From the First World War until the height of the Cold War, actors from the decolonizing world sought to build connections with international peace movements. These efforts produced new networks and practices of solidarity while also exposing tensions over the centrality of decolonization in global struggles for peace. At the same time, such new coalitions also experienced moments of friction around the question of (potential) violence in struggles against Empire. Simply put, was the pursuit of sovereignty a prerequisite for world peace, or did the pursuit of world peace supersede the struggle for sovereignty?
This conference seeks to bring together histories of peace movements that place the decolonizing world at the center and emphasize the role of activists from Africa, Asia, and Latin America as key actors in shaping global peace advocacy. We welcome contributions that move beyond the focus on the Cold War and Euro-American experiences of peace internationalism, by foregrounding the challenges and opportunities posed by decolonization in the building of international coalitions for peace.
In order to build a truly global history of peace movements, this conference departs from an understanding of peace advocacy as having multiple points of origin. We intend to focus on regionally contingent understandings of peace advocacy, alongside the motivations of peace workers from decolonizing and newly decolonized countries for taking part in international coalitions for peace. To that end, the conference departs from a capacious view of peace advocacy that includes the full political and religious spectrum. Types of advocacy include, but are not limited to, conferences, protests, alternative communities, but also textual, literary and artistic expressions. In particular, the conference will interrogate the networks and spaces where ideas about peace were exchanged, exploring how mobility and interpersonal relationships contributed to repeated attempts to build more inclusive global peace movements and practices.
Join us!
We invite contributions from scholars at all career levels, and we warmly welcome submissions from scholars based in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Accommodation will be provided for all speakers. Travel funding is available - the conference conveners will prioritize funded travel for scholars based outside of Europe and the US, and those without permanent jobs.
The conference will convene based on pre-circulated papers of ca. 7,000 words, with intent to publish after a cycle of post-conference revisions. Submitted papers will only be circulated to confirmed speakers. The working language of the conference is English, but we warmly welcome papers from scholars whose primary working language is not English.
We invite papers spanning the 1900s until the 1990s. Topics may include but are not limited to:
- The history of local peace movements and their international connections;
- Local, regional and national chapters of international peace organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Soviet Union;
- Intellectual histories of peace thinking and concepts of nonviolence outside of Europe & the US;
- History of female peace activists and women's peace movements from the decolonizing world;
- Relations between peace movements and other internationalist movements such as cosmopolitanism, feminism, trade unionism, religious movements, anarchism;
- Histories of anti-nuclearism, antiwar campaigns, and conscientious objection in the decolonizing world;
- The history of cultural expressions of peace in art, film, music, and literature.
