independence thought – during the decades before India's independence Nehru articulated a strong willingness to cede India's sovereignty to international groupings for idealistic aims. To explain Nehru's shift from idealistic internationalist to professed internationalist but de facto isolationist with regard to alliances and blocs, I advocate a first-image, constructivist approach which considers the impact of collective trauma on Nehru's worldview. Drawing upon a novel, synthesized approach to theorizing collective trauma's impact on national identity, this article argues that the collective trauma Nehru witnessed and experienced during the decades before Indian independence profoundly impacted his trust in international institutions and views on representational diplomacy. In turn, this trauma affected his interpretation of various ideational and strategic considerations, contributing to the formulation of Nehruvian non-alignment.     

Being international in times of war: Arthur Sweetser and the shifting of the League of Nations to the United Nations

Transnational actors are increasingly surfacing when it comes to understanding the global dimensions of the modern nation-state. Thinking of the modern state from the diversity of its personnel and its many intersections with private and semi-private actors or institutions with a transnational reach, the new diplomatic history acknowledges the embeddedness of states in border-crossing agencies. What has been conceptualized as ‘network diplomacy’ grasps both the role of transnational epistemic communities for the making of particular policy fields and the perception of diplomats as an integral part of transnational initiatives. Taking the League of Nations as a case study, this article analyses how its personnel attempted to spell out ideas of network diplomacy and to make their exposed position at the intersection of transnational civil society, state politics and international institutions work to effect political change. We focus on the transnational career of Arthur Sweetser (1888–1968) who, as a journalist, a long-term member of the League secretariat, the UN staff and the US administration, was at the forefront of developing new techniques of diplomatic practices beyond institutional mandates. Sweetser’s trajectory allows us to illuminate the mechanisms of network diplomacy by probing into multi-layered negotiation processes that engaged state practices, international institutions and the border-crossing agency of individuals. Characterizing him as transnational enables one to interlink his mobile trajectory with a particular scope of action that unfolded beyond the political demarcation of the nation-state and its instituted logics of rule and diplomacy. We further carve out the main features of a diplomatic practice that was formally non-existent yet crucial to the transfer of League principles, practices and personnel to the new United Nations.     

Notions of solidarity and integration in times of war: the idea of Europe, 1914–18

Abstract

This article argues that the First World War did not just aggravate nationalist sentiments but also encouraged intercultural exchange and a better understanding of other societies and ways of life. Indeed, the wartime prevalence of notions of solidarity and integration requires more attention and careful analysis. The essay explores three key issues, focusing in particular on solidarity practices and transnational interaction. It investigates military alliances, the collaboration between national independence movements, and the role of neutral countries as refuge and gathering place of pacifist groups and intellectuals. Many of these actors discussed and promoted forms of at least regional cooperation in post-war Europe.     

The Great War,the child’s body and the American Red Cross

Abstract

This article examines the child-relief activities of the American Red Cross in Hungary in the aftermath of the Great War, offering an insight into the workings of humanitarianism in interwar Europe. A close look at this one Central European ‘playground’ of transatlantic intervention helps us understand the logic and the underlying political, economic and ideological motives behind Allied humanitarian aid to ‘enemy’ children. Analysis of the ways in which the war’s aftermath affected children, their bodies and their relief throws light on the relationship between violent conflicts, children in need and humanitarian intervention. The article looks particularly at the role of the child’s damaged body and its photographic representation, making it what Cathleen Canning calls an ‘embodied experience of war’. Exploration of the humanitarian discourse around the suffering child helps us identify the humanitarian reaction to the unforeseen social consequences of wartime confrontation. The article argues that the harmed body of the ‘enemy child’ served to mobilise transnational compassion that challenged the war’s deeply anchored ‘friend–foe’ mentality. The child turned into a means of configuring and translating human suffering beyond ideological and political borders. At the same time humanitarian child relief helped to further consolidate asymmetric international power relations.     

REFORM AND REVOLUTION IN SCANDINAVIA, 1917–1919

The articles in this special issue, entitled Reform and Revolution in Scandinavia, 1917–1919: Entangled Histories and Visions of the Future, deal with the political turmoil in Scandinavia in the late 1910s, accelerated by the First World War and the revolutions in Russia in February/March and October/November 1917 and eventually in Germany in the autumn of 1918. Their special focus is on the political debates about reform and revolution and the related visions of the future of political order and social structures in national contexts and across borders. The articles examine how actors with different agendas in different contexts exploited the opportunities opened up by a window of change. None of the Scandinavian countries were directly involved in the theatre of war, but the whole of Scandinavia was associated with the hostilities in many other ways. The revolutionary processes in Russia affected Finland directly but – reflecting the events spreading from Petrograd – the debates about the legitimacy of the established political order intensified in all Scandinavian countries. The articles demonstrate how the debates and political processes took diverse forms in varying national contexts but were often more dependent on international relations, transnationally interconnected and entangled, than has traditionally been recognized in nation-state-centred historiographies.     

Transnational Constructors of Parliamentary Democracy in Swedish and Finnish Constitutional Controversies, 1917–1919

During the First World War, the legitimacy of established polities was challenged everywhere in Europe. Not only the combatant great powers but also smaller states witnessed a resurgence of constitutional disputes and competing ideological conceptualizations of revolution and reform, the will of the people, democracy, and parliamentarism. While these controversies primarily focused on the future of the national polities concerned, historical experiences and discourses accelerated by the war and the Russian Revolution were transnationally interconnected and contributed to discursive transfers between political cultures. Swedish and Finnish socialists were linked by their internationals, liberals were connected by transnational debates for and against ‘Western’ democracy and parliamentarism, and conservative politicians and academics were involved in ideologically oriented networks. This article reconstructs transnational links and discourses in order to understand the exceptionally confrontational dynamics (which, in Finland, partly led to a civil war) and the outcomes of the Swedish and Finnish constitutional debates in 1917–1919. It examines the nature of the transnational connections of eight Swedish and Finnish conservatives, liberals, revisionist socialists, and far-Left socialists, analysing their argumentation on constitutional questions in published works and parliamentary speeches as illustrative examples of the political groups they represented.     

‘Assisting you to become a local’: NGOs and constructed foreign spouses in Eastern Taiwan

As social and cultural contexts change and globalization spreads, the number of transnational-marriage migrants mainly from Southeast Asia has increased in Taiwan. Using institutional ethnography, this article investigates the roles of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and projects aimed at helping foreign spouses to adapt to their new life. I mainly elaborate that NGOs emerge as important actors in assisting and empowering transnational spouses to ‘become locals’. In empowerment projects, foreign spouses are given a voice to elaborate themselves. However, this article elaborates that these projects are a scheme of education to shape each such migrant into a proper ‘Taiwanese wife/mother/daughter-in-law’. Also, these projects particularly promote ‘exoticism’ of migrants and become key sources of how local people understand the images of ‘foreign spouses’. As a result, though NGOs play positive roles in empowering foreign spouses, we need to be aware that NGOs’ efforts may ironically become a mechanism to strengthen transnational spouses’ gender roles and cultural stereotypes.     

Borderless sport? Imagining and organising bicycle racing in Belgium, 1869–1914: between transnational dynamics and national aspirations

From the 1860s onwards, the new sport of bicycle racing engendered transnational flows of ideas, practices and performers. However, national actors and sensitivities always remained present. In interaction with these transnational flows they shaped national identity in this sport, as the Belgian case shows. Belgium was a site of cross-border interaction for racing from early on. Nevertheless, actors like the Belgian cycling press or national cycling union also continuously tried to construct a ‘national’ racing culture. French and British influences were especially crucial here, as Belgian actors were continuously torn between both in determining their position in the amateur–professional question or in the International Cycling Association. France and Britain thus functioned as ‘significant others’ in the shaping of ‘national’ Belgian racing, a process often complicated by the transnational activities of other, commercially motivated actors like cycling tracks or racers themselves. In competition, too, the discourses of the Belgian press on racers Hubert Houben and Robert Protin celebrated their ‘small nation’ and its success against and differences from its bigger neighbours. The Belgian orientation on French racing eventually became dominant, and proved to be crucial to the resurrection of the sport in Belgium after a period of crisis around 1900.     

The politics of repressing environmentalists as agents of foreign influence

Theoretically, this article reveals the long-term risk for local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of participating in transnational advocacy networks (TANs), accepting money from foreign sources and throwing ‘boomerangs’ internationally—a strategy used by local NGOs to seek international allies to pressure repressive and unresponsive states at home. Focusing primarily on the suppression of environmental NGOs that oppose natural-resource extraction, this article examines three cases—Russia, India and Australia—to illuminate the consequences of this trend for local civil society and TANs. It also documents a global trend towards states depicting local NGOs with international linkages as subversive agents of foreign interests, justifying legal crackdowns and the severing of foreign funding and ties. State framing of NGOs as agents of foreign interests is repressing local environmental activism, depoliticising civil society and weakening international NGO alliances—a conclusion with far-reaching consequences for the future of TANs, local NGOs and environmental activism.     

Explaining the Congo Wars

Abstract

From 1996 to 2003, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was the scene of two major regional wars. The second Congo war (1998–2003) was an especially complex formation of wars within wars, characterised by repeatedly changing alliances between various actors, both internal and external, and by the spread of ethnic conflicts across national borders. However, the recent troubled history of the DRC has often been understood from either a national or an international perspective. The terms of this debate centred on whether the continental wars were linked either to the weak or collapsing state of Zaire/Congo or outside interferences by neighbouring states. The two studies reviewed in this essay both suggest ways of addressing this dichotomy between the internal and external dimensions of the conflicts. By analysing the multitude of conflicts from a regional perspective, both authors can aptly illuminate the linkages and interdependencies among local and national conflicts that became inextricably intertwined and developed into regional and continental conflicts. Thus, this review argues that both comprehensive works on the multiplicity of recent crises in the Great Lakes region significantly contribute to an understanding of the causes and evolution of the Congolese wars.