Sites of International Memory 9781512824063

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Sites of International Memory
Part I: From National to International Sites of Memory
2. Palimpsests: National, International, and Transnational Sites of Memory
3. The Nansen Passport as Site of International and Exilic Memory
Part II: From Imperial to Postcolonial Sites of International Memory-Making
4. The Boxer War and International Memory
5. The Arctic: Memory Beyond Territoriality?
6. Antarctica and the Stratigraphy of International Memory
7. “I Seem to Hear the Camel Bells”: Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road and the Politics of the Belt-and- Road Initiative as a Future Global Memory of Illiberal Internationalism
Part III: City-Sites of International Memory
8. Revolutionary Roads: Tashkent as a Site of Indian Internationalism
9. Cosmopolitan, Global, International? New York’s Material Sites of Memory and Forgetting
10. Rediscovering the Total Liberation of Africa: Recalling Addis Ababa as a Site of African Internationalism
11. Greening Our Common Fate: Stockholm as a Node of Global Environmental Memory
Part IV: Memory-Making and Multilateral Institutions
12. Absent Memory and Abundant Present of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
13. International Conflict, National Pasts, and UNESCO World Heritage and Memory of the World
14. Internationalism from the Inside: The Women of the United Nations Secretariat in New York
List of Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Sites of International Memory

SITES OF INTERNATIONAL MEMORY

edited by

Glenda Sluga, Kate Darian-­Smith, and Madeleine Herren

U N I V E R S I T Y O F P E N N S Y LVA N I A P R E S S PHIL ADELPHIA

Copyright © 2023 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-­4112 www​.upenn​.edu​/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-­free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Hardcover ISBN: 978-­1-­5128-­2405-­6 eBook ISBN: 978-­1-­5128-­2406-­3 Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Sluga, Glenda, editor. | Darian-Smith, Kate, editor. | Herren, Madeleine, editor. Title: Sites of international memory / edited by Glenda Sluga, Kate Darian-Smith, and Madeleine Herren. Description: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023003603 | ISBN 9781512824056 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781512824063 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Collective memory. | History, Modern— 20th century. | Internationalism—History—20th century. | Memorialization—International cooperation. Classification: LCC D842 .S545 2023 | DDC 909.82—dc23/eng/20230210 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023003603

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii   1. Sites of International Memory

1

Glenda Sluga, Kate Darian-­Smith, and Madeleine Herren PART I. FROM NATIONAL TO INTERNATIONAL SITES OF MEMORY

  2. Palimpsests: National, International, and Transnational Sites of Memory

17

Jay Winter

  3. The Nansen Passport as Site of International and Exilic Memory

38

Philippa Hetherington PART II. FROM IMPERIAL TO POSTCOLONIAL SITES OF INTERNATIONAL MEMORY-­M AKING

  4. The Boxer War and International Memory

71

Dominique Biehl

  5. The Arctic: Memory Beyond Territoriality?

97

Madeleine Herren

  6. Antarctica and the Stratigraphy of International Memory

115

Rohan Howitt

  7. “I Seem to Hear the Camel Bells”: Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road and the Politics of the Belt-­and-­Road Initiative as a Future Global Memory of Illiberal Internationalism Ralph Weber

141

vi Contents

PART III. CITY-­SITES OF INTERNATIONAL MEMORY

  8. Revolutionary Roads: Tashkent as a Site of Indian Internationalism

165

Carolien Stolte

  9. Cosmopolitan, Global, International? New York’s Material Sites of Memory and Forgetting

188

Sarah C. Dunstan, David Goodman, and Glenda Sluga

10. Rediscovering the Total Liberation of Africa: Recalling Addis Ababa as a Site of African Internationalism

215

Beatrice Wayne

11. Greening Our Common Fate: Stockholm as a Node of Global Environmental Memory

237

Eric Paglia and Sverker Sörlin PART IV. MEMORY-­M AKING AND MULTILATERAL INSTITUTIONS

12. Absent Memory and Abundant Present of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

269

Roland Burke

13. International Conflict, National Pasts, and UNESCO World Heritage and Memory of the World

294

Kristal Buckley and Kate Darian-­Smith

14. Internationalism from the Inside: The Women of the United Nations Secretariat in New York

321

Alanna O’Malley

List of Contributors

347

Index 353

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

S

ites of International Memory is the culmination of historical and historiographical conversations held over many years. In various combinations, in seminars and workshops that have geographically spanned the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, in person and through online communication, the contributors and other discussants have met to reflect on just how we might bring together the new international history and studies of memory and commemoration. We thank all who were involved, especially Professor Lynn Meskell (University of Pennsylvania) and Professor Jennifer Barrett (University of Sydney), and recognize the scholarly generosity that shaped this endeavor. We are grateful for the support of Professor Patrizia Dogliani who hosted a meeting at the University of Bologna; the Institute for European Global Studies, University of Basel, which welcomed us there; and the College of Arts, Law and Education, University of Tasmania, for supporting gatherings at both its Hobart and Sydney campuses. Most important was our home site, the Laureate Research Program in International History at the University of Sydney, and we are particularly indebted to the Australian Research Council, which funded that program. The University of Pennsylvania Press has been enthusiastic about this project from the beginning. We thank Walter Biggins for his guidance and acknowledge that the volume has benefited from the detailed and constructive comments of two anonymous peer reviewers and the wider efforts of the publishing team. Our deepest gratitude is to our authors who wrote, and then polished, their essays in the difficult circumstances of a global pandemic. As the volume came together, we relied on the enthusiasm and assistance of Dominique Biehl and Ghassan Moazzin. In the final stages, we could not have completed the manuscript preparation, including research and editorial tasks, without the exceptional assistance of Dr. Jackie Dickenson at the University of Tasmania.

viii Acknowledgments

Finally, as coeditors, we have been on a journey of intellectual discovery; through the organizational momentum of preparing the volume, we were sustained even in dark times by our friendship and a shared commitment to understanding the past and its place in the future. We miss most in this moment of completion our dearest colleague, Philippa Hetherington, who was part of our conversations from the beginning, and our most generous and insightful interlocutor.

CHAPTER 1

Sites of International Memory Glenda Sluga, Kate Darian-­Smith, and Madeleine Herren

T

he statues, plaques, street names, practices, and other material and intangible forms of historical remembrance found in the cities and places where we live are everyday reminders that the collective memory of the past is everywhere. Some of these sites of memory are intended to celebrate and honor local events, others attest to the need to record and celebrate historical moments and people who are tied to wider narratives of nations and empires. This volume studies sites of international memory: the commemoration of a twentieth-century past when international ideas, institutions, and experiences also mattered. Consider the memorial (Figure 1.1) unveiled to great pomp and ceremony in 1909 in the Swiss city of Berne marking the thirtieth anniversary, and the headquarters, of the Universal Postal Union (UPU). The memorial’s design was the product of a competition that required attention to how the world might be represented, and how a model of international cooperation might appear. Entitled Around the World, the massive monument (ten meters high and four meters across) was constructed in bronze and granite by the French sculptor René de Saint-­Marceaux, and depicts the earth’s globe embraced by five female figures in classical robes. Each figure represents one of the continents of the world, and each is frozen in the act of transmitting communications, one to the other, as if linked in a dance. The figure of Berna, the city personified, lies at its base. The monument, and its symbolic representation of a really existing technocratic internationalism had currency throughout the twentieth century, and was adopted as the UPU’s official logo in 1967. Its motif can be found on over 800 postage stamps issued by many of the UPU’s 191 member nations, including a special 2009 UPU centenary stamp.

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Figure 1.1. Weltpostdenkmal (Autour du monde—René de Saint-­Marceaux 1909). Photo credit: Gürkan Sengün, CC BY-­SA 3.0.

As significantly, the memorial’s engagement of the ideal of international cooperation, like the philatelic culture or even globalization it has supported, now seems relatively passé; as the UPU’s relevance has since faded with the invention of alternative digital forms of communication and the rise of populist nationalism, it has attracted criticism as an old-­fashioned and biased body.1 It could be argued that in the early twenty-­first century, the UPU memorial—relatively neglected in one of Berne’s riverside parks—marks an absence of international memory. It is against the background of this complex landscape of memory and forgetting that we have assembled a collection of essays to track the material and textual clues of an international past, often simultaneously imperial and national, cosmopolitan and global, and only sometimes self-­consciously remembered. Half a century ago, the French historian Pierre Nora’s three-­volume Lieux de mémoire (Sites of Memory) seeded a revolutionary analysis of the making



Sites of International Memory 3

and nature of national communities.2 Nora’s historical focus was on the politics of memory—its significance, structures, and purposes—with the nation serving as the point of reference. Sites of International Memory builds on Nora’s innovation and other more recent work on the transnational nature of memory to recover and map twentieth-­century international lieux de mémoire. These sites include the range of subjects-­objects Nora catalogued as national sites of memory: memorials and buildings, libraries and books, passports and stamps. We bring a focus on the politics of memory to the accelerating historical interest in the last hundred years of international forms of governance and thinking. Since the 2000s, just as the valence of international norms and institutions declines, and new nationalisms intensify across the globe, a new international history—the offspring of the marriage of political, social, and cultural historical methods—is zooming in on the internal workings of multilateral institutions through the twentieth century, the liberal and illiberal internationalisms that nurtured their relevance, and the individuals who were key international actors.3 Historians of all stripes are drawing attention to the affect of internationalisms, and their effects on how we understand the potential and limits of nation-­states, including the movements for collective rights and representation exploited by internationally organized women or colonial subjects with national ambitions.4 The influence of the new international history means we now know much more about intergovernmental bodies such as the interwar League of Nations and its ambitions, bureaucracies, and extensive social underpinnings. Historical investigations have also opened up the inner workings of intergovernmental bodies such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as well as the UN and its offshoots such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).5 This scholarship is capturing the regional and national connections between a left to right political spectrum of international thinking and institutions. It is also paying close attention to how internationalisms were caught up in imperial and colonial entanglements, reflecting at times the arrival of the globalized “cosmopolitized” world.6 In other words, the memory of this international past is not only traceable through the installation of international institutions, it can also be traced through the ideas of liberal and socialist internationalists, colonial and postcolonial internationalisms, and across local, national, and universal levels of political agitation. Situated at the intersections of such wider historical lines of inquiry into the geopolitics and fraught ambivalences of “a world connecting,” this volume sets out to map material and ideological sites

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of international memory, to interrogate the political and cultural legacies of the recent international past, as evident in conceptualizations of nationhood and identity today.7

Sites of International Memory Historians are now well-­practiced in the study of lieux de mémoire: whether explicit in material forms of community and national identities, or implicit in the drawing of territorial and national borders and the symbolic representations and locations tied to these, or in a vast array of tangible and intangible objects and heritage. Written and visual culture, social and cultural practices, and commemorative events and their depictions, are all conventionally understood as sources of tangible and non-­tangible memory. More recently, and in the context of the flourishing field of cross-­disciplinary memory studies, historians no longer only focus on the social memory or collective memory of nations and their communities, but also aim to capture wider transnational flows of identity and experience that cross sovereign borders.8 New scholarly discussions have moved away from the default national framings of lieux de mémoire in other ways: whether by testing and fleshing out the potential of memory-­making and its memorialization as it has occurred in imperial and global settings; or by addressing broader national and community memories that may be detached from patrimonial narratives or invested in them. This can be seen too in the historical experiences and expressed forms of memory that are associated with international migration and the identities and connections of diasporic communities, even when they invoke national imperatives and interests.9 In acknowledging the mobilities of memory, for example, Michael Rothberg’s influential conceptualization of noeuds de mémoire, or “knots of memory,” and his work on “multidirectional memory” is one example of how memory scholarship has increasingly accommodated the complicated and evolving layered relation of remembrance to the nation.10 For Rothberg, the public sphere—where historical memories are given material and symbolic validation through commemorative forms—is not limited to the contestation between differing groups for representation within national states. Rather it is a non-­nation-­specific discursive space enabling new identities and interests to come into being. In the midst of the expanding historical debates about the locations, scales, and forms of individual and collective memory, memory across space and



Sites of International Memory 5

time, the essays presented here locate forms of memory—and the remembering and forgetting of historical events—in diverse international settings that call up various historically specific political, cultural, and ideological definitions of international. Rather than ascribe to any one version of memory studies, the contributors to Sites of International Memory explore a range of approaches. Among them is the conceptualization of historical memory as palimpsest. In using this specific image of the layering of meaning, the opening essays by Jay Winter and Philippa Hetherington signpost the relationship of national memory to more expansive international and transnational perspectives on the recent past. As a celebrated interpreter of Nora’s work, Winter interrogates how multilayered, and concealed forms of memory may disappear and reappear to achieve a potentially contradictory meaning in corresponding historical contexts. Hetherington refocuses our attention on sites of memory as at once personal, localized, national, international, and transnational. In all cases, particular places and objects concentrate individual experiences and their meaning within widening frames, spanning countries and borders, and gaining their significance through networks, institutions, and ideas that are beyond national interests. Taking an alternative conceptual frame, Rohan Howitt experiments with the geological idea of stratigraphy to evoke the layering of local, national, and imperial pasts that combine (and compete) in the constitution of sites of international memory. In general, the essays in Sites of International Memory demonstrate through case studies the links between commemorative artifacts (such as memorials or medallions), institutions (such as libraries or museums), popular culture (including movies and literary and visual texts) and their contexts, whether in relation to liberal and socialist internationalisms, state and nonstate international organizations, or personal ambitions. In this respect, this scholarship reveals the relevance of the international to the layered materiality of national, imperial, and postcolonial pasts. Indeed, just as historians now view internationalism through the perspective of nesting and competing communities, identities, and polities, this volume is intended to contribute to a historiography of international memory that exposes the tensions and convergences between the local and the global, routing through national, imperial, transnational, and global historical landscapes. Across this volume too, many essays share an interest in the forgotten status of sites of international memory. Nora’s foundational work still provides a useful provocation on this point, theorizing that sites of memory occur in the absence of a community with “an immense and intimate fund of

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memory,” where memory survives “only as a reconstituted object beneath the gaze of critical history.”11 In other words, the memory of the past comes into being because that past no longer exists.12 In the case of sites of international memory, the material evidence of that past, and its destruction, are equally significant, and point to the politics of memory in the sense that the international past has in fact been forgotten or rendered irrelevant. The authors trace such evidence—in its presence and absence—through the multiple and layered histories of places and events, in evolving political and social contexts. The evolving utility and political and popular understandings of the function of civic buildings, for example, are the focus of some chapters in this collection. Here we might consider, too, the neo-­Renaissance red-­brick solidity of the Vredspaleis—the Peace Palace built in The Hague on the instructions of the famous 1907 peace conference with the funding of the Scottish-­American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie—or the expansive 1930s modernism of the Palais des Nations (also the product of an international competition) located on Geneva’s own lake shores, once home to the League of Nations and now a campus of the UN. Like the famous skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan built as the official headquarters of the UN in 1951, these earlier buildings were designed to celebrate the idea of the international through such explicit elements as external and internal decorative sculpture and artwork. Then there is the internationalist symbolism of purpose-­built conference sites that exists outside of Western locales, not least Africa Hall in Addis Ababa. Constructed in 1961 as the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, its meaning in the world order is now buried in the changing skyline and everyday life of that city, and in the nationalist narratives of postcolonial African internationalism that won out. While the memory of the material and ideological origins of many buildings intended to manifest international ambitions may have been long relegated to the past, they nonetheless act as sites of memory-­making in other ways, accommodating documentary archives, oral histories, and specialist collections that attest to the history and influences of their twentieth-­ century internationalist origins. The purpose of essays within this book is to reexamine the histories of such places, surfacing the original intentions of these buildings as the embodiment of historically situated internationalist impulses while tracking forms of memory-­making and the unstable politics of memory across time and place. The essay on New York by Sarah Dunstan, David Goodman, and Glenda Sluga, notes the successive rise and fall of internationalisms in the urban fabric of Manhattan. This is a history of memory



Sites of International Memory 7

that connects the late nineteenth-­century and nationalist Statue of Liberty to the internationalism of the UN; the creation of the UN to the suppression of the memories of the League of Nations, the first major experiment in international governance tainted by its failures; the UN project, over the decades of its existence, to displaced memories and counternarratives of New York’s cosmopolitan and global as well as internationalist pasts. Then there are the seeming absences within this history of the memory of internationalism. Madeleine Herren’s essay reminds us that the North Pole was perceived as both empty space and global commons, signifying both a geographical absence and a presence. This dual representation was evident in the design of the official UN flag adopted in 1946, the aim of which was to signal an internationalism that overrode national territorial boundaries by having the “empty space” of the Arctic at its center. Drawing on a range of historical sources and approaches, Sites of International Memory interrogates recent and ongoing debates among scholars about the ownership of textual, material and place-­based memories, the implications for nations and communities where these memories are challenged, and the tensions (productive or not) between local and global responses to the remembrance of historic international events and phenomena that may continue to influence social views and political ambitions. The volume investigates who and what contributes to the making of international memories, and their ongoing relevance today; how sites of memory develop over time and in response to changing imperatives, including, as Eric Paglia and Sverker Sörlin’s essay on Stockholm notes, the Anthropocene and the crisis of climate change. Ultimately, the contributors to Sites of International Memory posit the need for a new historiography of identity-­building across borders that acknowledges the international as a characteristic site of memory in the twentieth century and the role of international memory-­making in new perspectives on, and narratives of, international pasts.

International Memories from Local to Global We have organized Sites of International Memory around four thematic parts that investigate international ideas, practices, policies, and institutions and how their impact on public and private experience have been variously cele­ brated, commemorated, forgotten, and reinvented by individuals, by states and other kinds of actors over the course of the twentieth and twenty-­first

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centuries. We begin by locating sites of international memory in relation to the most familiar and yet contested sources of national memory in modern experience: war and migration. In Part I, “From National to International Sites of Memory,” Jay Winter teases out a typology of memory by redefining three sites of national war memorialization as either international or transnational in character: the Historial de la Grande Guerre, located on the Somme battlefield and opened in 1992; the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, inaugurated in Berlin in 2004; and the launch in 2014 of the Anneau de la Mémoire or Ring of Memory, erected on the hill of Notre-­Dame-­de-Lorette in France and listing the names of more than half a million victims across nationalities who died in World War I. He argues that each of these memorials of twentieth-­century war can be seen as a palimpsest, their multiple layers of meaning about the past in the present as likely to evoke international as local, national, and transnational memories. For Philippa Hetherington, the Nansen passport, which arose from the international governance of Europe’s post–World War I refugee problem, is also a palimpsest onto which international and national, insider and outsider, inclusive and exclusive memories have been simultaneously projected. Hetherington restores not only the significance of the Nansen passport in the determination of individual lives but also how it shaped individual subjectivities invested in narratives of internationalism as much as empire and nation. Part II, “From Imperial to Postcolonial Sites of International Memory-­ Making,” locates the imperial and postcolonial contexts of state-­based memory-­ making in a series of telling case studies that are more commonly associated with the histories of colonization and national expansion—the Boxer War, territorial competition in the polar regions, and China’s current Silk Road ambitions. In these specific settings, the authors each explore alternative readings of how state and nonstate actors either intentionally or unintentionally evoked international, even universalizing memories. Dominique Biehl’s essay concerns the geopolitics of the international concessions in China that were created by the commercially and militarily intrusive European empires. When war broke out between these imperial nations in 1899, the response within the concessions led to the invention of complex and distinctive sites of deliberately international, as well as imperial, and national memories of the conflict. During and after the war, non-­Chinese communities sought to place their stamp on the meaning and memory of the Boxer Rebellion in ways that reflected their claims and international status within the Chinese setting. They commissioned the Peking Siege Medal to recognize the existence of a self-­identified international



Sites of International Memory 9

community, along with plans for a monument and international cemetery, and the commemoration of a piece of artillery known as the International Gun. As importantly, these self-­conscious attempts to create international sites of memory of Western experiences of the Boxer Rebellion were ultimately unsuccessful. In the longer term it was the national narratives and Chinese memories of that imperial war which dominated. Ralph Weber’s discussion of China’s more contemporary resurrection and renegotiation of a long national memory of the Silk Road moves us into a radically altered international setting. Weber argues that the manufacture by the Chinese state of a historical presence that spans national borders today serves to gild its expansionist ambition with a legitimacy and authority bestowed by the cultural international past that is the idea of the Silk Road. When Madeleine Herren turns our attention to the Arctic, we find a completely distinctive and so-­called empty space not easily filled with any memory. Herren argues that the Arctic is a site of international memory that exists beyond territoriality, offering a focal point for the investigation of new forms of remembrance and identity-­building, including denoting an environmental universalism that addresses humankind beyond national or even international institutions. In his chapter on Antarctica, Rohan Howitt takes up a similar analysis at the other end of the earth. Here, at the world’s southernmost edge, the memory stratigraphy of Port Lockroy reveals it as the site of rival imperialisms and internationalisms. The essays in Part III, “City-­Sites of International Memory,” explore the built fabric of cities as sites of international memory, where the materiality of that memory is buried, exposed and obscured. While the contemporary political geography of cities locates them firmly in nation-­states, we see that cities have acted as hubs for political activism by nonstate actors, as well as state actors, engaged in global endeavors. Carolien Stolte explores the attraction of a non-­metropolitan Tashkent as a site of radical and utopian strands of shifting twentieth-­century Asian/Indian internationalisms; Beatrice Wayne examines Africa Hall in Addis Ababa as a forgotten site of African/Black internationalisms and the contested visions of anticolonial worldmaking that arose around decolonization. Sarah Dunstan, David Goodman, and Glenda Sluga explore New York as a site of the intersecting memories of cosmopolitan, global, and international pasts, where the cosmopolitan invokes cultural communities, the global economic conditions, and the international the influence of internationalist movements since the late nineteenth century. Their analysis draws out the contested race-­differentiated sites of those movements over this same

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period. Like Addis Ababa, remapping New York’s internationalist past brings us closer to a complex understanding of the diverse Black internationalisms inspired by the invention of the UN and even in opposition to it; in Addis Ababa, as Wayne notes in her complex deconstruction of the significance of the Africa Hall building, we can see the role of memory in competing versions of African/Black internationalisms, and which wins out. The contested nature of African unity, and of its national or supranational form, are fought out in the design and purpose of Africa Hall, and the idea of the “spirit of Addis Ababa,” evoked in memory of the “spirit of Geneva.” For Stolte, the reconstruction of Indian memories of the international purpose of the regional hub of Tashkent is necessary in the absence of material evidence given the repeated rebuilding of the city and destruction of the layers of the past since the 1920s across shifting geopolitical thresholds. By contrast, Eric Paglia and Sverker Sörlin are able to map the city of Stockholm as a crucial site for the memorialization of environmental global governance as a kind of public history. Part IV, “Memory-­Making and Multilateral Institutions,” engages with international institutions and their multilateral ambitions alongside the idea of the “heritage of humanity” in the past and the present. These essays look at how international mobilities and laws have fostered new sites of collective and world memory. Roland Burke’s fascinating study of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) examines the memory of the document since its acceptance by the United National General Assembly in 1948. The UN granted the UDHR an officially designated calendar day to encourage its commemoration and spur wider reflection on human rights as an ongoing struggle. The valorization of the UDHR’s virtues required it to affirm a timeless universalism as a universal international memory beyond both space and time. In their analysis of the ideas promulgated by the powerful concept of a “universal cultural heritage” that exists beyond national, regional, or cultural borders or definitions, Kristal Buckley and Kate Darian-­Smith turn to ongoing controversies between member states in UNESCO’s iconic world heritage system and its lesser-­known Memory of the World program. The diplomatic and institutional politics of heritage nominations have become the sites at which competing notions of international, world, and human communities have jostled alongside understandings of cultural value and human rights to promote the protection and conservation of places and practices of universal significance for humanity. Debates around such world heritage programs substantially illuminate the tensions between the national and international



Sites of International Memory 11

memorializations seen in other contexts of historical commemoration and how these shape national and cultural identities. In the final chapter in this volume, Alanna O’Malley introduces the “cosmos of internationalism” through a close study of the published memoirs of two idealistic and extraordinary women employed by the UN Secretariat from the 1950s to the 1990s. She demonstrates how different individual memories can divert and contest the official historical narratives of the UN by revealing the gaps between the lofty idealism of internationalism and the daily tedium of bureaucracy and decision-­making within a gendered and hierarchical workplace. O’Malley’s dive into the history of the UN through the gendered perspective of memoirs reminds us again of the very personal dimension in the politics of memory that swirl within and around institutional sites of internationalism.

Conclusion Our present feels far distant from the rhythms and cadences of a century ago, when the the UPU memorial was intended to symbolize the triumph of an international outlook—or internationalism—encompassing political multilateralism and economic liberalism. It is against the background of this relative amnesia that the rich case studies and approaches of the essays collected are intended to draw historical attention to the resonance and remnants of the international in the remembered and forgotten past: When, why, and how have international sites of memory been remembered or forgotten? How have memories of the institutional, intellectual, and material traces of the international past worked to enhance and diminish the history of politics? Sites of International Memory is an intervention that steps out of the methodological nationalism that was long the default location for historical memory studies and, as importantly, pushes forward ambitions for a methodological cosmopolitanism. We hope this collection will be considered a vital contribution to empirical explorations of “the reality of the ‘cosmopolitan outlook,’” and to the historicization of the cosmopolitanized world so far unexplored by either international history or memory studies, or the heritage literature.13 The essays collected here remind us that memory makes community, whether memories of cities or buildings, geographical locations such as the Arctic, or objects such as Nansen passports issued by states for deterritorialized subjects, or human rights bills promoted by intergovernmental organizations to make

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the abstract more material. In each of these distinctive cases, the mapping of the international past radically shifts depending on whose memories matter, and what we have remembered. Given the social and political turmoil of the twenty-­first century, and its resurgent populist nationalisms, presuming that shared memory has an identity-­building function beyond the nation-­state in international/transnational contexts may seem misguided. However, the accumulating evidence— including in debates about transitional justice, for example—is confirming the crucial ongoing function of transnational heritage and memory institutions in our own times.14 Indeed, the history of memory practices reveals a process of continuous evolution in response to wider cultural currents and shifting geopolitical realities. If, as we argue, sites of international memory exist at the intersections of national, imperial, and overtly international territorial domains, these intersections return us to crucial questions about the specificity of sites of international memory, in contradistinction and in relationship to other conceptual framings, not least cosmopolitan, global, and planetary identifications. As a global pandemic unfolds and, at the time of writing, a new war was waged by Russia against Ukraine, it is timely to reflect on reconceived ways of remembering twentieth-­century internationalisms. Just as the narratives of war extricate layers of older histories, the desire for peace is increasingly argued in the institutional and normative terms of an international past, remembered in conventions, processes, and institutions. Even if sites of international memory are often about forgetting as much as remembering, the work of historians is surely to excavate the forgotten from the layers of memory work to re-­center the displaced and furnish a richer understanding of the lost past. From the perspective of a methodological cosmopolitanism, forgetting is all the more reason to remember. Remembering is not simply an act of courtesy, it can also be a more radical gesture, expanding our horizons of future orientation. We dedicate this volume to the memory of our colleague, the late Philippa Hetherington, an inspired and inspiring historian of Russia, and a generous fellow-­traveler in all-­things-­international history.

Notes 1. See Madeleine Herren and Glenda Sluga, “The Trump Administration Deals Another Blow to International Cooperation,” Washington Post, 14 December 2018, accessed 4 May 2021,



Sites of International Memory 13

https://​www​.washingtonpost​.com​/outlook​/2018​/12​/14​/trump​-administration​-deals​-another​ -blow​-international​-cooperation/. 2. Pierre Nora, Les Lieux de mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984). 3. See, for example, Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin, eds., Internationalisms: A Twentieth Century History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Philippa Hetheringon and Glenda Sluga, eds., Liberal and Illiberal Internationalisms, special issue, Journal of World History 31, no. 1 (2020); Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Suzanne Bardgett, David Cesarani, Jessica Reinisch, and Johannes-­Dieter Steinert, eds., Justice, Politics and Memory in Europe After the Second World War: Landscapes After Battle, vol. 2 (London: Valentine Michell, 2011); Jessica Reinisch and David Brydan, eds., Internationalists in European History: Rethinking the Twentieth Century (London: Bloomsbury, 2021); Simon Jackson and Alanna O’Malley, eds., The Institution of International Order: From the League of Nations to the United Nations (Boca Raton, FL: Routledge, 2018); and Florian Wagner, Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022). 4. Ilaria Scaglia, The Emotions of Internationalism: Feeling International Cooperation in the Alps in the Interwar Period, Emotions in History series, ed. Ute Frevert and Thomas Dixon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020); Manu Goswami, “Imaginary Futures and Colonial Internationalisms,” American Historical Review 117, no. 5 (2012): 1461–85. Most recently, see Glenda Sluga, “Nationalism as Historical Method,” in special forum, Rethinking Nationalism, American Historical Review 127, no. 1 (2022): 364–369. 5. Sunil Amrith and Glenda Sluga, “New Histories of the United Nations,” Journal of World History 19, no. 3 (2008): 251–74; Glenda Sluga, “UNESCO and the (One) World of Julian Huxley,” Journal of World History 21, no. 3 (2010): 393–418; Glenda Sluga, “The Transnational History of International Institutions,” Journal of Global History 6, no. 2 (2011): 219–22; Karen Gram-­Skjoldager, “The League of Nations: The Creation and Legitimization of International Civil Service,” in Peacemaking and International Order After the First World War, ed. Peter Jackson, William Mulligan, Glenda Sluga (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023); Karen Gram-­Skjoldager, Haakon A. Ikonomou, and Torsten Kahlert, Organizing the 20th Century World: International Organizations and the Emergence of International Public Administration, 1920–1960s (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). 6. We take “cosmopolitized” from Ulrich Beck. See Sabine Selchow, “The Paths Not (Yet) Taken: Ulrich Beck, the ‘Cosmopolitized World’ and Security Studies,” Security Dialogue 47, no. 5 (2016): 369–85. 7. Emily S. Rosenberg, ed., A World Connecting, 1870–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 8. See, for example, Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad, eds., Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Robert Aldrich, “Introduction: Sites of Colonial Memory,” in Vestiges of the Colonial Empire in France: Monuments, Museums and Colonial Memories (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Rick Crownshaw, ed., Transcultural Memory (London: Routledge, 2016); Rick Crownshaw, “Introduction,” Parallax 17, no. 4 (2011): 1–3; Chiara De Cesari and Ann Rigney, eds., Transnational Memory: Circulation, Articulation, Scales (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014); Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, “Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory,” European Journal of Social Theory 5, no. 1 (2002): 87–106; Etienne Achille, Charles Forsdick, and Lydie

14

Chapter 1

Moudileno, Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Sites and Symbols in Modern France, Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures 68 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020); Dominik Geppert and Frank Lorenz-­Muller, Sites of Imperial Memory: Commemorating Colonial Rule in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016); and Annika Björkdahl and Stefanie Kappler, “The Creation of Transnational Memory Spaces: Professionalization and Commercialization,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 32, no. 3 (2019): 383–401. 9. See Kate Darian-­Smith and Paula Hamilton, eds., Remembering Migration: Oral History and Heritage in Australia (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 10. Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009); Michael Rothberg, “Introduction: Between Memory and Memory: From Lieux de mémoire to Noeuds de mémoire,” in “‘Noeuds de mémoire’: Multidirectional Memory in Postwar French and Francophone Culture,” ed. Michael Rothberg, Debarati Sanyal, and Maxim Silverman, Yale French Studies 118/119 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 3–12. 11. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” trans. Marc Roudebush, in “Memory and Counter-­Memory,” special issue, Representations, no. 26 (Spring 1989): 7–24, 12. See also Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism, 160. 12. Jay Winter, “Realms of Memory,” H-­France Review (October 1997): v, accessed 4 May 2021, https://​www​.h​-net​.org​/reviews​/showrev​.php​?id​=​1354. Winter went on to explain: “The significance of this approach for the study of cultural history is of the first order. Its primary effect is liberating. Like the pioneers of the French journal Annales Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, Nora has dared historians to broaden their vision and to widen their repertoires of evidence.” 13. Sabine Selchow, “Starting Somewhere Different: Methodological Cosmopolitanism and the Study of World Politics,” Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 20, no. 3 (July 2020): 544–63, 544; Sluga, “Nationalism as Historical Method,” passim. 14. Rachel Kerr, Henry Redwood, and James Gow, eds., Transitional Justice: Historical Perspectives on Transitional Justice (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2021).

PA R T I From National to International Sites of Memory

CHAPTER 2

Palimpsests: National, International, and Transnational Sites of Memory Jay Winter

Palimpsests All sites of memory are local and national, in that they draw attention to a particular site in a particular place where a significant event or events happened. What Dolores Hayden calls “the power of place” arises when people tell stories about a past that unfolded here, in this town and in this country. The question arises whether these local or national sites at one and the same time can also be international or transnational in character. I believe they can. International sites of memory mark events and movements that unfolded in more than one country—for instance, the operation of and abolition of the slave trade. Transnational sites are those that were constructed or designated as significant by people from different places who worked together to achieve transnational goals—for instance, the emergence of the European Union or the drafting and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What makes a site international is the coming together of associations in more than one country to mark events that were significant in different national contexts. What makes a site transnational is the way it is marked by people who work outside of or beyond nations to achieve transnational objectives. International sites are marked by the efforts of different actors operating in national associations, like the Second International, the League of Nations, or the United Nations. Transnational sites are fashioned by people working in transnational associations, such as the Médecins sans Frontières, the Roman Catholic Church, or the Red Cross. They have national standing,

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From National to International Sites of Memory

as does the archbishop of Paris, but their primary allegiance is to a transnational church or organization or coalition. I claim therefore that all sites of memory have local and national meanings since they say that something happened here or to the people who live here that is worth remembering in public. Only some sites of memory are international, in that they are constructed not solely by locals or residents of a particular region or country but by groups of people in different countries drawing attention to events they think are significant. And other sites of memory involve other groups, whose identity arises not from national associations but from transnational affiliations. Diasporic memory, for example, is both international since it refers to a homeland and to the scattered members of that homeland, and transnational since it frequently refers to a town or region from which people migrated. They frequently practice transnational memory in Landsmanschaften. I discovered that my Russian grandfather came from Brest-­Litovsk, on the Polish-­Byelorussian border, from a notice the association of emigrants from Brest-­Litovsk published in a newspaper in 1924. My family came from that transnational entity the Pale of Settlement, which was both part of the Russian Empire and a Jewish world that spanned many national and imperial borders. After 1945 Germans expelled from many parts of Eastern Europe created their own Landsmanschaften. The word is also used for alumni of universities who want to recall the fun of being young and relatively free. That freedom spanned borders and continents. Former students at my old college, Pembroke at Cambridge, run such an association, as do my former students at Yale University. These associations are global in character, but they do not necessarily perform acts of global memory. In most of these groups, there is a core and a periphery, a place of origin, semisacred in character, and a place of nostalgia, where those attached to the origin can recall its delights. Here, memory dissolves into nostalgia, as Svetlana Boym observed, a warm and cloudy place, like a sauna, where we can conjure up a past that (we know) never existed in the first place. Global memory, in my view, is an illusion, a site of fantasy rather than a site of memory. World heritage sites are not global sites of memory but rather those designated by a transnational organization, or by one of its auxiliary bodies, to be worthy of preservation. The work of UNESCO, founded on 16 November 1945 in Paris, was and remains the promotion of peace through education, science, and culture. Being founded and centered in Paris just after the end of

Palimpsests 19

the Second World War, UNESCO faced multiple tasks. One was the repair of European culture from the damage inflicted on it by the Nazi occupation of France and the rest of Europe. The great powers then were still proudly imperial, and no one saw this as a contradiction alongside UNESCO’s campaign against racism. It was only from the 1960s that it became a crime (or at least an embarrassment) to be an imperial power. Only in 1966 did the British Colonial Office merge with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Not always, but all too frequently the term “global culture” means the products of the Atlantic world marketed to everyone else. Nike, the maker of footwear, or the United Colors of Benetton, show us the way “global culture” has been reduced to a marketer’s slogan. Those who sell designer clothes are not agents of global memory. Colonial and imperial sites of memory are both international and transnational. They originate to express a binary bond between the settler and the country of origin. Two examples are two statues honoring Cecil Rhodes, the British magnate and prime minister of the Cape province. The first was installed in 1934 prominently at the University of Cape Town and removed in 2015. The second is on the external wall of Rhodes’s college in Oxford, Oriel, in 1911. It will remain in place with an explanatory plaque alongside it. Initially, these monuments tied London or Oxford to Cape Town, but the controversy over preserving them in place was transnational, drawing in people from all over the world. The same distinction between the international and the transnational may be seen in the establishment of the Rhodes scholarships in 1902. Initially a project to bring the sons of white settlers to Britain, it was expanded in 1903 to include German students, nominated by Kaiser Wilhelm II. These scholarships were redirected in 1914 to Canadian and West Indian candidates, and then restored for Germans in 1930. That came to an end in 1939 but, once more, in 1970 the Rhodes Trust opened the competition to students from the Federal Republic of Germany. The Rhodes scholarships were imperial in origin but became transnational over time.1 The same is true for sites of memory in other imperial or colonial settings. I stick to my view that there are four levels on which sites of memory operate. What distinguishes them is the subject position of the memory activists who create or sustain them. We find traces of these four levels of memory work in local and national archives. But we also learn about them through the records of international and transnational movements and associations. Sometimes, a site of memory attracts all four levels of associational activity. Consider the example of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, a museum and

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From National to International Sites of Memory

documentation center on the Holocaust. Here is a Jewish site, transnational in character. It is also an international site, recognizing the Just among the Nations, those people who were not Jewish who risked their lives to save Jewish people during the Holocaust. It is a national site, the place where foreign dignitaries and heads of state go on official visits. And it is a local site, facing the hills of Judea and the coastal plain. St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is similarly a palimpsest. It is local, national, international, and transnational, at one and the same time. The tomb of Lenin in Red Square, in Moscow, near the Kremlin, is a local site, to be sure, but also where national and international Communist leaders paid their respects and where tourists follow in their footsteps to this day. In its early days, after 1917, Communism attracted people who believed it was a transnational project; that belief did not last long, but while it lasted, this site was transnational as well. Levels of meaning arise from the collective work of those who create, preserve, appropriate, use, or destroy particular sites of memory. This four-­part typology of sites of memory is useful heuristically since it helps us see that meanings are multiple, and flexible, and so are the narratives people build on them. What matters most is to recognize how porous the boundaries are between the local, national, international, and transnational character of the work of those we call memory agents. They are the ones who tell us what a site of memory means.

Memory Agents This focus on memory agents leads to what I have termed a social agency interpretation of sites of memory. The source of this intervention was a sense of discomfort first with the original idea and second the subsequent free-­floating and at times vague notion of what Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire actually did. For him and the authors of the extraordinary seven-­volume series published between 1984 and 1992, what they did was to act as political astronomers, attempting to describe the political and social universe of France after the twin demise of Communism and Gaullism. To see the future of France one had to see the past, inscribed in a host of places, traditions, and texts. It was a brilliant success, both as a publishing venture and as an inspiration to hundreds of other scholars, myself included. Here was an approach that offered an alternative to two schools of historical thought that appeared in the 1980s to have exhausted their potential. By the 1980s, Marxism as a

Palimpsests 21

theory of history and as a theory of action had disintegrated, well before the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites. In the same period, social-­ scientific history based on quantification in demography, urban history, and economic history had lost its appeal. The scholarly work appearing in these fields was useful, but it did not change our understanding of the past. The field of memory studies was born in the 1970s and came to dominate not only history but also cognate disciplines, in particular literary studies. It was at this time that the topic of post-­traumatic stress disorder received the imprimatur of the American Psychiatric Association, and the delayed arrival of Holocaust studies transformed the history of the Second World War. The study of dark memory expanded rapidly now that the technology of audio and video capture and retrieval of survivors’ testimonies became easily accessible to scholars all over the world. What I call the “memory boom” of the last decades of the twentieth century2 was overdetermined. But it drew on a turn among historians and others to study the narratives embedded in objects, monuments, or buildings of a commemorative nature. To be sure, the choice of objects was subjective, but the violent history of the twentieth century had more than enough material to launch an intellectual current that is still powerful. That current informed the growing discipline of cultural history, defined as the study of the way men and women find meaning in their past.3 Nora’s seven-­volume project was a foundational moment in the arrival of cultural history as a dominant historical discipline. It was not an alternative to social history or to political history but a way to inform both by introducing an element of reflexivity. That term simply means that what meaning people have ascribed to their past matters centrally to the exercise of political power today and tomorrow. Here was the appeal of Nora’s project, and the inspiration for many like 4 it. This body of work both excited and troubled me too, in that, aside from investigating in ingenious ways what we now call political culture, it was unclear to me what all the spin-­off studies inspired by Nora actually achieved. On the one hand, they helped shift attention from social and political history to cultural history in the late twentieth century and after; on the other, they made cultural history a potpourri, in which, in effect, anything goes. That is why in the 1990s I focused on a functional interpretation of sites of memory. In part this arose from fruitful exchanges with an astonishing group of social anthropologists at Cambridge, in particular Meyer Fortes,5 that seemed to me to describe the social and cultural practices of a vast local, national,

22

From National to International Sites of Memory

international, and transnational community in mourning during and after the First World War. Anthropologists like Caroline Humphrey6 pointed out too that the Eurocentric nature of Nora’s lieux de mémoire was too narrow, and that to understand commemorative sites in Europe it was necessary to understand African, Asian, and Latin American forms of remembrance as well. Over time that project has come of age, though it has taken time to mature. Currently, the anthropologist Heonik Kwon has shown the way forward.7 I learned from these anthropologist neighbors how to shape a study of war memorials as quintessential sites of memory.8 Drawing too from J. L. Austin’s marvelous study How to Do Things with Words, I decided to focus on the performative element in the construction and use of les lieux de mémoire. And in doing so, I wanted to show that Nora was mistaken in one of his fundamental claims. It was not true in the 1980s (and it is not true today) that milieux de mémoire are ersatz, substitutes for a departed regime of milieux de mémoire.9 If Nora had shifted his gaze beyond the 6th arrondissement of Paris, he might have seen that there are milieux de mémoire all over the world—local, national, international, and transnational. The best way to make this point was to adopt a lightly functionalist approach to the subject. The central question of my research then as now has been what did the people who built or used these sites of memory do with them? What were they for? A preliminary answer came out of both archival work and numerous visits to local war memorials dotting the countryside in France and Britain. They were evidently places where people mourned. The second part of my argument appeared once again both through archival research and by using my eyes. These sites were overwhelmingly local. A few were national, and even fewer were imperial, international, or transnational in character. Especially before the Second World War, and before television and cheap tourism, most people mourned the dead of the First World War at local sites, alongside their neighbors and friends. There, women got into the narrative of war as mourners, given pride of place by everyone else, including veterans. In effect, the evidence was overwhelming that despite the importance of the national ceremonies, local sites were the places where people mourned. I call these people memory agents. They form small groups and engage in public acts of remembrance, and they do so mostly at certain sites within their reach. The work of these memory agents breathes life into these sites of memory and mourning. Working in local archives shows clearly that when those who activate these practices move away, or die, or fall ill, or become preoccupied with

Palimpsests 23

other projects, then these sites of memory fade away. All have a half-­life; all fall victim to time, to the succession of generations, and to the work of other people who either reappropriate these sites or let them fade away into the landscape. That is the sum and substance of my contribution to the debate over les lieux de mémoire. Decades ago, I asked my students at Cambridge what they saw at the first roundabout when they took the bus from the railway station into town. They mostly didn’t know what I was getting at when I referred to an interesting, even odd, war memorial at the roundabout of Station Road, which none of them had seen. A decade ago, it was removed from the roundabout, and now has faded into the landscape as a sculpture on the side of the road, but not a site of memory. Nobody does anything there anymore. Homo agens rules; memory agents either keep sites of memory alive or, by their inaction, let these sites lose their charge until they fade away.10 How does the appearance of international and transnational sites of memory affect this interpretation? I believe the approach I have just outlined still stands. However, it is necessary to add a dimension to this interpretive framework to which I have given insufficient attention in the past. I want to emphasize more clearly that all sites of memory are palimpsests, which have layers of meaning attached to them from their very beginnings. And this is even more evident when we deal with sites of memory created or adopted or adapted by subaltern or colonial populations, who use their own notation on top or alongside that of the once or still hegemonic power.

Sites and Sight That there are layered meanings in sites of memory should surprise no one. But in the English language, the synonym of sites and sight brings us to another way of understanding palimpsests. The meaning of war memorials is inscribed not only in iconography but also in what I call the geometry of remembrance.11 I mean that, over the course of the twentieth century, there has been a conversation among artists, architects, public officials, and activists which has led to a change, with major exceptions, in the way sites of memory are configured. My claim is that those who build or adopt transnational and international sites of memory, like those who built local ones, now tend to prefer the horizontal axis to the vertical.

24

From National to International Sites of Memory

Why should this be so? My reasoning is that the horizontal is the axis of mourning and applies to family groups as well as to very large transnational populations. The vertical is the visual grammar of redemption, of hope; the horizontal is the visual grammar of mourning, of loss. Their relationship is dialectical; if you prefer, they are in dialogue with each other. Here, we can see a change over time. The vertical, which is the vector of hope, is very frequently the posture of national affirmation. When we survey twentieth-­century sites of memory over the course of the twentieth century and beyond, we can see a change over time. The later the monument, the more likely it is to be horizontal in design or to have horizontal elements in it. I believe this turn to horizontality is even more striking after the turn of the twenty-­first century and is likely to remain the dominant pattern of public remembrance at sites of memory in the foreseeable future.

The Logic of Horizontality In this chapter, I want to illustrate the logic of horizontality in three sites of memory that are either international or transnational in character. All are palimpsests, in the sense of having multiple layers of meaning, some iconographic and others geometric in character. The first is the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne, Somme, France, which opened in 1992. The second is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, designed by Peter Eisenman and Buro Happold, inaugurated in 2004. The third is the Anneau de la Mémoire, a memorial structure built at the largest French battlefield of the First World War at Notre-­Dame-­de-­Lorette further north in France near Arras, designed by Philippe Prost and inaugurated in 2014. First a word of disclosure. I had the good fortune to be asked to join the team designing the museum and constructing its narrative, both spatial and written. I do not have the same insider’s knowledge about the other two projects discussed here, but I have spent a considerable amount of time at them and admire the thoughtfulness and artistic power the designers of the memorials in Berlin and Notre-­Dame-­de-­Lorette brought to their task. The first question is this: Are these three sites of memory international or transnational? The answer is both. They are at one and the same time international and transnational. The Historial is the first museum of the Great War designed as an international site of memory. That is, the standpoint, and artifacts relating to, the three great powers whose soldiers fought at this site from

Palimpsests 25

1 July 1916 to 10 December 1916, are French, British, and German, without preference for the home country. Indeed, the vitrines or showcases are organized on three levels, and when I tried to calm down an outraged French official, I got him to see that putting the German story and objects first, was simply a matter of alphabetical order: L’Allemagne, La France, Le Royaume-­Uni. The fact that the museum was then entirely funded by French local authorities did not change the order. And now that the museum and its research center have received state funding instead of regional funding, nothing has changed. The museum took the catchment area of its narrative as the unified and discrete story of the three million soldiers from the armies of France, Germany, and Britain along with her empire and dominions, who fought there. But unlike many war museums that remain entirely about “our side,” the Historial broke the boundary between the soldiers who fought on different sides of the same battle. Since the Treaty of Westphalia, most battles were international, but their representation in painting, prose, poetry, and exhibition spaces was either national or imperial or both. That was true of all First World War museums before the Historial came on the scene. Now we have been joined by the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, which also has an international character, telling a Belgian, French, German, and British story, and doing so in a state that has ceded cultural affairs, including museums, to the regions—in this case, Flanders. What joined the Historial together with the In Flanders Fields Museum was the view that all the soldiers who fought in either sector were equally victims of a war the world had never seen before—industrialized war among the world’s greatest industrialized powers. The distance between the international and the transnational is slight, but it does reflect different emphases. Both the Historial and the In Flanders Fields Museum are transnational, in that they honor men who came from over seventy different countries and dependencies to fight in northern France or Flanders. The lucky ones went home again. To make this point, in 2018 the British installation artist Val Corwin inaugurated an installation of chairs donated by ordinary people from seventy different countries. These chairs are empty and will remain in Ypres. The idea of presenting chairs without people has precedents in Berlin, where overturned chairs and a table higher than our usual level of sight represent the way children see a kitchen table. This memorial to those Berlin Jewish families arrested and murdered has been assembled in a children’s park in Koppenplatz. The designer was Karl Biedermann. The theme is absence, and in particular the absence of Berlin’s Jews from our world. We all know these unfortunate people were part of an entire

26

From National to International Sites of Memory

people, the murdered Jews of Europe. And these victims were transnational in character. Until 1948 Jewish identity had no national focus. The Holocaust was a transnational crime, the murder of people for the crime of being who they were, wherever they lived. It was also an international crime, with criminals from many nations participating in their own way and on their own ground. Perhaps one way to put it is to say that the victims were one— all were deemed to be of the Jewish race—while the killers were many, coming from nations all over Europe. As in many other cases, the Shoah defies easy classification. The central feature of the three sites of memory discussed here is that the story they tell is both international and/or transnational. The First World War was an imperial and national war that—especially after the Russian Revolution of 1917—mutated into a new kind of war, one more like a continental civil war, in which the vast majority of victims were civilians. This civilianization of war occurred then and there; it was not born then since there were many events that pointed in this direction before 1917. But wars that attacked civilians directly and incessantly marked the period after the Armistice of 1918 in new ways. In 1914–17 war was waged between armies. After 1918 war fragmented, shattered, mutated. The revolutionary and counterrevolutionary wars fought from 1917 on—wars that determined the fate of the Russian Revolution and the shape of the twentieth century besides—occurred in what we now call the shatter zones of empire, where no authority reigned and where new claimants challenged other claimants for the right to establish national sovereignty over Lithuania, Galicia, or Finland. And these post-­1918 national wars were marked by the direct targeting of civilians—either Jews in the old Pale of Settlement or Muslim Turks first and then Greek Christians in Anatolia. Yes, national boundaries were fixed in this era of transnational warfare but, in addition, the creation of transnational enemies—including the Jews—became part and parcel of the counterrevolutionary struggle. That is how the Nazis concocted at this moment the fantasy of the Judeo-­Bolshevik conspiracy as a central part of their ideology. Not long after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk stood at the port of Izmir (Smyrna having been burned to the ground in 1922), Hitler launched his Beer Hall Putsch. The Nazis did not invent the claim that a religious group could not be part of a nation; it was Lord Curzon and his colleagues at Lausanne in 1923 who made “population exchange” the rhetorical fig leaf covering the expulsion of Christians from Turkey and Muslims from Greece. The Nazis got the point.

Palimpsests 27

This pre-­history to the Holocaust is important to cite because it shows that the notion of the international came apart when nations were defined by religion.12 Greek Orthodoxy, Islam, and Judaism are not national but are defined by the language in which faith is expressed. People speak those languages—Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew or Yiddish—in many different countries. Persecuting Greek Christians or Jews or Muslims is therefore a transnational crime committed by people from various nations. There is one further dimension of the transnationality of sites of remembrance that followed the Second World War. Partly because of the Holocaust, and partly because of atomic weapons, war has lost much of its legitimacy as a form of politics, in Karl Clausewitz’s sense of the term. This is not true everywhere but, in many parts of the world, it is impossible to mobilize a population to go to war for the nation’s honor, or to uphold treaties, or even to protect the vulnerable from predatory states. That is why George W. Bush and Tony Blair had to lie about weapons of mass destruction; without an existential threat—clear and present—war is a choice most people in most parts of the world reject today. That is why the world of remembrance has brought together the military and the civilian victims of war into an alliance of the dead and the survivors against the deadliness of modern war. All three of the international or transnational sites of memory I will describe share this common outlook. Alongside the names of those who have died in modern wars, what we need to remember, the designers of these sites implicitly say, is that war itself is our enemy. In this context, transnational and international sites of memory transmit pacifist messages more clearly than do local or national sites.

The Historial de la Grande Guerre The idea of horizontality dominated the design of the interior of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, which opened in 1992. Six years earlier, Max Lejeune, president of the Conseil Général de la Somme, came to see me in Cambridge to ask me to act as one of three historian designers of a new museum. He already had the agreement of Jean-­Jacques Becker, who passed the work on to his most brilliant student, Stéphane Audoin-­Rouzeau, and Wolfgang Mommsen, who did the same to Gerd Krumeich. Why was I chosen? Because I was the only one of about two hundred historians of the Great War in Britain who could work in French.

28

From National to International Sites of Memory

Let me tell you as an aside a story that bears on our theme—how the national and the transnational are not worlds apart. Lejeune told me that his personal motive for taking up this project in his retirement—he had been a right-­wing Socialist and minister for the army during the Suez Crisis. His father had fought in the Battle of the Somme and returned without a scratch, but still a very damaged man. Shell shock was much less familiar as a category in French society as it was in British society, and even there the stigma attached to it was and remains considerable. But in France, no one received a pension for shell shock, and Max Lejeune’s father was no exception. He abused his son and his wife after demobilization. Lejeune told me that to create a museum of the Battle of the Somme was part of his desire to make peace with his father. In response, I asked for and got Lejeune’s agreement on three points. First, the museum should not stop at the Battle of the Somme. Ernst Junger said that the twentieth century was born there on the Somme. Why not turn it into a museum of the war as a whole, with the epicenter being the huge battle on the Somme in 1916? Here was the moment the museum moved from the local to both the national and the international levels. French participation in the Battle of the Somme had been occluded by Verdun for sixty-­five years. Through this museum the Somme could enter the French national narrative and the Allied narrative of the war. Second, the museum should be designed by historians, I insisted, and to this end there had to be founded and funded—even before the museum came into existence—a research center of transnational scholars whose research would inform the design. Here, the international moved easily into the transnational. Third, I returned to the very local and very personal impulse behind the museum. I asked Lejeune to have a drink with me much later on, when the museum was ready to open, since I believed then and still believe now that memory doesn’t heal. It can open wounds as easily as closing them. Hence, he was unlikely, I suggested, to find peace in his work in constructing a site of memory. He agreed then, and six years later, he agreed that whatever set of words might convey what the museum had achieved, the word “healing” was not one of them. The striking originality of the design of the Historial was the use of the horizontal axis to convey space and time. My colleagues and I were not at all happy with the verticality of the Imperial War Museum in London, with its rockets and aircraft soaring to the heavens. Instead, I wanted to convey the idea that in the Great War most people lived underground in order to survive and put up with rats and lice and other physical hardships precisely because,

Palimpsests 29

in Ford Madox Ford’s words, a man can’t stand up in these trenches. Not if he wants to live another day. The horizontal represented the only way to shield the body from the revolutionary effects of artillery fire, which killed roughly 80 percent of all those who died in the war. Only by emphasizing the vulnerability of the body, flattening itself to or below the horizon did soldiers have a chance of survival. This point was missed in the Imperial War Museum and in other war museums that minimized the horrors of the daily life of soldiers in 1914–18. Just after I met Max Lejeune in the summer of 1986, I took a holiday to Switzerland, where I have continued to holiday with my family for the last forty years. Halfway to our destination was the town of Kaisersberg in Alsace and, nearby, was the Kunstmuseum in Basel. There, I came across the astounding painting by Hans Holbein of The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb. Here was an icon of horizontality, creating a sense of the finality of death so strong that only those with faith could really believe that this dead man would rise on the Sunday after the Crucifixion. In a split second, I could see how the horizontal was the language of mourning, verticality the language of redemption. Since I never believed in the redemptive character of war, I felt that the horizontal axis explored in devastating fashion by Holbein was what a war museum should use as a way of organizing space. In addition, the horizontal would force viewers to look down when contemplating war, either at the dead, or at the underground world that soldiers created in order to survive. The second step in realizing these ideas followed the replacement of Gérard Rougeron as muséographe of the Historial by Adeline Rispal and her team at Repérages. She and her colleagues, together with a group of historians, designed the Historial much as it is today. In meetings in Paris every Friday, Jean-­Jacques Becker, Annette Becker, Stéphane Audoin-­Rouzeau, Gerd Krumeich, and I joined Rispal to work on both general and particular facets of the museum and came up with the design of fosses for representations of the front, and vitrines for representations of civilian life, with bornes vidéo in between. Horizontality and a stylized representation of the soldiers’ kit in the trenches then became the central motif of the museum’s design. I recall objections from colleagues in the Imperial War Museum, who thought the fosses were bound to be damaged by boisterous children or unsteady adults. Our view was that the fosses would have the aura of a sacred place and suggest something between an archaeological dig and a grave. Our colleagues in the Imperial War Museum were mistaken. Horizontality gave then and gives now the Historial its unique character.

30

From National to International Sites of Memory

The second feature of the Historial linked to horizontality is silence. Here is a matter of principle that I managed to persuade my colleagues to adopt. Silence is the language of mourning, and therefore silence is the right accompaniment to a horizontal museum.13 Here is a point that extended to the Museum of In Flanders Fields, where after years of using mournful music, the directors of the museum shut the sound off. They heard my critique, took it up with their docents and visitors, and found a consensus that the best sound to accompany a museum of war is no sound at all. To be sure, there are spaces of testimonial representation, where actors read Vera Brittain or the American neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing talking about nursing and surgery, and all their attendant horrors. But these closed spaces still leave the rest of the museum silent. The In Flanders Fields Museum is not horizontal in design, but its turn to silence shows how museums develop in relation to others in the field.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin A second instance of the use of the horizontal perspective is Peter Eisenman’s Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.14 The monument is an ensemble of 2,700 concrete rectangular shapes of varying heights, many above human height, others below. The result, not entirely anticipated by the architect, was to create a space of disappearance. Here is Eisenman’s own sense of the effect of his design, from an interview on 9 May 2005: Just yesterday, I watched people walk into it for the first time and it is amazing how these heads disappear—like going under water. Primo Levi talks about a similar idea in his book about Auschwitz. He writes that the prisoners were no longer alive but they weren’t dead either. Rather, they seemed to descend into a personal hell. I was suddenly reminded of that passage while watching these heads disappear into the monument. You don’t often see people disappear into something that appears to be flat. That was amazing, seeing them disappear.15 Like a concrete maze, Eisenman’s monument suggests a nightmare in which tombstones change size, and some grow to become huge rectangular blocks,

Palimpsests 31

imprisoning those who wander among them. From above, the field of stone looks like waves in a sea. Another way of capturing the effect his design produces is that it likens entry into the time and space of the Holocaust to a black hole, which absorbs all light or energy in its orbit. Here, too, we are deep into the language of loss, descent, entrapment, and horror. A “personal hell” to which one could affix Dante’s admonition in The Inferno, “Abandon hope all you who enter here.” The way this monument is shaped creates a landscape of disorientation, discomfort, and at times, panic. But not everyone who has been there feels these negative emotions. The monument has no border, and thus children skateboard over and through this space. Its abstract title says little about which murdered Jews it commemorates and who the murderers were.16 True, there is a visitors’ center in one corner, but that underground space is not part of the monument visitors see. Yet part of Eisenman’s achievement is that his work captures the uncanny character of the crime. It tells us that the Holocaust happened, and that Berlin is the place to remember it since it was from here that the orders went out to kill every Jew in Europe. That matter-­of-­factness is just the beginning of a story which still seems strange, unnatural, otherworldly. An architectural environment of a descent into hell, Eisenman’s design followed the downward path to death not as it happened to one person but as it happened to the six million as a whole. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe does not invite our gaze downward but asks us to feel that descent into genocide. Once again, the material presented here highlights but one visual strategy of remembrance, only one geometry of memory, in which the vertical is either muted, transformed, or disappears. There are many other Holocaust memorials that employ different optics and use vertical space, in tension with the horizontal. This they share with museums and monuments representing other catastrophes of the last one hundred years.

L’Anneau de la Mémoire In 2014, twenty-­two years after the opening of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, a second project was completed in northern France. It was a monument rather than a museum, though it bears striking similarities in one important respect to the Historial. It is resolutely horizontal in form and both transnational and pacifist in character.

32

From National to International Sites of Memory

The Ring of Memory is a huge elliptical structure set alongside one of the largest military cemeteries in France at Notre-­Dame-­de-­Lorette, near the city of Arras and the Canadian memorial at Vimy. The monument is a 328-­meter cast concrete ring, bearing 525 copper-­toned panels. On each plaque, written in specially designed calligraphy, are the names of approximately one thousand soldiers who died in Artois and Flanders in the First World War. These names are arranged alphabetically without reference to nationality. Once again, this is a local site, not far from Arras, which left lasting traces on a region. It is also a national site, the largest French war cemetery in the country. But what Philippe Prost, the architect, added to these levels of meaning brought out the synergism between the international and the transnational in the creation of a site of memory. Prost had two years to complete the project. As in the case of the construction of the Historial, he enjoyed the full support of regional and local politicians in both the Nord and Pas-­de-­Calais departments. Yves Le Maner, director of the Office of History, Memory and Commemorations of the Regional Council, played an important role in this effort, comparable to that of Hugues Hairy, who fulfilled a similar function in guiding the Historial project for the Department of the Somme. The Ring of Memory was inaugurated on 11 November 2014, by President François Hollande, whose family fled this region in 1914, and whose grandfather served in the war.17 This part of France has been devastated over the last fifty years by the decline of textiles and mining. Local politicians and administrators look to tourism and commemorative projects to create what they see as a third industrial revolution, one based on information rather than on extractive or manufacturing industry.18 Financial support for commemoration is part of the effort regional authorities are making to redefine their profile and to present their heritage to tourists and schoolchildren alike. The war is etched in the landscape of this part of France, which was devastated by fighting both before and after the great battles of 1916 on the Somme, further south, or at Verdun, further east. Here was the site of global war, drawing in military units and munitions from all over the world.19 One of the great war novels, Under Fire by Henri Barbusse, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1916, describes the savage fighting and misery of soldiers in this sector. In addition, this part of the Western Front extended into Flanders, passing through the city of Ypres, which was virtually destroyed during the war. The Flemish government, autonomous on questions of culture under Belgium’s divided political structure, has been a very active player in commemorative

Palimpsests 33

politics with an emphatic pacifist tone to their interventions. Both north and south of the border between Belgium and France, there was a consensus that the war had to be commemorated at the centennial of its outbreak as a human disaster. The new monument at Notre-­Dame-­de-­Lorette powerfully reflects this pacifist point of view. A secondary element in the public profile of the project was its entirely transnational character. To list names without nationalities describes its European and humanist character in a crystalline way, highlighted by the development of an original typeface and process for engraving 580,000 names on the 580 large rectangular plates placed in the ellipse. Of these names, roughly half served in British forces.20 Given the fact that many of the names are those of non-­Europeans who served in European armies, honoring all those who died in precisely the same understated way is a political statement at a time of rising xenophobia and tension over immigration, in particular Muslim immigration, to France and Belgium as well as to the rest of Europe. Treating the names of German men as indistinguishable from the names of all the others follows the same Europeanization of the history of the war, understood as a common catastrophe, that we saw in the Historial. By 2014, at the time of the centennial of the outbreak of the conflict, German writer and decorated soldier Ernst Jünger’s robust fascination with war no longer captured the public mood. More somber views about war now predominate, and Philippe Prost and his team reflected them. The funerary character of the project was reinforced by the fact that, during its construction, nine bodies were unearthed, two of which were identified as French soldiers killed in the French offensives of May 1915.21 Prost acknowledges that the horizontal axis was the organizing principle of the project from the start. Adjacent to a vertical Catholic basilica, and a vertical stone lantern and beacon to the “glory of the dead,” Prost’s ring unfolds in an entirely different spatial universe. His elliptical structure was placed so as to be below the line of the horizon. The rhythm of the five hundred copper-­toned sheets of names recalls, he stated, the elegant rhythms of the Campo Santo cemetery in Pisa. In this project, the names and only the names are what matters. The sheer number of the dead precludes a downward gaze in viewing them. On entering the monument, we need to look up to start searching for individuals. We can find poet Wilfred Owen’s name here, as well as Jewish poet Isaac Rosenberg’s. But they are no different from the others.22 Here, Prost’s work echoes the precedent set by the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission

34

From National to International Sites of Memory

but diverges in using a metal rather than a concrete surface on which to etch the names of the dead. In a sense, Prost’s monument is halfway between the Commonwealth cemeteries scattered throughout northern France and Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Prost did not create a polished reflecting surface, capturing the visitors in the optic of the memorial, but the simplicity of his structure and the names it bears, as well as its horizontality, suggest a line running from the First World War to Vietnam to today. Like one of the rings of Saturn, Prost’s Ring of Memory is perched on a slope, with a section unanchored to the ground. His purpose, he said, was in part to suggest the fragility of memory and of peace. The monument has none of the massive stability of Edwin Lutyens’s monument at Thiepval, nor the embeddedness in the ground of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, firmly dug into the soil of the Washington Mall. What gives the Ring of Memory its solidity is the overwhelming number of names, one name for one man, in the army of the dead of the Great War. A twenty-­first century addition to the practice of using the horizontal as the defining spatial element in commemorative projects, Philippe Prost’s Ring of Memory both continues what is now a clear line in the practice of remembrance, and breaks new ground in its silent, spatial dialogue with older, vertical monuments and religious buildings near it.23 Like Maya Lin, Prost has engaged in a dialogue between using the horizontal and the vertical. In the landscape, the horizontal is dominant; but when you enter the space of commemoration, in both cases you look up at a field of names. The vertical is there, but it is drawn downward, by the weight of numbers, of the thousands and thousands of names of the dead. In Notre-­Dame-­de-­Lorette, as in Washington, we see powerful instances of the turn away from the vertical language of hope and redemption in public meditations on war and its meaning.

Conclusion I began this chapter with a plea for us to attend to the multivocality of sites of memory. The three instances I have chosen describe suffering and loss of life that transcended national boundaries. They speak of a whole continent, and its imperial holdings, and not of particular states. They imagine a community of victims of war that extended (and in some respects still extends) all over the world. And they did so through framing the iconography of loss through

Palimpsests 35

a particular geometry of remembrance. Their horizontality is the way they frame their message. Yet we should not be too extreme in separating the national from the transnational. For instance, consider Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Not in form, not in substance, but in its location on the mall in Washington, Lin’s monument is emphatically national. But in its self-­conscious and explicit linkage to international and transnational forms before it, Maya Lin managed to escape the boundaries of American commemorative practices and to create a work of art that is both American and universal. It is interesting that one very rich American, Ross Perrot, wanted to reaffirm the solely American character of this commemorative commission. He funded a vertical statue of three soldiers on the side of Maya Lin’s memorial. In my many visits to the site, I have seen no one who goes to the vertical monument; it is the horizontal, the descent into the ground that draws people in. And what do they do there? They look at a list of names facing them, a list chiseled out of granite with a reflective surface that forces people to look at themselves as they remember those who aren’t there. Is it an accident that a woman who grew up in a transnational family was the architect who built a transnational monument within the space of American national memory, on the mall in Washington, and that she used horizontality to do so? Consider for a moment another project, a British one entitled “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red.” This was an installation from below—not at all the product of the British state—that was made up of 880,000 ceramic poppies placed around the Tower of London. This referenced those who died in British forces, just as Maya Lin only referenced those who died in American forces. Yet British forces were imperial in character, and among these 880,000 were men from every corner of the world. Empires erode national boundaries while insisting that there is a family of nations which shares the memory of war. Poppies are both very British and much more than that. The 880,000 ceramic poppies were all sold for charities helping British people and non-­British people all over the world. Such charitable work is both local and global and reflects the multiple meanings of the sites of memory we have discussed. There are two other points that require emphasis. First, we have to appreciate that geometry, by which I mean spatial design, is an essential part of iconography, endowing all sites of memory with particular meanings. Secondly, the best way to promote understanding of these sites is to use the adjectives “local,” “national,” “transnational,” or “international” before the

36

From National to International Sites of Memory

term “sites.” International sites of memory are places where men and women come together to remember events defined by their international character. The memories each individual brings to the site are theirs and theirs alone; commemoration is the gathering together of those who come to do the work of remembrance in public. Hence to speak of sites of international memory presumes that memories can be international. That is true only as a metaphor. Memory is an individual faculty; the UN does not have memory, people who work there do. To speak of sites of international memory is the kind of slippery usage of the term “memory” that brings us back to the successes and limitations of Pierre Nora’s original use of the term “lieux de mémoire.” Let us preserve the term “memory” for the individual and give the site to the group, and to historical analysis. International sites of memory are there. And the polyvalent character of these sites and their lives as palimpsests are also there in front of us, if only we have the eyes to see them.

Notes 1. Jay Winter, “Oxford and the First World War,” in The History of the University of Oxford in the Twentieth Century, ed. B. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 101–30. 2. Jay Winter, “The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the ‘Memory Boom’ in Contemporary Historical Studies,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 27 (Fall 2000): 69–92. 3. Jay Winter, Remembering War: The Great War Between History and Memory in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), chapter 1. 4. Etienne François and Hagen Schulze, eds., Deutsche Erinnerungsorte (Munich: Beck, 2001); Evelyne Cohen, Anaïs Fléchet, Pascale Gœtschel, Laurent Martin, Pascal Ory, Andrew Hill, and Rosine Feferman, eds., Cultural History in France: Local Debates, Global Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2019). 5. Meyer Fortes, Web of Kinship Among the Tallensi: The Second Part of the Analysis of the Social Structure of a Trans-­Volta Tribe (London: Oxford University Press, 1949). 6. Caroline Humphrey and James Alexander Laidlaw, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: An Essay on Ritual as Action Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). 7. Heonik Kwon, Ghosts of War in Vietnam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 8. Without them I never would have written Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History, nor would I have seen the need to break through the European frontier in this field. 9. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” trans. Marc Roudebush, in “Memory and Counter-­Memory,” special issue, Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7–24. 10. See “Setting the Framework,” in War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1–30. 11. Jay Winter, War Beyond Words: Languages of Remembrance from the Great War to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), chapter 6.

Palimpsests 37 12. Jay Winter, The Day the Great War Ended, 24 July 1923: The Civilianization of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 199–210. 13. Efrat Ben Ze’ev, Ruth Ginio, and Jay Winter, eds., In the Shadow of War: The Social Construction of Silence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 14. On the site and the controversy of the design, see James E. Young, “Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial: A Report to the Bundestag Committee on Media and Culture, 3 March 1999,” in “The Dilemmas of Commemoration: German Debates on the Holocaust in the 1990s,” special issue, German Politics and Society 17, no. 3 (52) (Fall 1999): 54–70; Johan Åhr, “Memory and Mourning in Berlin: On Peter Eisenman’s ‘Holocaust-­Mahnmal’ (2005),” Modern Judaism 28, no. 3 (2008): 283–305; and Harold Marcuse, “Holocaust Memorials: The Emergence of a Genre,” American Historical Review 115, no. 1 (2010): 53–89. 15. “SPIEGEL Interview with Holocaust Monument Architect Peter Eisenman: ‘How Long Does One Feel Guilty?,’” Spiegel Online International, 9 May 2005, accessed 2 December 2021, http://​www​.spiegel​.de​/international​/spiegel​-interview​-with​-holocaust​-monument​-architect​ -peter​-eisenman​-how​-long​-does​-one​-feel​-guilty​-a​-355252​.html. 16. For just one critique, see Richard Brody, “The Inadequacy of Berlin’s ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,’” New Yorker, 12 July 2012. 17. “14–18: En inaugurant ‘l’Anneau de la Mémoire,’ Hollande se confie sur son grand-­père,” MYTF1 News, 11 November 2014, cited in Winter, War Beyond Words, 168–69, nn. 32, 35. 18. I am grateful to Philippe Prost for talking with me about the project. Interview, Paris, 31 August 2015. 19. Philippe Prost, Mémorial International de Notre-­Dame-­de-­Lorette (Paris: Les Édifiantes editions, 2015). 20. Winter, War Beyond Words, 168–69, nn. 32, 35. 21. Prost, Mémorial. 22. Lucy Williamson, “New French WWI Memorial Focuses on Individuals, Not Nations,” BBC News, 11 November 2014, accessed 2 December 2021, http://​www​.bbc​.com​/news​/blogs​ -eu​-29991019. 23. See the interesting discussion in Sabina Tanović, Designing Memory: The Architecture of Commemoration in Europe, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

CHAPTER 3

The Nansen Passport as Site of International and Exilic Memory Philippa Hetherington

She had a Nansen, or better say Nonsense, passport which for some reason a share in her husband’s solid Swiss citizenship could not easily transcend; and I decided it was the necessity of queuing in the préfecture, and other formalities, that had made her so listless. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

I

n the summer of 2015, over a million refugees fled to Europe from wars in the Middle East and North Africa.1 Sparked by intertwined social, economic, and political instabilities, particularly after 2011’s Arab Spring, this mass departure precipitated the twenty-­first century’s first self-­conscious refugee crisis.2 Politicians and publics invoked the discourse of emergency to demand action after terrifying scenes of migrants dying in efforts to reach Mediterranean crossing points, without providing clear road maps for how best to support and protect refugees themselves.3 Observers in Western media outlets decried the inability of international organizations, not least the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, to stabilize the situation and avoid humanitarian catastrophe.4 It seemed that it would fall to individual nation-­ states to address the problem, in particular Germany, led by the center-­right politician Angela Merkel.5 Merkel’s solution—a wide-­reaching program of refugee assistance that nearly brought about the end of her own government—did



The Nansen Passport 39

not last long.6 Nonetheless, in that distressing summer, much was made of the new nature of the refugee problem, and the apparent inability of international and multilateral solutions to stand up to the strain of such a large number of people on the move.7 A small number of commentators bucked the claim to novelty and argued that the refugee problem did have a precedent: the period immediately following the First World War.8 They made particular appeals to an international memory of refugeedom, highlighting the collapse of the Russian, Habsburg, and Ottoman Empires as the engine of Europe’s first self-­conscious refugee crisis. The story of this crisis is well known to historians. In response to the mass displacement of millions of Europeans during and after the period 1914–1918, the council of the world’s first multilateral intergovernmental organization, the League of Nations, set up an official framework for dealing with refugees, producing in turn new conceptualizations and legal doctrines of forced migration.9 The interwar refugee regime dealt first and foremost with former subjects of the Russian Empire, over a million of whom were denaturalized by Bolshevik decree in 1921, rendering them stateless.10 In the chronicles of international memories of displacement, these Russian refugees loom large, a presence augmented by famous writers, artists, and composers from Zinaida Gippius to Marc Chagall and Sergei Rachmaninov. Interwar efforts to govern refugees were entangled with new quandaries pertaining to statelessness in the context of the heightened, post-­Versailles salience of the nation-­state.11 In response to the 1921 Soviet naturalization and evident refugee distress, the league’s General Council appointed the Norwegian explorer and philanthropist Fridtjof Nansen as head of a new High Commission for Russian Refugees (HCR).12 The HCR would, it was hoped, provide desperately needed welfare while clarifying the juridical status of refugees. Direct aid, while initially envisaged as an element of the HCR’s work, was largely abandoned in the wake of financial insufficiencies and a broader belief among league bureaucrats that charitable aid was the job of the voluntary organizations.13 Nansen and the HCR were, however, more successful in the juridical realm. Their first concrete achievement was the creation of the so-­ called Nansen passport, an identity document formulated under the auspices of the league in 1922. The initial passport was to be valid for one year only and would provide a refugee with the right to remain and work in their place of settlement but not to leave it and come back unless specially authorized.14 It was only to be offered to former Russian subjects initially, although it was

40

From National to International Sites of Memory

later extended to groups including Armenians and Assyrians. Twenty-­four governments accepted the Nansen passport in 1922 with twenty-­eight more following in subsequent years.15 Following Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015, a number of observers called for a revival of this interwar Nansen passport. In their telling, the Nansen passport was a synecdoche for an earlier, more successful, and more truly multilateral attempt to help refugees than that offered by the international community in the twenty-­first century.16 These calls were frequently predicated on the insistence that the Nansen passport had been forgotten. In an April 2016 article on the current affairs blog News Deeply, the migration scholar Stefan Wallaschek called the Nansen passport a “realistic utopia” in need of revival.17 The website Atlas Obscura published a history of the passport that called it the “little-­known document that protected 450,000 refugees” in February the next year.18 In the pages of The Conversation, the international development scholar Katy Long praised the Nansen system and declared that “instead of reinventing the wheel, we’d do well to first look backwards for inspiration.”19 By rescuing this “forgotten” artifact, these authors expressed faith in a “useable past” that took the Nansen passport as a talisman of international order, a site at which inter-­or supranational belonging supposedly crystallized. What is the nature of the usable past these commentators sought to evoke? How does it interact with alternate understandings of the Nansen passport as a memory object, including those produced by Nansen-­passport holders themselves? And how may these evocations help us understand the relationship between the different levels of meaning embedded in a single site of memory? In this chapter, I argue that the Nansen passport has become a symbol of an ideal international migration regime that is imagined to be more humane, functional, and cosmopolitan than our own. At the same time, this international memory-­making it just one of multiple memory modalities that have been layered onto the Nansen passport since its inception. As I argue, the Nansen passport functions simultaneously as a site of international memory; of transnational exilic memory (for émigré and refugee holders of the passport); and of national memory in contemporary Russia, where it occupies a particular place in the ongoing process of memory-­making regarding the interwar emigration. Rather than contradicting one another, these international, transnational, and national memories—or cosmopolitan, exilic, and ethnonational associations—intersect and coproduce, resulting in a dense encrustation of contemporary memory politics. The Nansen passport



The Nansen Passport 41

represents an ideal site at which to untangle the relationships between international, transnational, and national memory, and the illuminations and elisions those relationships produce. In this chapter, I explore these three memory modalities by interrogating, in turn: the appeals to the Nansen passport in and after 2015; representations of the Nansen passport in the life writings of some of its Russian holders; and commemorations of the Nansen passport system in post-­Soviet Russia. I seek to understand where, how, and why affective attachments to the passport expressed at these three levels differ. When we read, for example, the memoirs and life writings of interwar Nansen-­passport holders alongside its contemporary revivification, we see that the Nansen system as a realistic utopia is rarely reflected in these accounts. While such life writings contain heterogenous reflections on the passport, collectively they present it as a site of transnational exilic memory, a symbol onto which the trauma of displacement could be projected.20 As this chapter will show, for people like the transatlantic literary star Vladimir Nabokov, the Paris-­based monarchist Vasilii Shul’gin, the former Social-­Revolutionary Mark Vishniak, or the London-­ based émigré leader Ariadna Tyrkova-­Williams, the Nansen passport constituted concrete evidence of the irresolvability of statelessness, rather than its solution. Opinions on and commitments to the Nansen passport were, of course, diverse, with some refugees praising the passport as a key to transnational mobility and others condemning it as a marker of degradation. In both positive and (more common) negative framings, it emerged as an object of international significance with transnational effects. It was also an object in which praise of the international order’s possibilities were arguably less resonant than echoes of its inevitable failure. In contemporary Russia, the Nansen passport is evoked in a third, more nationally oriented context. As post-­Soviet intellectual, cultural, and political life engages the legacy of the emigration, Nansen is celebrated as a conduit of Russia’s cultural impact on Europe and North America via his passport regime. However, this national reclaiming has little to do with a search for cosmopolitanism and more to do with the passport as a symbol of the continuity between Russia’s prerevolutionary past and its post-­1991 present. As Russian cultural institutions reclaim émigré writers and thinkers (often in ways that obscure the intelligentsia’s small numerical size in the emigration), they also champion the humanitarian campaigns that buttressed the diaspora. I will close this chapter by considering these contemporary commemorations in post-­1991 Russia, exploring the Nansen passport as a palimpsest

42

From National to International Sites of Memory

onto which international and national, insider and outsider, inclusive and exclusive memories are simultaneously projected. The literature on the interwar Russian emigration has given rise to a complicated array of terms and categories, which are frequently conflated: from émigré, emigrant, refugee, stateless person to Russian, person of Russian origin, and Russian abroad.21 This chapter will primarily keep to actors’ categories, emphasizing the simultaneity of competing languages of displacement. Many former Russian imperial subjects abroad preferred to refer to themselves as émigrés rather than migrants but not all did and even those who argued for a special status for stateless Russians occasionally used the loaded term “refugee” (bezhenets).22 Those denaturalized by Soviet fiat in 1921 fell into three broad categories: people who had emigrated before the revolution and chosen not to take up Soviet citizenship; people located in former Russian imperial territories that were new nation-­states after Versailles; and people who had explicitly fled the civil war that followed 1917. Only the latter category tended to refer to themselves as émigrés, although this was occasionally contested by the community of imperial subjects who had emigrated pre-­1917. In contemporary Russia it is common to refer to the group of émigrés from the interwar period as “Russia Abroad” (Russkoe zarubezh’e).23 In theory, this title can refer to any interwar émigré. In practice, it is most often evoked when referring to the cultural diaspora of writers, artists, composers, and intellectuals whose legacy many institutions in Russia today commemorate.24 Perhaps most contentious is the question of who was Russian in “Russia Abroad.” In practice, the Nansen passport was available to any former Russian imperial subject who did not have the protection of a national government after denaturalization. This included people who identified as ethnically or linguistically Russian but also those who identified as Ukrainian, Belorussian, Dagestani, Georgian, Uzbek, Adyghe, and myriad other ethnolinguistic qualifications.25 Ethnolinguistic categories in the Russian Empire (as elsewhere) were notoriously complex and fluid, and nowhere more so than in emigration. Nonetheless there was often animosity among émigré groups over the question of who counted as a Russian abroad and how Nansen-­ passport holders should be categorized in national terms.26 Contra the historian Mark Raeff, who in his influential book Russia Abroad defined his subject as those who shared some commitment to Russian-­speaking national culture, in this chapter I will use the term “Russian refugees” capaciously to



The Nansen Passport 43

include all former Russian-­imperial subjects.27 I do so to underline the fact that it was this former subjecthood, not nationality, that determined refugees’ international legal status and access to a Nansen passport.

Nansen and the Legal Status of Refugees The first thing to note in any introduction to the Nansen passport is that there was no single Nansen passport. From the moment of its introduction in 1922, the relevant legal relationship was between the refugee and the signatory country granting them the document. Thus, there was a Nansen passport issued by Finland, a different one by France, yet others by Austria, Britain, and Italy.28 The typographic conventions of Weimar Germany or Cyrillic flourishes of Bulgaria could variously grace a Nansen identity certificate, and they came in various colors and forms. Further, the legal rights granted by the Nansen passport changed over the period from 1922 to 1945. With the evolution of a cascading series of “Arrangement(s) with respect to the issue of certificates of identity to Russian refugees,” concluded between the league’s High Commission for Refugees and signatory states in 1922, 1926, 1928, 1930, and 1933, the rights and responsibilities of bearer and issuer fluctuated.29 To make matters more complicated, a small number of states adhered to these agreements formally, but many asserted their right to exclude or reject aspects of each arrangement that they felt was unpalatable.30 While ultimately encompassing a range of national groups, the efforts to clarify the legal status of refugees were initially prompted by the desperate position of Russian subjects in Constantinople during and after the Russian Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of Russian subjects fled to and through the former Ottoman capital while it was under Allied occupation in 1920 and 1921, and their visible, indigent presence spurred vociferous calls for the league to step in.31 The direct result was the foundation of the HCR in 1921. Nansen’s initial hope was that repatriation to the Soviet Union, or naturalization in countries of residence, would solve the refugee crisis.32 Many of the states to which many Russian refugees had fled initially courted their labor, particularly France and Czechoslovakia which had experienced shortages of workers in the wake of World War I.33 They were nonetheless reluctant to offer a potentially restive and dangerous population naturalization. Further, newly formed states bordering the Soviet Union such as Poland and Romania

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From National to International Sites of Memory

Figure 3.1. 1927 Nansen Passport issued by the British Government. Photo credit: Huddyhuddy, CC BY-­SA.

were particularly anxious to reserve the right to expel Russian refugees whose loyalties they considered suspect.34 The ability to variously entice (for labor) and exclude (as alien) refugees became one of the most jealously guarded sovereign rights in the post-­Versailles order.35 And the Soviet Union, while initially open to the idea of repatriation as a solution to its own labor shortages, decided after some failed attempts at welcoming back refugees to end any repatriation programs in 1924.36 It was clear that something more would be necessary. Russian émigré lawyers, a number of whom were influential interpreters of minorities treaties and the new legal order of the international period, campaigned for rigorous protections.37 Meanwhile, receiving countries wanted league support in regularizing the labor flow of refugees. In response, the Nansen team came up with the



The Nansen Passport 45

Arrangement of 1922, which established an internationally recognized identity certificate that would be valid for one year and facilitate (but not guarantee) employment.38 Crucially, if a refugee were to leave the territory of the country granting this certificate, they had no right to return. Nansen convinced many of the signatory states to agree to the arrangement with the promise that this would facilitate the moving on of refugees.39 The legal representatives of the Russian community were not impressed, as was reflected in the ambivalent attitude toward the certificate at the 1922 Berlin Conference of Russian Jurists.40 Some Russian lawyers nonetheless encouraged their compatriots to see the certificate as a useful first step.41 In the pages of La Tribune Juive, the organ of Russian Jewish refugees in Paris, the lawyer Boris Mirkin-­Getsevich argued that it was of particular use to Jewish refugees who could be liberated from the consular “Soviet yoke” in states that had recognized Bolshevik rule.42 A series of arrangements forming and reforming the new identity certificate began in 1922. Named after its benefactor, bearers became known as nansenovsty in Russian. Further arrangements in 1926 and 1928 introduced certain temporary rights of return for Russian subjects to the country issuing them the certificates, and turned the Nansen Office itself into a consular representative of holders of a Nansen passport.43 The definition of protected refugee moved from “person of Russian origin who has not acquired another nationality,” which excluded those who had unilaterally been made Soviet subjects in 1921 and subsequently left, to “any person of Russian origin who does not enjoy, or has ceased to enjoy, the protection of the government of the USSR and not taken any other nationality.”44 This opened up international legal protection to those who left the Soviet Union after the end of the civil war. Ongoing campaigning by Russian and Armenian refugee representatives highlighted continued insufficiencies of the regime, however, and these groups scored their biggest win with the 1933 Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees.45 The convention introduced the principle of non-­refoulement; signatory states could not expel individuals with a valid Nansen certificate issued by that state.46 Many states saw this as an unacceptable infringement on their sovereign power, and some, like Great Britain, excluded the non-­refoulement article when they signed the convention.47 Nonetheless, in general the article extended the protections of Nansen-­ passport holders such that they were unrecognizable from 1922. The history of the later 1930s in Europe would go on to show how necessary, and how insufficient, such protections were.

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From National to International Sites of Memory

Nansen Passport as Metonym for Cosmopolitan Belonging A brief institutional history of the Nansen passport demonstrates that, while the legal order governing it may have been international, the relationship of the granter to the grantee was between the individual and the nation-­state. At the same time, access to the passport relied on an individual’s group status; confined to Russian refugees at first, it was later expanded to include other nationalities but not, crucially, all refugees regardless of (prior) subjecthood. Here, we see one of the lacunae in the narrative in Atlas Obscura or the Conversation, that the Nansen passport was somehow supra-­or nonnational. A supranational citizenship conferred by a standardized passport issued by the League of Nations was the dream of Russian émigré lawyers and advocates for refugee groups, but it was never achieved. Further, Nansen was able to convince a number of signatory governments to approve Nansen passports not just out of humanitarian sentiment but also because they served as an important tool for population control. As a contemporary observer Louise Holborn noted in 1938, Nansen passports not only helped holders find employment but were also of value to governments that could more quickly identify Russian refugees within their borders and “facilitate their departure elsewhere.”48 This approach was later summed up by Hannah Arendt when she stated that “all discussions around the refugee problems revolved around this one question: How can the refugee be made deportable again?”49 In the flurry of news articles promoting Nansen passports in the wake of the refugee crisis of 2015, its humanitarian image was largely elided. Instead, a common theme emerged whereby the passport was framed as a metonym for an imagined cosmopolitan interwar order. The temporal politics of this framing can be seen in the frequency with which authors issued calls to recover the passport from memorial obscurity. The journalist Carla Giaimo referred to it as “a little-­known passport” before lauding it as a “simple” document that “served its purpose well.”50 Ana Campoy asked what “we can learn from the revolutionary passport that helped 1920s refugees,” explicitly evoking the Nansen order as a usable past.51 Both authors discussed the passport not so much as a material object but as a stand-­in for the international legal mobility regime that it helped regulate. Both acknowledged in passing that the system was not perfect and that it ceded power to allow or deny movement to individual states, only a small number of which signed on to the Nansen arrangements. Nonetheless, they championed the passport for its facilitation of cross-­border movement and the (positive) legal status it gave deterritorialized subjects.



The Nansen Passport 47

While these articles were largely authored by commentators outside the academy, scholars have also called for the passport’s recovery. In journals, edited volumes, and online media, sociologists and historians have argued for a new Nansen regime for the territorially dispossessed as a response to climate change in particular.52 This revivification was the theme, for example, of separate articles by the migration scholars Alessandra Roversi and Otto Hieronymi in Refugee Studies Quarterly (in both of which the passport stands in for the broader legal order around it).53 In the pages of The Conversation, the historian of refugee repatriation Katy Long argued that the time was ripe for a renewal of Nansen passports, as documents that could—as the title of her article declares—“end border delays in the Balkans.”54 The text is more nuanced, acknowledging that Nansen passports did not equal “free movement” for the holders and reserving the most praise for the system of economic help that the Nansen scheme offered refugees. But it is not incidental that the title of her article refers to the passport and not to the economic bases of the refugee crisis, highlighting the symbolic power of this particular material object in the search for precedent in refugee management. Praise of the Nansen system sits uneasily with classic political-­theoretical examinations of interwar statelessness. Ironically, the theorists of refugeedom who are most influential in contemporary refugee studies—particularly Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben—framed the interwar period as one in which the abjection of statelessness was at its most acute.55 Perhaps most famously, Arendt highlighted the particularities of 1918–45 for reshaping the category “refugee.” “A refugee used to be a person driven to seek refuge because of some act committed or some political opinion held,” she reflected on her own experience as a Jewish refugee from Germany. “But we committed no acts and most of us never dreamt of having any radical opinion. With us the meaning of the term ‘refugee’ has changed.”56 In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt singled out the “millions of Russians” as the first group of stateless people who exposed the lie that those seeking refuge were a small group of political dissidents.57 Fifty years later, Giorgio Agamben engaged Arendt’s analysis in his own article “We Refugees” to frame the interwar refugee as the paradigmatic biopolitical subject occupying a “state of exception” outside the sovereign legal order.58 For Agamben, this positionality, in which the refugee is stripped of citizenship and reduced to bare life, could not (and cannot) be mitigated by legal efforts to incorporate refugees by the international state system.59 The Nansen passport arguably constituted just such a legal effort; analysis of its relative success would seem to be one field in which Agamben’s theory could be tested.

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From National to International Sites of Memory

Rather than confining themselves to the practical barriers produced by statelessness, Arendt’s and Agamben’s theorizations dwell on the loss of human dignity experienced by those unmoored by denaturalization (what some émigrés considered a form of civil death).60 If the Nansen passport were to be revived, commentators have argued, it could mitigate this loss by fostering a sense of belonging in the form of cosmopolitan citizenship. The democracy theorist Rebecka Lettevall has called for a revival of the passport as a symbol of both cosmopolitan and world citizenship. Despite acknowledging that the interwar passport failed to guarantee refugees’ civil rights in issuing countries, Lettevall has nonetheless argued that its creation represented the idea that “all humans are equal.”61 It thus embodied a form of “preliminary cosmopolitanism in practice” that was “above” or “outside” the nation-­state.62 As we will see in the discussion of Nansen-­passport holders’ memoirs below, questions of belonging to—or exclusion from—national or international bodies politic loomed large. However, the Nansen passport’s ability to solve their existential problems (something Lettevall does not attempt to analyze) was an open question. It is not surprising that issues of belonging, identity, and inclusion should appear in discussions of the Nansen system. Historians have long recognized the role of passports in producing a sense of national belonging, as tools of state “efforts to construct and enforce durable identities that facilitate their embrace of their own citizens.”63 Where does this leave the international or supranational passport? As the foremost historian of the modern passport John Torpey has argued, it is both states and the international state system that have “expropriated from individuals and private entities the legitimate means of movement” by imposing “passportization” on them.64 All passports are thus arguably international sites to the extent that they are the material fetishes of a global migration regime. That this regime is predicated as much on exclusion as inclusion makes it difficult to present them as loci of utopian cosmopolitanism. Nonetheless, this does not prevent scholars and commentators from continuing to try. In a recent article for the digital magazine Public Books entitled “Against Despair,” the human rights historian Eric Weitz called for a recovery of the (successful) utopianism of the past in the face of contemporary wars, and climate and migration crises. Among other schemes, he championed a “robust revival” of the Nansen passport not only for the regulation of cross-­border migration it provided but also for the “sense of identity” that, he argued, it gave stateless people.65 In today’s world, he declared, a renewed Nansen



The Nansen Passport 49

passport would “relieve the disorientation of non-­belonging in a world that places primacy on papers and national citizenship.”66 Weitz highlighted a crucial psychological harm of statelessness—the disorientation of nonbelonging—and pinned his hopes on a forgotten identity document. When we turn to the life writings and memory documents of interwar Russian Nansen-­ passport holders to test this thesis, we find multiple, often contradictory affective attachments to the passport but few that would support Weitz’s confidence in it as a token of belonging. Interwar refugees were almost always more ambivalent toward it than the latter-­day cheerleaders of the Nansen system seem to be.

Nansen Passport as Synecdoche for Exilic Memory When we read the life writings of interwar Nansen-­passport holders, it becomes apparent that the passport functioned less as a symbol of belonging and more as a multilayered and contradictory site of exilic memory. In analyzing some of these writings below, I neither claim to be exhaustive or representative in reading these first-­person accounts of the passports, nor do I suggest they represent the authentic view of the passport. Instead, I discuss a number (of the thousands) of ways that Russian refugees in particular framed and understood the Nansen passport. Just as there was no one Nansen passport, there was no one exilic construction of it. With communities scattered across Europe from Paris and Berlin to Prague and Belgrade, and later across the Atlantic in New York or Buenos Aires, different Russian refugee commentators viewed the Nansen passport through the lens of their own cultural position. The point of reading émigré life writings about the passport is not to juxtapose the real experience of the passport against an invented international tradition. Rather, it is to highlight how malleable the passport was as a focus of collective and communal construction. For some of the passport holders discussed below, the passport was indeed a ticket to border crossing and world exploration, as twenty-­first century Nansen-­passport champions have proposed. For far more, however, it represented boundaries (between citizen and stateless, outsider and insider, Russian and non-­Russian), a barrier to movement and welfare, and a shameful blemish on their individual identity. For both groups, it became a physical totem of exile and displacement, a material object only necessitated by the inability to return home.67

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From National to International Sites of Memory

Exilic memory, marked by the trauma of displacement, has a long history. In a Western or European context, much of it exists in dialogue with a tradition of émigré nostalgia reaching back to the late eighteenth century, when exiles from revolutionary France created a vast literature of displacement that helped mark them sentimentally as a group apart.68 For Russian émigrés— even those for whom the passport promised a pathway to cosmopolitan border crossing—the role of the Nansen regime was always to “set them apart,” something that could have positive but more often had negative valences. One of the most famous literary reflections on Russian exilic memory is Vladimir Nabokov’s memoir Speak, Memory, written between 1936 and 1951, and covering both his childhood in Russia and his years in European emigration. Having fled Russia via Crimea in 1919 (his father had been a member of the Provisional Government), Nabokov spent much of the 1920s in Berlin, home to one of the largest communities of Russian refugees and a center of refugee intellectual life.69 It was in Germany that he received his Nansen passport, and to Berlin that he frequently had to return if ever he wanted to renew it.70 In his memoirs Nabokov recalled the passport in withering terms. It was, he opined, a “very inferior document” of a “sickly green hue,” and deserved to be discarded as soon as possible.71 What is more, for Nabokov the Nansen passport stood not for some dream of open borders but for the fact that, “somewhere at the back of their glands, the authorities secreted the notion that no matter how bad a state—say, Soviet Russia—may be, any fugitive from it was intrinsically despicable, since he existed outside a national administration.”72 Staunchly anti-­Soviet, Nabokov highlighted here what many émigrés saw as one of the great betrayals of their stateless position: that an international community which had shunned the Soviet Union in 1917 nonetheless refused to embrace its exiles. As arguably the most famous Russian émigré writer, and one with a particularly acute sense of the indignities of exile, Nabokov’s view of the Nansen passport as a marker of refugee abjection has been influential. The epigraph to this chapter, from his most famous novel Lolita (1955), paints a memorable picture of the Nansen passport as an absurd source of stigma, a “nonsense” passport whose taint superseded even the solid practicality of a spouse’s Swiss nationality.73 To the extent that the exilic experience had a literary interpreter, Nabokov would seem to reign supreme.74 Nonetheless, he is also a particularly unrepresentative guide. Literary scholars have long highlighted Nabokov’s relative “un-­Russianness”—exacerbated not only by his move to the United



The Nansen Passport 51

States in 1940 and insistence on writing much of his work in English but also by his disdain for much of the rest of the émigré community.75 Not for him the modernist experimentations of the Parisian-­based Russian literary exiles, or the call of communal organizing in Berlin, Prague, or Belgrade.76 If Nabokov decried the exile from the political community that statelessness caused, he seemed uncomfortable in the émigré community of nansenovtsy he was offered in its place. Nabokov’s singularity reminds us that his disdain was not the only possible affective relationship toward the passport. An entirely different narrative emerges from memoirs such as those of Ivan Soboleff, a former White officer who wrote about his own adventure of traveling the world on a motorcycle in the late 1920s.77 Soboleff had fought in Semirechie (in modern Kazakhstan) in 1919 and fled with the losing White forces of Ataman Annenkov to Chinese Turkestan (modern-­day Xinjiang). After living a number of years in relative poverty, he made his way to Shanghai. On arrival he had no papers or formal status, but by the mid-­1920s that city had a well-­organized (albeit internally fractious) community of Russian émigrés who helped him obtain a Nansen passport.78 Bored with unemployment, he hatched a plan to use his documents to travel the world and connect the far-­flung Russian people. As he claimed to have declared at the time, “We Russians of the old regime are scattered in every country of the earth; surely it would be a fine idea to go and look them up and bring them news of their countrymen—to help them to realise that, though exiled for the time, we are still part of the great Russian nation.”79 At first his attempts to travel were far from smooth; endeavoring to get a visa for his first border crossing into Indochina from the French consul, he was rejected for his “rather inadequate passport.”80 He managed to get to Bangkok and talk the British consul into giving him a visa to the Straits Settlement, after which his journey was facilitated by the expansive reach of the British Empire. By the time he arrived in Europe, the presence of so many British colonial visas give him the imprimatur of imperial approval, making the receipt of Hungarian, Serbian, and Italian visas far easier.81 He passed over his Nansen passport proudly, “now an enormous document with all the visas I had accumulated.”82 In Serbia many of the border guards stamping his passport were themselves Russian, adding fuel to his associations between the passport, the migration regime, and the émigré community. In his memoir, Soboleff presents the Nansen passport as not only facilitating the possible reunification of the Russian people but also as standing in for

52

From National to International Sites of Memory

the Russian community itself. It represents the thread stitching together a scattered Russia and the physical manifestation of transnational nationhood. It is also a synecdoche for the whole system of legal protections devised for stateless people by the League of Nations order. Finishing off what was ultimately a tale of triumphant adventuring (in which devastating refugee hardship is alluded to but never emphasized), Soboleff declares that “it seems unlikely now that I shall ever return to Russia. . . . But, all over the world, I can always find others who speak my own language, and who carry the Nansen passport, issued by the League of Nations to those who have no longer any country of their own.”83 The passport represents the opening up of opportunity rather than its closing down for an individual who had experienced the abjection of statelessness. At the same time, the belonging it provides access to is diasporic rather than international. Even in Soboleff ’s sympathetic reading, the passport eludes efforts to categorize it in nonnational terms. If, for Soboleff, the passport was the physical embodiment of diasporic solidarity, those who had more to lose in terms of status and wealth with the move into emigration tended to echo Nabokov’s position on it as a marker of alterity. Aristocratic and monarchist former members of the White opposition saw the passport as a particular source of shame. In characterizing it, some fell back on prerevolutionary categories of exclusion and inclusion, such as that imposed by the tsarist regime on the empire’s Jews. In the late 1920s, as Soboleff was setting off on his journey, his fellow former White, the archconservative former Duma member Vasilii Shul’gin, discussed the Nansen passport as a symbol of the utter degradation of the Russian community abroad. Before the revolution, Shul’gin had been a bombastic right-­wing journalist, writing for and later editing the monarchist newspaper Kievlianin.84 Fleeing into exile in Yugoslavia during the civil war, he penned frequent attacks on the Soviet Union, in many of which he explicitly blamed Jews for the revolution and his personal suffering.85 He was also a participant in one of the stranger footnotes to the emigration. In 1925 he was chosen to represent the monarchist organization Trust (in fact a Soviet secret police front) on a clandestine trip to the Soviet Union. Disguising himself as an Orthodox Jew, he sneaked in on a forged passport under the name Eduard Emilievich Shmidt. It was only after returning to Yugoslavia that he discovered Trust’s ruse; deeply embarrassed, he needed to redeem himself on the right.86 The result was a 1929 book, collating his essays about the problem with Jews in the (former) Russian Empire entitled What WE don’t like about



The Nansen Passport 53

THEM (Chto NAM v NIKH ne nravitsia . . .).87 The book combined earlier writings attacking both Jews and the Ukrainian nationalist movement with his freshest thoughts on the Soviet system. In a section entitled “The Death of the Bourgeoisie: The Strike of the Yid,” Shul’gin expanded on his accusation that the new Soviet order had been built by and for the empire’s Jews.88 Part of his logic involved emphasizing the poor treatment of Jews under the old regime, a situation that turned them into vicious enemies of the Russian. Shul’gin explicitly likened the legal restrictions faced by holders of Nansen passports to those suffered by Jews in the old empire. He even briefly drew a parallel between his own lot and that of the Jewish population. “Are not our ‘visa ordeals’ remarkably similar to the oppression experienced by Jews in the Pale of Settlement?” he asked rhetorically. “Aren’t our Nansen passports, which are a sort of ‘wolf ’s passport’ obstructing movement, reminiscent of the ‘Jewish religion’ label, which we stamped in Jewish passports in Russia, thereby closing many doors to them?”89 He went on to liken the lack of a right to work suffered by many Nansen-­passport holders to similar professional exclusions of Jews in the Russian Empire, underlining the Nansen regime as one of civil exclusion rather than inclusion.90 Once again, we are confronted with the Nansen passport’s symbolic function in delineating lines of belonging and detachment, functioning in Shul’gin’s words as a link between the juridical exclusion of émigrés and that of imperial Russian Jews. What is more, it led Shul’gin to express, albeit momentarily, an ambiguous position toward the Jewish population that intimates a ripple of empathy within his trenchant racism. On the one hand, he was outraged that this passport has brought him and his fellow Russians to the degraded status of the “Hebrews.” On the other, he seemed briefly to acknowledge the hardship, exploitation, and existential crisis that such a status can inspire. Any hint of nuance in Shul’gin’s position is, however, negated by the conclusions to which he took this likening of the civil exclusion of Jews and that of refugees. The danger, he opined, is that the “malice” that developed in the heart of the Jewish community as a result of this exclusion would emerge among the Russian émigré community also.91 While communal anger at legal exclusion may have been somewhat warranted, Shul’gin suggested, he also used it as an excuse once again to evoke Judeo-­Bolshevism and claim that it was this exclusion that turned Jews into both “the spine and the brain of the Russian communist party.”92 The émigré community must guard against a similar ossification of anger, he said, ideally by removing the very communal restrictions that bind them under the Nansen passport.

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From National to International Sites of Memory

For Shul’gin, the Nansen passport “lowered” the Russian émigrés abroad to the status of Jews in the Russian Empire, the most oppressed of all classes. For a notorious anti-­Semite, influenced by fascist typologies, such lowering was arguably not only legal but also racialized, making it all the more galling.93 However, by likening Nansen-­passport holders to Jews to whom many doors were closed in imperial Russia, Shul’gin also gestured at tacit acknowledgment of structural oppression. Such apparent contradictions were not unusual in his writings. Even while editing Kievlianin before 1917, Shul’gin liked to play the provocateur and was known for an uncharacteristic attack on the tsarist government’s restrictions on Jews during the 1913 Beilis blood libel trial.94 Perhaps unintentionally, his take on Nansen passports opened up a space for an analogy that emphasized the outsider status of the civilly excluded even (and for Shul’gin, especially) under the League of Nations’ New World Order. For all its ambivalences, Shul’gin’s exclusionary rhetoric firmly defined the community of Russian émigrés as one excluding Jews. In practical terms, nothing could have been further from the truth. Many of the most high-­ profile Russian émigrés were Jewish—such as Mark Vishniak, Marc Chagall, David Bergelson, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and Raisa Maritain.95 Shul’gin was not the only émigré to mobilize the Nansen passport as a tool to differentiate between those they considered “Russian” and those “not Russian,” however. Such gatekeeping and boundary-­making was a common feature of émigré discourse.96 In 1927, for example, the former Kadet Ariadna Tyrkova-­Williams, a stalwart in the small London-­based Russian community, responded to a questionnaire about Russian émigrés by differentiating Nansen-­passport holders from Russian Jews in London who held the old, tsarist passport.97 In other cases, a refusal to swap a Soviet passport (held by those who had left after 1921) for a Nansen passport led individuals to self-­select out of the community of Russian émigrés. In a response to the same questionnaire, the Paris-­based painter Zinaida Serebriakova expressed sorrow that she could not join the “official” community of émigrés because she was still supporting family in the Soviet Union and was forced to retain her Soviet passport, excluding her from the community of nansenovtsy.98 The Nansen passport thus operated to form boundaries within the community of émigrés as much as between them and the outside world. This border-­making function was frequently noted by Russian émigré lawyers who struggled for a solution to the problem of refugees’ legal status. As a prominent émigré lawyer Mark Vishniak wrote in his 1922 column for



The Nansen Passport 55

the Paris-­based Sovremennye Zapiski (Contemporary Notes), for Russians abroad the passport was the symbol of the dividing line between “us” and “them.” Responding to the Soviet denaturalization decrees, he despaired that, just as in tsarist times when a passport established the possession or loss of civil rights, the Communist government had created a situation whereby passports formed the basis of who was Russian and who was not.99 A believer in constitutional as opposed to ethnonational legal status, Vishniak was appalled by the idea that the Nansen passport solidified former imperial subjects’ exile and their position outside the community of Russians. Vishniak’s conflation of “Russian” and “Soviet” citizenship here is not surprising, given his understanding of the Bolshevik regime as one that had— hopefully temporarily—supplanted a Russian national or imperial state. A former member of the right wing of the Social Revolutionary (SR) Party, he had fled Russia after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and carved out for himself a respectable position in the Paris émigré community in the interwar period.100 He was a prolific writer, sitting on the editorial board of Sovremennye Zapiski while training as a specialist in international law and spending time in the early 1930s as a visiting professor at the Hague Institute for International Law where he became an expert on the questions of minority rights and statelessness.101 While a pre-­1917 opponent of tsarism, he nevertheless argued at the 1922 Berlin Congress of Russian Jurists that the solution to the Russian emigrants’ plight was for their personal status to continue to be governed by imperial Russian civil law, to be recognized abroad under the international legal principle of reciprocity.102 This was a popular opinion at the congress, where other participants advocated against self-­defining themselves as legally stateless and insisted that international recognition of the phantom imperial Russian state would offer them protection.103 Given that few European countries recognized the diplomatic existence of the Soviet Union before 1924, this was not as utopian as it may sound at first. Nonetheless, at the 1922 congress proponents of this idea came up against those who were more willing to wait and see on the potential utility of the Nansen passport.104 Despite coming from the opposite end of the political spectrum as Vasilii Shul’gin, Vishniak’s writings also highlighted the symbolic and practical interplay of the Nansen and pre-­1917 Russian imperial civil order. His 1970 memoir of his time as a Nansen-­passport holder, The Years of Emigration (Gody Emigratsii) invested in the passport a symbolic power no less nefarious than that exposed by Nabokov.105 The Nansen passport is only mentioned when it became a barrier, not a facilitator, of his movement—particularly in

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the wake of Hitler’s invasion of France in 1940, by which point Vishniak had been in Paris for two decades. Vishniak, who was not only Jewish but also a prominent advocate of greater political rights for émigré Jews, recalled how local French police in his neighborhood would call him and his fellow Russian refugees “Nansen passports” to their faces.106 This name was not only dehumanizing but it also emphasized that, as “rootless cosmopolitans,” (Jewish) Nansen-­passport holders were no longer welcome in France. Undergoing a random document check one day, upon producing his Nansen passport policemen hurled slurs at him as a dirty foreigner, “Easterner,” and he was told to “run away, or we’ll kick you out.”107 In this context, the Nansen passport was a symbol not of citizenship but of rightlessness. Fleeing Paris, Vishniak arrived in Marseilles and attempted to find a boat that would take him to America; in doing so, however, he was reminded that he did not have a real passport but rather a residency permit or laisser passez. After nearly two decades in which the international community offered the Nansen certificate of identity as a “passport,” Vishniak was explicitly reminded of its substandard status in law. Thus, as he became an exile for the second time, far from protecting him, Vishniak’s Nansen passport seemed to make his passage more dangerous and his position more insecure. It was not just in France that the Nansen passport’s marking of holders as outsiders could have negative consequences as World War II approached. Throughout the interwar period, émigrés were subject to regular shifts in their legal status within their diasporic homes, despite the supposed protections of the passport. When they appealed to the international power of the HCR, it was frequently unable to intervene on their behalf. For example, in the early 1930s the community of Russian émigrés in Germany raised the alarm about shifts in identification document practices introduced in the early years of the Nazi regime. In a 1934 letter to the informal ambassador for the émigré community Vasilii Maklakov, the Berlin-­based former diplomat Sergei Botkin reported the extremely strict new measures that had been introduced for Nansen-­passport holders in Germany.108 Highlighting the confusion encircling the Nansen system, he opined: “That which is called a Nansen passport in Russian is in foreign languages not called a passport but an ‘identity certificate’, a ‘Nansen Ausweis’ etc.”109 According to the new rules introduced by the Nazis, those without a proper passport (or Fremdenpas) were to be subject to exorbitant fees to send money abroad, charged far more for exit visas, and were no longer being guaranteed that if they left on a Nansen passport they could return to Germany.110 In desperation, Botkin asked



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Maklakov to intervene with Geneva on behalf of the Russian refugees in Germany, stating that even though Germany had withdrawn from the League of Nations he still thought Geneva could have some influence. His continued faith in Geneva is poignant. As the interwar era drew to a close, the plight of the Nansen-­passport holders in Germany reminds us of both the failure of the Nansen system to enact the utopian cosmopolitanism often attributed to it and the continued faith of at least some Russian refugees in the international system. As a site of memory, the Nansen passport was one onto which diverse and heterogeneous individuals who made up the community of Russian refugees inscribed different layers of exilic meaning. In the memory-­scape of the emigration, suffused with both the melancholy of nostalgia and the trauma of displacement, the passport could be variously a mascot of freedom that linked the community of émigrés—for Soboleff or, more commonly, a totem of exclusion and juridical subjection (as for Nabokov, Shul’gin, and Vishniak). For others, like Tyrkova-­Williams, it helped to articulate the boundary between émigré and prerevolutionary migrant, while for ex-­tsarist diplomats and lawyers it was a reminder of the heightened salience of national sovereignty in the post-­Versailles world. As the interwar period drew to a close, the march of fascism in Europe heightened the implications of a document that marked its bearer’s outsider status. Crucially, while the exilic meanings projected onto the passport were multifarious, none reflected the idealized sense of cosmopolitan belonging expressed by early twentieth-­first century commentators. Even for Soboleff, the community the passport shaped was that of the scattered Russian diaspora, understood primarily in national terms.

Nansen Passport as Palimpsest Soboleff ’s projection of national belonging onto the passport brings us to the third and most salient memorial function of the Nansen passport: that of palimpsest onto which multiple international and transnational meanings and national memories are inscribed. The national register has experienced a renaissance in Russia since 1991. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been an explosion of scholarly and popular interest in the Russian-­speaking, postrevolutionary emigration.111 While the “white emigration” was an embarrassing and marginalized focus of historical study in the Soviet Union, as soon as it was politically permissible in the 1990s a number

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of foundations, museums, and libraries were established to commemorate the émigré movement.112 Part government-­funded, part funded by émigré organizations returned from exile, memorials to the emigration have become a common feature of Russian state institutions. A number of literary scholars and historians have begun to specialize in the emigration and to organize conferences and events that bring together former émigrés and their descendants with those who study them. They have even named their field of study emigrantovedenie or “emigrantology,” delineating a whole discipline for the historical, cultural, and sociological study of the “first wave” of Russian emigration.113 Within this field, much attention has been paid to memory in the cultural construction of the emigration—in particular to memory and nostalgia vis-­à-­vis the homeland.114 Less attention has been given, however, to the fact that those commemorating the emigration within Russia are engaged in memory construction of their own. For practitioners of emigrantology, “Nansen” as collective signifier of “Russia abroad” has loomed large. Most tellingly, a prominent annual conference gathering interdisciplinary perspectives on the interwar emigration in St. Petersburg is called “Nansen Readings.” Papers presented at this conference, and published in annual edited collections under the same banner, explore everything from the role of Nansen’s High Commission, the relationship between émigrés in the East and the West, and the utility of an emigrantology focused on the first, interwar wave of the emigration for understanding the third, post-­1991 diaspora.115 Throughout, the association between Nansen, the emigration, and the protection of the sacred flame of “Russian culture” continues. Within Russia, the public memorialization of Nansen emphasizes his association with freedom, human rights, and humanitarian goals. In 2011 the Sakharov Center in Moscow, a museum named after the famed physicist and dedicated to the preservation of human rights, hosted an exhibition on Nansen entitled “Nansen, his life and activity.”116 The center advertised the exhibition with a blurb somewhat spuriously describing his eponymous passports as documents giving protection to “prisoners of war and political refugees” (categories into which a number of Nansen-­passport holders arguably did not fall).117 It also pointed out the continuing recognition of the interwar Nansen moment in international organizations’ self-­commemorations, as represented for example by the 1954 founding of the Nansen Refugee Award by the UN.118 Recent years have seen two memorials to Nansen erected in Russian cities. The first appeared in Moscow in 2002, a sculpture of Nansen in a classical



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style, standing next to a hungry-­looking child carrying a parcel of belongings.119 The second, erected in the Volga city of Samara, is more postmodern; consisting of a glass case etched with Nansen’s image and a text describing his good works, it commemorates Nansen’s coordination of famine aid to the Soviet Union while resembling a passport in its very form.120 Both memorials attest to Nansen’s status as “the best foreigner in Russia” (as an article on the website Drugoi Gorod called him at the time of the unveiling of the Samara memorial).121 The same year, a post on the website Russkii Mir, the government’s official cultural center, described Nansen as “in the truest sense, a citizen,” highlighting the legacy of his commitment to ameliorating not only the physical being but also the civil and political status of Russian refugees.122 The same article, entitled “Nansen: Patron of Refugees,” declared that without the Nansen passport, the Russian emigration would have been unthinkable. Reeling off a list of the most prominent cultural figures of the emigration—Nabokov, but also Sergei Rachmaninov, Igor Stravinsky, and Anna Pavlova—it reminds the reader that all of them were Nansen-­passport holders. Admitting that, for many émigrés themselves, and for the states in which they resided, the Nansen passport was considered “a second-­rate document,” it notes the fact that after the Second World War, displaced persons holding Nansen passports who found themselves back in the Soviet Union were particularly suspicious, making the document “in fact a ‘pass’ to the prison or GULAG.”123 Nonetheless, rather nonchalantly the author concludes that it was “better than a complete lack of documents,” reaffirming the notion that a world in which passports are not central to the legal regulation of migration is as unthinkable in 2014 as it was in 1924. Russkii Mir’s acknowledgment that Nansen passports could signal danger even within the Soviet Union is a rare reminder that, after the Second World War, a number of émigrés did return to the Soviet Union and were not always welcomed as they expected. Laurie Manchester, one of the few scholars who has studied this phenomenon, has done so in the context of memory, nostalgia, and mythmaking in the Russian émigré community.124 Dealing specifically with the community of “Harbiners” from northern China who returned to Russia after the defeat of Japan and then the Chinese Revolution, Manchester argues that, for this community, their status as “émigrés” who had “returned” forged an identity different enough from the Soviet identity to constitute a “separate ethnicity.”125 For them, Russia Abroad had had a spiritual mission in the interwar period to preserve prerevolutionary Russian

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culture and represent it in Russian lands. Since 1991 many of those who have sought to commemorate the Nansen passport have similarly framed it as a torchbearer of real (non-­Soviet) Russian culture, via the legal regulation of the status of refugees.

Conclusion As a transnational product of both migration and migration control, the Nansen passport differs from sites of memory that are fixed in place or space. Nonetheless, even such a deracinated site cannot escape national memory-­ making. Commentators in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis claimed the usable past offered by the Nansen passport was one of successful international utopianism. Conversely, Nansen-­passport holders and their descendants framed it repeatedly around contested forms of national belonging and viewed it as a material marker of legal inclusion and exclusion. The passport could facilitate border-­crossing but it also erected juridical borders. This quality prompted many of the more negative affective attachments to it expressed by interwar émigrés. Given the heterogeneity (linguistic, national, and regional) of the Russian émigré community, this chapter can only scratch the surface of the myriad ways in which the passport was discussed, imagined, and memorialized between the wars. Even this brief summary nonetheless identifies it as an unusually rich memory object. In contemporary Russia, the national and nationalizing function of the passport has been given a more positive interpretation, as a tool for the preservation of Russian culture after the revolution. Once again, this would seem to contradict efforts to claim it as a fundamentally international site. Do these nationalizing effects mean that efforts to locate the international in sites of memory are moot? The case of the Nansen passport certainly would suggest not. While the championing of it as a cosmopolitan document constitutes a willful forgetting as much as an incitement to remember, the Nansen passport continues to have remarkable resonance as a reminder of the fundamentally international problem of reconciling sovereignty and statelessness. Asking not only what the Nansen passport was and how it operated in practice but also how it has been evoked as a metonym for the first multilateral attempts to regulate the legal status of refugees in the twentieth century, can illuminate particular lacunae in our understanding of the imaginaries of international order.



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As a material document, the passport may have had for Nabokov a “sickly hue,” but it has also proved a remarkably malleable symbol. In Pierre Nora’s words, it is “mixed, hybrid and mutant” as an object of memory; that is, a paradigmatic lieu de mémoire.126

Notes Epigraph: Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1958 ), 28 1. For a succinct summary of these events, in which large numbers of refugees were driven by violence and civil war in Syria in particular, see Natalia Banulescu-­Bogdan and Susan Fratzke, “Europe’s Migration Crisis in Context: Why Now and What Next?,” 24 September 2015, accessed 4 March 2020, https://​www​.migrationpolicy​.org​/article​/europe​’s​-migration​-crisis​-context​-why​ -now​-and​-what​-next. 2. Peter Gatrell, The Unsettling of Europe: The Great Migration 1945–the Present (London: Allen Lane, 2019), 427–44. 3. On this discourse of emergency and its negative implications, see Gatrell, Unsettling of Europe, 429. 4. Harriet Grant, “UN Agencies ‘Broke and Failing’ in Face of Ever-­Growing Refugee Crisis,” Guardian, 6 September 2015, accessed 4 March 2020, https://​www​.theguardian​.com​/world​ /2015​/sep​/06​/refugee​-crisis​-un​-agencies​-broke​-failing; Steven Erlanger and Kimiko de Freytas-­ Tamura, “UN Funding Shortfalls and Cuts in Refugee Aid Fuel Exodus to Europe,” New York Times, 19 September 2015, accessed 4 March 2020, https://​www​.nytimes​.com​/2015​/09​/20​/world​ /un​-funding​-shortfalls​-and​-cuts​-in​-refugee​-aid​-fuel​-exodus​-to​-europe​.html; Thomas Spijkerboer, “Europe’s Refugee Crisis: A Perfect Storm,” University of Oxford Faculty of Law Border Criminologies Blog, accessed 4 March 2020, https://​www​.law​.ox​.ac​.uk​/research​-subject​-groups​ /centre​-criminology​/centreborder​-criminologies​/blog​/2016​/02​/europe​’s​-refugee. 5. Joyce Marie Mushaben, “Wir Schaffen Das! Angela Merkel and the European Refugee Crisis,” German Politics 26, no. 4 (2017): 516–633. 6. Judith Vonberg, “Why Angela Merkel Is No Longer the ‘Refugee Chancellor,’” CNN World, 6 July 2018, accessed 4 March 2020, https://​edition​.cnn​.com​/2018​/07​/06​/europe​/angela​ -merkel​-migration​-germany​-intl​/index​.html. 7. Chris McGreal, “Donald Tusk Defends European Response to ‘Unprecedented’ Refugee Crisis,” Guardian, 29 September 2015, accessed 4 March 2020, https://​www​.theguardian​.com​ /world​/2015​/sep​/29​/donald​-tusk​-defends​-european​-values​-united​-nations. 8. See, for example, the historian Tara Zahra’s op-­ed “The Return of No-­Man’s Land: Europe’s Asylum Crisis and Historical Memory,” Foreign Affairs, 22 September 2015, accessed 11 May 2021, https://​www​.foreignaffairs​.com​/articles​/western​-europe​/2015​-09​-22​/return​-no​-man​-s​-land. For a dissenting view highlighting the differences between 2015 and earlier refugee crises, see the historian Jessica Reinisch’s policy paper “History Matters . . . but Which One? Every Refugee Crisis Has a Context,” History and Policy, 29 September 2015, accessed 11 May 2021, http://​www​ .historyandpolicy​.org​/policy​-papers​/papers​/history​-matters​-but​-which​-one​-every​-refugee​-crisis​ -has​-a​-context.

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9. The classic work on this regime is Claudena M. Skran, Refugees in Inter-­War Europe: The Emergence of a Regime (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). See also Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 52–84; Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 133–88; Keith David Watenpaugh, “The League of Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920–1927,” American Historical Review 115, no. 5 (2010): 1315–39; and Martyn Housden, The League of Nations and the Organisation of Peace (London: Routledge, 2014), 57–74. 10. For the text of the denaturalization decree, see Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii rabochego i krest’ianskogo pravitel’stva, Moscow, 1922, no. 1, p. 11. For an extensive discussion of early Soviet emigration and immigration policies, see Iuri Fel’shtinskii, K Istorii Nashei Zakrytosti: Zakonodatel’nye osnovy sovetskoi immigratsionnoi i emigratsionnoi politiki (London: Overseas Publications Exchange, 1988), especially 14–152. This denaturalization had been preceded by earlier decrees confiscating all property of those who had left the territory of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. As Eric Lohr argues, together these decrees amounted to the “basic Bolshevik approach to its diaspora: return immediately or never.” Eric Lohr, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 147. 11. For a definitive study of statelessness as conceptual incubator of the post–World War I international order, see Mira Siegelberg’s Statelessness: A Modern History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020). 12. “The Question of the Russian Refugees,” League of Nations Official Journal (November 1921): 1005–27. 13. Skran, Refugees in Inter-­War Europe, 86. 14. Arrangement with Respect to the Issue of Certificates of Identity to Russian Refugees, Signed at Geneva, July 5 1922, League of Nations Treaty Series, 13, no. 355 (1922): 238–42. 15. Louise W. Holborn, “The Legal Status of Refugees 1920–1938,” American Journal of International Law 32 (1938): 680–703, 683. 16. The current international refugee regime does offer a form of refugee identification in the Refugee Travel Document mandated by the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Critics, however, point out that many signatory countries continue to deny refugees this document. 17. Stefan Wallaschek, “The Nansen Passport: Time to Revive a Realistic Utopia,” News Deeply, accessed 4 March 2020, https://​www​.newsdeeply​.com​/refugees​/contributor​/stefan​ -wallaschek. 18. Cara Gaimo, “The Little-­Known Passport That Protected 450,000 Refugees,” Atlas Obscura, accessed 23 March 2020, https://​www​.atlasobscura​.com​/articles​/nansen​-passport​-refugees. 19. Gaimo, “Little-­Known Passport.” 20. There is a growing literature on the memories of displacement, and of “exilic memory” as a cultural construction of the Russian émigré intelligentsia in particular. Thomas Lacroix and Elena Fiddian-­Qasmiyeh, “Refugee and Diaspora Memories: The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 34, no. 6 (2013): 684–96; Leonid Livak, “Making Sense of Exile: Russian Literary Life in Paris as a Cultural Construct, 1920–40,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 2, no. 3 (2001): 489–512. 21. M. G. Sheneriuk, “Sovremennoe Otechestvennoe Emigrantovedenie: Problemy Institualizatsii,” Nansenovskie Chteniia (St. Petersburg: Informatsionno-­Kul’turnyi Tsentr Russkaia Emigratsiia, 2012), 14–17.



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22. Ariadna Tyrkova-­Williams referred to Nansen-­passport holders as refugees in, for example, her reply to a questionnaire for émigrés sent by Baroness Vrangel in 1927; A. V. Popov, ed., Rossika c SShA: 50-­letiiu Bakhmetevskogo Arkhiva Kolumbiiskogo Universiteta Posviashchaetsia, Sbornik Statei (Moscow: Institute Politicheskogo i Voennogo Analiza, 2001), 177. The jurist S. K. Gogel made an impassioned argument against labeling Russians abroad “refugees” and calling them “political emigrants” instead at the 1922 Berlin Conference of Russian Jurists. See G. S. Starodubtsev, Mezhdunarodno-­Pravovaia Nauka Rossiiskoi Emigratsii, 1918–1939 (Moscow: Kniga i biznes, 2000), 61. 23. Sheneriuk, “Sovremennoe Otechestvennoe Emigrantovedenie,” 15. 24. For example, O. R. Demidova, Metamorfozy v Izgnanii: Literaturnyi byt Russkogo Zarubezh’ia (St. Petersburg: Giperion, 2003); and N. I. Kaniseva, Russkoe Zarubezhe Zolotaia Kniga Emigratsii. Pervaia tret’ XX veka entsiklopedicheskii biograficheskii slovar’ (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1997). 25. While scholarship on the interwar emigrations is dominated by work on Russian speakers, there is a small and growing literature on émigrés from other parts of the empire; see, for example, Mykola Soroka, “On the Other Side: The Russian-­Ukrainian Encounter in Displacement, 1920–1939,” Nationalities Papers 37, no. 3 (2009): 327–48; Irina Babich, “Western Adighes and Cossacks: Together and Separately in European Emigration, 1919–the 1930s,” Caucasus and Globalization 5, nos. 3–4 (2011): 150–66. 26. Soroka, “On the Other Side”; Marcia Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 76. 27. Marc Raeff, Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration 1919–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 5. 28. Sixteen countries adhered to the Arrangement of 1922 (Estonia, Finland, France, Britain, Latvia, Bolivia, Romania, South Africa, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Guatemala, Austria, and Greece); by 1926 the number had expanded to forty-­three. Only nine states ratified the 1933 Convention (Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, and Norway). “Arrangement of 5 July 1922”; “Arrangement Relating to the Issue of Identity Certificates to Russian and Armenian Refugees, 12 May 1926,” League of Nations Treaty Series 89, no. 2004 (1929): 48–52; “Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees, 28 October 1933,” League of Nations Treaty Series 159, no. 3663 (1933): 199–218. 29. “Arrangement of 5 July 1922”; “Plan for the Issue of a Certificate of Identity to Armenian Refugees, 31st May 1924,” League of Nations Official Journal, nos. 7–10 (1924): 969–70; “Arrangement of 12 May 1926”; “Arrangement Relating to the Legal Status of Russian and Armenian Refugees, 30 June 1928,” League of Nations Treaty Series 89, no. 200 (1929): 555–61; “Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees, 28 October 1933.” 30. See, for example, the reservations of Belgium, Bulgaria, Egypt, France, and Norway on signing the 1933 Convention, refusing, among other things, the right of refugees to unemployment insurance and the principle of non-­refoulement, “Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees, 28 October 1933,” 212–17. 31. Martyn Housden, “White Russians Crossing the Black Sea: Fridtjof Nansen, Constantinople and the First Modern Repatriation of Refugees Displaced by Civil Conflict, 1922–23,” Slavonic and East European Review 88, no. 3 (2010): 485–524. 32. Katy Long, “Early Repatriation Policy: Russian Refugee Return 1922–1924,” Journal of Refugee Studies 22, no. 2 (2009): 133–54.

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33. Catherine Gousseff, L’Exil Russe: La fabrique du réfugié apatride (1920–1939) (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2008), 101–214; Elizabeth White, “The Legal Status of Russian Refugees, 1921– 1936,” Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftforschung 27, no. 1 (2017): 18–38. On the broader history of France’s interwar guest-­worker regime, in which Russian refugees took part, see Mary Lewis, The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918–1940 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 17–53, 155–87. 34. “Le Rapport du Dr. Nansen sur les Réfugiés Russes,” La Tribune Juive 163, 25 May 1923, 6. 35. The renewed importance of borders and the ability to exclude aliens from them in the interwar order are key themes in Skran, Refugees in Inter-­War Europe; John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951), among others. 36. League of Nations, Report of the Work of the High Commission for Refugees, Geneva, 4 September 1923, A.30.1923.XII.IV, 8; Long, “Early Repatriation Policy.” 37. William Butler, “Russian International Lawyers in Emigration: The First Generation,” Journal of the History of International Law 3, no. 2 (2001): 235–41. 38. “Arrangement of 5 July 1922.” 39. See Holborn, “Legal Status of Refugees 1920–1938,” 680–703. 40. Starodubtsev, Mezhdunarodno-­Pravovaia, 58–64; Z. S. Bochareva, Russkie Bezhentsy: Problemy vozvrashcheniia na rodinu, uregulirovaniia pravovogo polozheniia, 1920–1930-­e gody (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004). 41. Starodubtsev, Mezhdunarodno-­Pravovaia, 62. 42. B. Mirkine-­Guetzevitch, “Le Passeport International,” La Tribune Juive 115, 13 March 1922, 3. 43. On the Nansen office as consular representative, see “Agreement of 30 June 1928,” discussed in “Refugee Questions,” League of Nations Official Journal (March 1928): 483–89. 44. White, “Legal Status.” 45. “Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees, 28 October 1933.” 46. Aoife Duffe, “Expulsion to Face Torture? Non-­Refoulement in International Law,” International Journal of Refugee Law 20, no. 3 (2008): 373–90. 47. Robert J. Beck, “Britain and the 1933 Refugee Convention: National or State Sovereignty?” International Journal of Refugee Law 11, no. 4 (1999): 597–624. 48. Holborn, “Legal Status of Refugees 1920–1938.” 49. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 284. 50. Gaimo, “Little-­Known Passport.” 51. Ana Campoy, “What We Can Learn from the Revolutionary Passport That Helped 1920s Refugees,” Quartz, 13 July 2019, accessed 11 May 2021, https://​qz​.com​/1659736​/the​ -1920s​-refugee​-passport​-that​-could​-help​-solve​-todays​-border​-crisis/. 52. Clare Heyward and Dominic Roser, “A Free Movement Passport for the Territorially Dispossessed,” in Climate Justice in a Non-­Ideal World, ed. Clare Heyward and Dominic Roser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 208–226 . 53. Otto Hieronymi, “The Nansen Passport: A Tool of Freedom of Movement and of Protection,” Refugee Studies Quarterly 22, no. 1 (2003): 36–47; Alessandra Roversi, “The Evolution of the Refugee Regime and Institutional Responses: Legacies from the Nansen Period,” Refugee Studies Quarterly 22, no. 1 (2003): 21–35.



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54. Katy Long, “Refugee passports could end border delays in the Balkans,”The Conversation, October 24, 2015, https://​theconversation​.com​/refugee​-passports​-could​-end​-border​ -delays​-in​-the​-balkans​-49339. 55. In using the word “refugeedom” I draw on Peter Gatrell’s use of the term to convey “the broad matrix of relations and practices” governing and engaged in by refugees. Peter Gatrell, “Refugees—What’s Wrong with History?,” Journal of Refugee Studies 30, no. 2 (2017): 170–89. 56. Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees” (1943), in The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, ed. Ron H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978), 55–67. 57. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 281n27. 58. Giorgio Agamben, “We Refugees,” Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 49, no. 2 (1995):114–19. 59. For a counterargument, see Patricia Owen, “Reclaiming ‘Bare Life’? Against Agamben on Refugees,” International Relations 23, no. 4 (2009): 567–82. 60. Marieke Borren, “Towards an Arendtian Politics of In/visibility: On Stateless Refugees and Undocumented Aliens,” Ethical Perspectives 15, no. 2 (2008): 213–37; Cabanes, Great War, 137n17. 61. Rebecka Lettevall, “Cosmopolitanism in Practice: Perspectives on the Nansen Passports,” in East European Diaspora, Migration and Cosmopolitanism, ed. Ulrike Ziemer and Sean P. Roberts (Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 2012), 13–25. 62. Lettevall, “Cosmopolitanism in Practice,” 23. 63. John Torpey, “Leaving: A Comparative View,” in Citizenship and Those Who Leave: The Politics of Emigration and Expatriation, ed. Nancy L. Green and François Weil (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 13–32. 64. John Torpey, “Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate ‘Means of Movement,’” Sociological Theory 16, no. 3 (1997): 239. 65. Eric D. Weitz, “Against Despair,” Public Books, accessed 11 May 2021, https://​www​ .publicbooks​.org​/against​-despair/. 66. Weitz, “Against Despair.” 67. Lacroix and Fiddian-­Qasmiyeh, “Refugee and Diaspora Memories.” 68. Peter Fritzsche, “Specters of History: On Nostalgia, Exile, and Modernity,” American Historical Review 106, no. 5 (2001): 605. 69. Nabokov’s time in European exile is discussed at length in the secondary literature; the most comprehensive account (despite its name) is Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). 70. Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov, 437. 71. V. V. Nabokov, Speak Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1951; New York: Vintage, 1989), 276. 72. Nabokov, Speak Memory, 276. 73. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1958 ), 28. 74. On Nabokov as “star writer” of the emigration, see Brian Boyd, “Nabokov’s Life in Context I: Russia and Emigration,” in Vladimir Nabokov in Context, ed. David M. Bethea and Siggy Frank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 11–18. 75. Leonid Livak, How It Was Done in Paris: Russian Émigré Literature and French Modernism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 174–75. 76. Livak, How It Was Done in Paris, 174.

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77. I. S. K. Soboleff, Nansen Passport: Round the World on a Motorcycle (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1936). 78. For Soboleff ’s accounting of these travels and travails, see Soboleff, Nansen Passport, 44–87. On the Shanghai community of Russian émigrés, see Ristaino, Port of Last Resort. 79. Soboleff, Nansen Passport, 91. 80. Soboleff, Nansen Passport, 93. 81. As he states: “My Nansen passport now had so many visas already that officials had stopped looking at it with any suspicion.” Soboleff, Nansen Passport, 81. 82. Soboleff, Nansen Passport, 173. 83. Soboleff, Nansen Passport, 235. 84. Victoria Khiterer, “Vasilii Shul’gin and the Jewish Question: An Assessment of Shul’gin’s Anti-­Semitism,” On the Jewish Street/Na Evreiskoi Ulitse 1, no. 2 (2011): 3–11. 85. Khiterer, “Vasilii Shul’gin,” 13. 86. Bruce Adams, “The Extraordinary Career of Vasilii Shul’gin,” Revolutionary Russia 5, no.  2 (1992): 202–3. On “the Trust” as a front group set up by the Cheka in the 1920s, see Andrew Barros, “A Window on the ‘Trust’: The Case of Ado Birk,” Intelligence and National Security 10, no. 2 (1995): 273–93. 87. V. V. Shul’gin, “Chto nam v nikh ne nravitsia . . .”: Ob antisemitizm’ v Rossii (Paris: Izd. Russia Minor, 1929). 88. Shul’gin, “Chto nam v nikh,” 140–83. 89. Shul’gin, “Chto nam v nikh,” 156. A “wolf ’s passport” was a term used in imperial and Soviet Russia to refer to a passport stamped to state that the bearer was deprived of certain civil rights—for example, the right to attend school or live in certain places. On the broader question of passports and the Jewish community in imperial Russia, see Eugene M. Avrutin, Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010), 86–115. 90. Shul’gin, “Chto nam v nikh,” 156. 91. Shul’gin, “Chto nam v nikh,” 157. 92. Shul’gin, “Chto nam v nikh,” 157. On the idea of Judeo-­Bolshevism, see Paul Hanebrink, A Spectre Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-­Bolshevism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2018); on the White Movement’s mobilization of this rhetoric from the outset of its anti-­ Bolshevik campaign, see 56. 93. Adams, “Extraordinary Career of Vasilii Shul’gin,” 203. 94. Khiterer, “Vasilii Shul’gin”; George Gilbert, The Radical Right in Late Imperial Russia: Dreams of a True Fatherland? (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 212. 95. Oleg Budnitskii and Aleksandra Polian, Russko-­evreiskii Berlin (1920–1941) (Moscow: Novoe Literature Obozrenie, 2015); Mikhail Parkhomovskii, ed., Evrei v Kul’ture Russkogo Zarubezh’ia, Vyp. 1 (Jerusalem: Israel Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1992). 96. Laurie Manchester, “How Statelessness Can Force Refugees to Redefine Their Identity: What Can Be Learned from Russian Émigrés Dispersed to Six Continents in the Interwar Period?,” Immigrants and Minorities 34, no. 1 (2016): 70–91. 97. Popov, Rossika c SShA, 177 (citing Arkhiv Guverskogo Instituta v Stenforde. Koll. M V Vrangel’. Kor 20, F5/6). 98. Irinna Shevelenko, Materialy o russkoi emigratsii 1920–1930-­x rr v Sobranii Baronessy M. D. Vrangel’ (Arkhiv Guverovskogo Instituta v Stenforde), Stanford Slavic Studies 9 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 18–19.



The Nansen Passport 67

99. M. V. Vishniak, “Na Rodine (My i Oni),” Sovremennye zapiski 20 (1922): 326. 100. M. V. Vishniak, Dan’ Proshlomu (New York: Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova, 1954). 101. While in The Hague, he published his influential Le statut international des apatrides, 43, Recueil des Cours 115 (1933). See also M. V. Vishniak, Pravo men’shinstv (Paris: La Press française et etrangère, 1926); M. V. Vishniak, La Protection des droits des minorités dans les traités internationaux de 1919–1920 (Paris: J. Povolozky, 1929); M. V. Vichniak, The Transfer of Populations as a Means of Solving the Problem of Minorities (New York: YIVO, 1942); M. V. Vishniak, The Legal Status of Stateless Persons (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1945); and M.  V.  Vichniak, The International Protection of Minorities and the International Bill of Rights (New York: Research Institute of the Jewish Labor Committee , 1945). 102. Starodubtsev, Mezhdunarodno-­Pravovaia, 58–64. For more on the Berlin Congress, see W. E. Butler, “Russian International Lawyers in Emigration: The First Generation,” Journal of the History of International Law 3 (2001): 235–41. 103. Bor. Or, “’S’ezd Russkikh Iuristov,” Rul, 561 (1922): 1. 104. “’S’ezd Russkikh Iurisitov”; Starodubtsev, Mezhdunarodno-­Paravovaia, 62. 105. Mark Vishniak, Gody Emigratsii, 1919–1969: Parizh-­N’iu-­York (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1970). 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid. 108. Z. S. Bochareva, “Kraine nepriiatnye ogranicheniia, ustanovlennye v Germanii dlia nansenovskikh pasportov,” Pis’mo S. D. Botkina V. A. Maklakovu, 1934, Russkii Arkhiv 5 (2005): 53–64. Published from GARF, f. 6094, op. 1, d. 31, ll. 15–18. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid., 62. 111. On the influence of Russian émigré discourses in contemporary Russian nationalism, see Gregory Gan, “‘And with Me, My Russia / I Bring Along in a Travelling Bag’: Literary and Ethnographic Narratives of Russian Exile and Emigration, Past and Present,” Revolutionary Russia 32, no. 1 (2019): 154–79. 112. The most well-­known Russian cultural foundation, Russkii Mir, frames itself as an equivalent to the British Council or Alliance Française, and organizes frequent events in commemoration of the emigration; see my discussion of the Nansen exhibition organized by Russkii Mir below. 113. For a summary of the “emigrantovedenie” tendency, see A. A. Prochin, “Emigrantovedenie,” in Reestr Novykh Nauchnykh Napravlenii, Tom. I, ed. M Iu Ledvanov (Moscow: Akademiia Estestvoznaniia, 2018), 64–65. 114. See, for example, L. V. Klimovich, “Russia emigratsiia, istoricheskaia pamiat’ i revoliutsii 1917 good: Proshloe otsenivaet proshloe,” Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie 116 (2017): 140–53. 115. See successive collected volumes of the “Nansen readings” conference—for example, P.  N. Bazhanov et al., eds., Nansenovskie chteniia 2007 (St. Petersburg: Russkaia emigratsiia, 2008); and P. N. Bazhanov et al., eds., Nansenovskie chteniia 2009 (St. Petersburg: Russkaia emigratsiia, 2010). 116. The exhibition, organized in conjunction with the Norwegian embassy in a celebration of Norway’s “Nansen week,” 25–30 October 2011, opened in Moscow on 26 October 2011. “Otkrytie vystavki ‘Nansen, ego zhizn’ i deiatel’nost,’” accessed 23 March 2020, https://​www​ .sakharov​-center​.ru​/node​/9936. 117. “Otkrytie vystavki ‘Nansen, ego zhizn’ i deiatel’nost.’”

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118. The first winner was Eleanor Roosevelt; for an official account of this award, see “In Photos: Nansen Refugee Award Winners,” accessed 23 March 2020, https://​www​.unhcr​.org​ /previous​-nansen​-winners​.html. 119. See the entry on the memorial on the website Uznai Moskvy (Know Moscow); “Pamiatnik Fritofu Nansenu,” accessed 23 March 2020, https://​um​.mos​.ru​/monuments​/pamyatnik​ _fritofu​_nansenu/. 120. “Fotoreportazh: V Samare otrkyli pamiatnik polianomu issledovateliu Nansenu,” Pro Gorod Samara.ru, accessed 23 March 2020, https://​progorodsamara​.ru​/news​/view​/163111. 121. “‘Pora vspomnit’! My sobiraem sredstva na pamiatnuiu kompozitsiiu ‘luchshemu inostrantsu Rossii’ Frit’ofu Nansenu,” accessed 23 March 2020, Drugoi Gorod, http://​drugoigorod​ .ru​/nansenmonument. 122. “Nansen—pokrovitel’ bezhentsev,” Russkii Mir, accessed 23 March 2020, https://​ russkiymir​.ru​/publications​/145194/. 123. Ibid. 124. Manchester, “How Statelessness Can Force Refugees”; Laurie Manchester, “Fusing Russian Nationalism with Soviet Patriotism: Changing Conceptions of Homeland and the Mass Repatriation of Manchurian Russians After Stalin’s Death,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 20, no. 3 (2019): 529–58. 125. Manchester, “How Statelessness Can Force Refugees.” 126. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoires,” trans. Marc Roudebush, in “Memory and Counter-­Memory,” special issue, Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7–24, 19.

PA R T II From Imperial to Postcolonial Sites of International Memory-­Making

CHAPTER 4

The Boxer War and International Memory Dominique Biehl

I

n the summer of 1900, news about the “Boxer Rebellion” made the headlines of newspapers around the world. The violent outbursts of the Boxers led to a collective intervention of the foreign imperial powers in China. Parts of the Chinese Imperial Court took sides with the Boxers in order to fight the foreign presence in China, prompting a military intervention of the eight imperial powers—Japan, Russia, Britain, the United States, Italy, Germany, France, and Austria-­Hungary. Suffering a series of defeats at the hands of the intervening powers, the Chinese representatives had to sign the humiliating Boxer Protocol in 1901. For some contemporary observers, the international military operations during the Boxer War1 reflected a more general trend toward internationalism. As one observer put it, the military operations in the Far East could be seen as the “precipitation of the latent internationalism of Europe and America into the visible concrete shape of an international navy and an international army in China.”2 This very idea of internationalism and military action intertwined remained as a substantial part of early twentieth-­century liberal conceptions of internationalism. Internationalists like Alfred Fried3 saw the cooperation of the intervening powers in China as a symbol of the “solidarity of the Kulturstaaten [cultured states].”4 Observers stressed the differences between these relatively new “international warlike actions” (internationale kriegerische Aktionen)5 and the “national wars” of the past. The national wars went hand in hand with national claims and often led to “retrogression to the savage lust of sheer barbarism.”6 In contrast, the “international warlike actions” were legitimized by a community of states, waged in the interest of that community, and were aimed “at maintaining or restoring order.”7 Moreover, by including

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military interventions on the list of the different “international activities” that resulted from international institutions and agreements, the political power of this conception of internationalism was substantially enhanced. In this reading, the international military operations in China were one instance of the aforementioned international warlike actions, aiming for the “pacification and the resettlement of China.”8 When thinking about how “to perpetuate the souvenir of this act of fraternity and international solidarity, unique in history,” the French general Henri-­Nicolas Frey dreamed of the construction of “a modest monument” in the capital cities of each of the participating powers, bearing the names of the non-­Chinese victims of the war.9 Such plans could also resonate with liberal internationalists, even more so as the age of historicism accentuated the need for memory sites, while internationalists had generally only intellectual utopias to offer, mostly world capitals, or, as suggested by Fried, an imaginative space described as “international country.”10 The Boxer War offers an interesting case study for analyzing how an event that contemporary observers—participants, journalists, and politicians alike—saw characterized by its very international dimension, was commemorated. As we will see, the international dimension of the Boxer War manifested itself to the citizens and subjects of the imperial powers mainly in two forms, in a broader sense, by the presence of and the interaction with civilians, and military and diplomatic personnel of the different Kulturstaaten and their respective colonial possessions. In a narrower sense, it could take the form of more or less coordinated semiofficial efforts directed at restoring or maintaining order. In this very broad understanding, “international” was a catch-­all term that first and foremost referred to the presence of members of the different “civilized states” and their colonial possessions, without necessarily implying that this presence was due to any type of state-­sanctioned action. As the international dimension was a key feature of the Boxer War, a question arises: Was it translated into Boxer War sites of memory that explicitly addressed this international dimension, or was it reduced to a circumstantial byproduct of minor importance? Answering this question requires an analysis of how a more prominent manifestation of “cooperative imperialism” was commemorated.11 Until now, most of the Anglophone research literature on sites of memory in China did not address the international context of the European, American, and Japanese presence in early twentieth-­century China.12 This is surprising,



The Boxer War 73

as China is a prominent example for illustrating the effects of “international colonialism” and of simultaneous intrusions by different imperial powers.13 This, however, just reflects the paradoxical development that sites of imperial and colonial memory are receiving an increasing amount of scholarly interest, while their respective analysis is often limited to an imperial or national framework.14 Whereas, in recent years, historians have analyzed interactions within, between, and beyond empires and the different forms these interactions could take, the commemorative imprint of these inter-­and transimperial interactions has not received much scholarly attention. Consequently, approaches that analytically bring together different empires have not been applied to sites of memory in Boxer War China until now.15 This chapter will investigate examples of how different memory communities of the Kulturstaaten tried to shape a remembrance culture of the Boxer War that went beyond the nation-­state or empire, thereby transcending conventional early twentieth-­century frameworks of commemoration and remembrance.16 The case studies provided will identify these memory communities, analyze their rationale, and assess the relation of their initiatives to traditional modes of commemoration, thereby highlighting the complex interactions of local initiatives, diplomatic deliberations, the demands of the foreign residents, and the attempts to adapt the language of military sites of memory to an international context. After a summary of the events unfolding in China from 1900 to 1901, three sections of this chapter will investigate different forms of international memory centered on the Siege of the Beijing Legations.17 Despite being a relatively brief episode (20 June 1900 to 14 August 1900) of the Boxer War, it is by far its best known, dominating media coverage and popular re-­presentations of the events in the northern parts of China. These examples serve to illustrate commemorative projects of actors of civil society in a nonofficial capacity, whereas the fourth section of this chapter will focus on different military and thus at least semiofficial initiatives aiming at preserving and shaping the memory of the international cooperation during the Boxer War.18 By focusing on various examples of (un)successful projects of international commemoration of the events in China, I will show that these forms of commemoration were most likely to be supported and executed when they were not the product of state or official initiatives. Thus, contrary to the liberal internationalists’ enthusiastic ideas about the positive effects on interstate affairs that the military operations in China might have, it was not the governments of the intervening powers who turned out to be the most fervent advocates of internationalized forms of commemoration. As

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the Boxer War forms the historical background of the initiatives that will be discussed in this chapter, a short overview of the events unfolding in China in 1900 is necessary.

The Boxer War The series of events that led to the Chinese “Declaration of War” on 21 June 1900 is rooted in interwoven endogenous and exogenous processes affecting the Chinese Empire in the late nineteenth century.19 Some of these were a direct result of China’s forced integration into the Western-­dominated international (economic) system.20 Equally important were the ever more aggressive actions of the imperial powers in seizing portions of Chinese territory in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Social and economic factors as well as natural catastrophes coupled with the paralyzed nature of local government in parts of China provided, in the mid-­and late nineteenth century, the soil for popular movements that sought to combat the very causes of the hardships the Chinese population had to endure. One of these movements was the “Boxers United in Righteousness,” characterized by mass spirit possession on the one hand, and shared beliefs in invulnerability on the other. Originating in Shandong Province, this movement quickly expanded in the North China Plain in late 1899 and early 1900. With a wavering stance of the local authorities and an indecisive position of the Imperial Court on how to react to the Boxers, more and more destitute rural Chinese joined this mostly pro-­Qing and anti-­foreign movement. At first targeting Chinese Christian converts, the Boxers then turned to attacking symbols of the foreign presence in China (railways, telegraph lines, churches) and, ultimately, mostly European and American but also Japanese foreigners.21 After the killing of a British missionary on 31 December 1899, the foreign community was highly concerned about the rising Boxer threat and the diplomats in Beijing started to mount pressure on the Chinese government so that it might take firmer action against the Boxers. When more foreigners were killed in late May and early June 1900, the foreign diplomats in Beijing asked for troop reinforcements without informing the Chinese government prior to calling for these reinforcements. As a result, pro-­Boxer officials at the Imperial Court in Beijing gained the upper hand and on 21 June 1900, the court issued a document



The Boxer War 75

that identified the foreign powers as responsible for the outbreak of hostilities. It now openly supported the Boxers.22 While Boxers and Chinese troops besieged the foreign settlements in Tianjin and Beijing, the powers mobilized expeditionary forces to be deployed to China. The German emperor Wilhelm II sent Field Marshall Alfred von Waldersee as “supreme commander” of the intervening powers to China, illustrating the prominent role the kaiser wanted Germany to play on the world stage, not least because the German minister to China had been assassinated by a Chinese soldier.23 With the bulk of the troops still on their way to the theater of operations, a coalition of international troops, made up mostly of Japanese and Russian soldiers, lifted the siege of Tianjin and marched inland to relieve the foreigners besieged in Beijing.24 In the autumn of 1900, with the bulk of foreign troops having arrived in China, major urban centers (Beijing, Tianjin, and Baoding) were occupied and the foreign troops undertook recurrent brutal “punitive expeditions” in Zhili Province. In autumn and winter of 1900, the number of foreign troops started to decrease, as negotiations between the powers and the Chinese representatives were under way. In September 1901, the intervention ended with the signing of the Boxer Protocol.25 The following section will retrace some Anglophone narrative representations of the “international” (in the aforementioned broader sense of the term referring to interactions between members of the Kulturstaaten) character that the Siege of the Beijing Legations took. Based on these narratives, the commemorative strategies involving the “International Gun” and the Peking Siege Medal will be analyzed.

Inside Noah’s Ark: The Unity of the Besieged in Beijing Already in mid-­August 1900, directly after the lifting of the sieges of Tianjin and Beijing, commemorative events started with the twofold aim of celebrating the foreign community’s survival and remembering those who had lost their lives. The beginning diplomatic negotiations between the powers and China also touched on the monopoly of interpretation of past events and the question of who dictated the “correct” interpretation of the Boxer War: The “joint note,” the prerequisite for the opening of formal peace negotiations between the powers and the Chinese government, included a particular interpretation of past events. It stated that China had violated “the law

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of nations, . . . the laws of humanity and civilization.” The Chinese government was forced to adopt commemorative measures that were to “expiate the crimes committed and to prevent their recurrence.”26 Consequently, the Boxer Protocol stipulated that monuments were to be erected on spots where foreign diplomats had been killed and in cemeteries that had been desecrated.27 Together with the “mission of atonement” of Prince Chun to Germany and other demands that the Chinese government had to fulfill, these practices, as shown by James Hevia, had a double dimension.28 On the one hand, they situated China “beyond the pale of civilization” for its breach of international law in the summer of 1900, but on the other, they also allowed for its readmittance to the “family of nations,” once it complied with the powers’ demands.29 However, whereas some foreign civilians, diplomats, and soldiers wanted to “teach the Chinese lessons for the future so that such a disaster would not recur”30—and the aforementioned stipulations of the Boxer Protocol were part of this very desire—a plethora of reports and eyewitness accounts published during and in the immediate aftermath of the Boxer War shaped the image of the community of foreign residents besieged in Beijing in new ways. Instead of a fragmented community originating from almost every country imaginable, a community transcending the boundaries of various countries surfaces in the different recollections of the siege of the legations, a community primarily characterized by its commonly experienced resistance to the imminent danger of annihilation and one that, as we will see, initiated its own projects to preserve the memory of this international experience. Reverend Frederick Brown, a Wesleyan chaplain in North China, collected various statements from the missionaries who had experienced the siege of the legations in his book China’s Dayspring After Thirty Years, published in 1914. Not an eyewitness himself, he quoted the words of the well-­known American missionary Arthur Smith, who celebrated the impact of the siege as a reinforcement of Christian unity: “Greek, Roman Catholic and Protestant fraternized as never before. Every country of Europe was represented except Turkey and Greece, besides three in Asia, and the United States. What a Noah’s Ark! Amid political and military jealousies, this fact will remain a precious memory.”31 Other eyewitness accounts of the siege had played on this same perception of unity,32 while additional accounts derived unity from multilateral cooperation. These claims of unity, however, did not result in the disappearance of more divisive categories such as “nationality.” Survivors recalling the songs they sang for entertainment stated that “thinking that in



The Boxer War 77

such a cosmopolitan place the songs of no one nation should predominate . . . we had the national airs of Great Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia sung by representatives of each country.”33 European media coverage replicated the idea of a foreign community that was threatened by the Boxers. Here, the nationality of those threatened was only of minor importance, as they were usually referred to as “Europeans,” although these “Europeans” sometimes also encompassed Americans, Japanese, and Chinese Christian converts.34 The “unity” described in these reports was, however, not the result of a deliberate choice because of abstract ideas such as cosmopolitanism or ecumenism but the direct result of a commonly faced danger and the geographical layout of Beijing where the foreigners were besieged at two points: the Roman Catholic Beitang Cathedral and the Legation Quarter. The Legation Quarter saw different instances of international—in the sense of semiofficial—forms of cooperation and organization. Nominated by the other ministers, the British minister Sir Claude MacDonald organized the overall defense of the legations by coordinating the different contingents of the legation guards and armed civilian volunteers.35 Various committees oversaw firefighting, sanitation, “native convert labour,” and even an international hospital under Anglo-­German administration.36 The male and female residents of the Legation Quarter had their fair share in its successful defense, whether as volunteer defenders or as members of the different committees organizing nursing. However, it was not just the representatives of the imperial powers who contributed to the defense of the Legation Quarter; the Chinese Christian converts, of whom up to 600–700 were trapped with the foreigners, performed valuable services in the different committees as well.37 The different committees, the unified command of the defense of the legations and the international hospital served, for many participants and outside observers, to illustrate the unity of the besieged, united in their common efforts to counter the Boxer threat—a unity that, by most accounts, also included the Japanese defenders of the Legation Quarter. With “Betsy,” the “International Gun,” we will analyze a more permanent material manifestation of this very unity. The focus on this gun and its representation uncovers how a circumstantial byproduct of the Siege of the Beijing Legations rose to prominence in the immediate aftermath of the siege as a symbol of the very unity of the besieged, but also how, over time, this international connotation of the gun disappeared.

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The “International Gun” and the Siege of the Legations The 1963 Hollywood movie 55 Days at Peking depicts the events surrounding the Siege of the Beijing Legations with a great amount of artistic freedom.38 In one scene, the movie’s hero, the American Major Lewis (played by Charlton Heston) is looking critically at an obviously improvised cannon. A priest standing next to him introduces the cannon as “a cross between an alligator and an ostrich,” saying that the gun’s name is “Betsy”—“after the Dowager empress of China.” The gun’s unusual appearance, the priest continues, derives from the different origins of its parts with its German-­made barrel, its Russian shells, its Italian gun carriage, and its French wheels.39 In the movie, this sequence represents yet another variation of the leitmotiv of cooperation among the foreign imperial powers.40 However, Betsy was not the product of a 1960s movie director’s imagination. On the contrary, it even entered official correspondence in the immediate aftermath of the Boxer War and became itself a material manifestation of the international efforts of defending the Legation Quarter. Detailing the events of the siege in his official report, the British Minister MacDonald stressed the defenders’ lack of proper artillery41 and the problems associated with this once the Chinese troops began shelling the Legation Quarter.42 In this delicate situation, a gang of Chinese converts found an old piece of artillery that was to become the International Gun. After the American gunner Mitchell had cleaned and scraped it, it was mounted on the wheels of an Italian gun, firing modified Russian shells. Contemporary accounts emphasized, above all, the international components of the gun: “As the gun was found by Chinese converts in charge of a British subject, and was probably of either British or French manufacture, as it fired Russian ammunition, was mounted on an Italian carriage and further was put together and fired by an American, it was with much truth christened ‘the International.’”43 The gun and its different parts stood, for eyewitnesses of the siege as well as for outside observers, pars pro toto for the informal coalition of the powers, transforming it into a sort of material manifestation of the makeshift coalition in Beijing.44 The significance attributed to the gun varied greatly. Some saw its role as being more a symbolic one by having a positive impact on the morale of the besieged45 or by causing consternation among the Chinese besiegers.46 Others stressed Betsy’s contribution in pushing back Chinese attacks,47 and some even went so far as to claim that it was the “the foreigner’s mainstay during the siege.”48 Betsy also served to illustrate the tenacity and ingenuity of the defenders.49 Irrespective



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of its actual contribution to the defense of the legations, it was a very fitting metaphor to represent the equally unusual community created by the siege, where there were, “within the legation lines . . . representatives of seventeen nations and the ministers of eleven of the Powers.”50 Besides the broader narrative strand that transformed Betsy into a symbol of the impromptu coalition in Beijing, especially American newspapers picked up the story of Mitchell, the indefatigable American gunner who operated Betsy and who was styled as one of the American heroes of the siege.51 Writing in 1917, Theodora M. Inglis, an eyewitness, published an article on Betsy in the Washington Post that focused on the exploits and the gallantry of this very Mitchell, “a hardy little chap, with a ‘never-­say-­die’ glint in his blue eyes” who had the “courage and ingenuity” to build this gun. Betsy, “her rusty old English body strapped to the Italian gun carriage was as truly allied then as now, but in a few moments, Betsy assumed international importance,” as the shells were Russian, the powder German, the fuse Japanese and the gunner American.52 However, here the story of Betsy served mainly to provide the background for Mitchell’s exploits. For American Protestant missionaries, Betsy was nothing less than a manifestation of “The Hand of Good in the Siege.” In this context, the discovery of Betsy was put in a line with other examples that manifested a sort of divine intervention during the siege, its international nature being of only secondary importance.53 Nevertheless, the gun itself was not included in any longer-­lasting commemorative strategy of highlighting the international dimension of the Siege of the Beijing Legations. The gun was, above all, a symbol of the American role during the siege and with the changing political tides after the relief of the legations, the need to create such an international memento might not have been felt by all participants alike. Consequently, Betsy was transferred to the United States after the Boxer War, where it was first presented to the US Military Academy at West Point,54 then handed over to the Navy Department and installed at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, where it was almost forgotten.55 In 1988, when the US Marine Corps Museum hosted an exhibition aimed at highlighting the corps’ longtime association with Northern China, only the barrel of the International Gun had survived and its other parts had to be reconstructed.56 In the end, Betsy’s association with the United States proved to be longer lasting than its international contextualization. Betsy’s original purpose had solely been its use as a gun that, coincidentally, turned out to be a very fitting material metaphor for the Defense of the

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Legations and consequently became incorporated into narratives that either highlighted the makeshift coalition in Beijing, individual exploits, or divine intervention. The next example will show one instance of a deliberate attempt by nonofficial actors to perpetuate the memory of the siege of the legations by creating a memento of the siege.

Peking Siege Medal At the same time as the story of Betsy began to circulate in European and American newspapers, readers of the British,57 French, and American press learned about the imminent creation of a medal commemorating the siege of the legations.58 According to the news dated 14 August 1900, the very day the legations were relieved, the medal would bear the legend “Men, not walls make a city,” by obviously following Thucydides’ proverb that “men . . . make a State, not walls nor ships devoid of men.”59 Indeed, the General Committee, “a sort of municipal council for the management of the civil affairs of the [British] Legation,” had taken the initiative by asking for design suggestions while the siege was still ongoing.60 These suggestions consisted of “three or four designs, one representing the burning of the Ch’ien Men [gate],61 one a Marine posted at a barricade, one three figures of Europe, America and Japan standing hand in hand on the head of a dragon, one a dragon breathing fire upon the Bell Tower with the legend ‘ex ore Draconis liberati sumus’ and one or two others which I have forgotten. The motto which took the popular fancy was ‘Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,’ but that really was a most unwarranted prophecy.”62 At the beginning of August 1900, with the dénouement of the siege in sight,63 some of the participants, well aware of the uniqueness of the events they had witnessed, wanted to perpetuate the memory of this experience. However, after the initial news coverage following the relief of the legations in late August and early September 1900 ceased, there was, for over two years, no news concerning the siege medal. It was only in mid-­1902 that Arthur Brent, whose son and wife had been in the Legation Quarter during the siege,64 brought the idea of the medal up once again by addressing a wider public with a letter to the editor of the “China and London Express.” The reason he took the initiative was, as Brent stated, the British government’s attitude, as it “did not take the opportunity in recognizing the services rendered by the ladies who unselfishly cured the sick and wounded [during



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Figure 4.1. Obverse of the Peking Siege Medal; showing the personification of Europe, Japan, and America trampling on the Chinese dragon. This medal was awarded to George Ernest Morrison, Times correspondent to China and renowned traveler. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, SAFE/R 644/Item j.

Figure 4.2. Reverse of the Peking Siege Medal; showing the burning Ch’ien Men gate and “Betsy.” Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, SAFE/R 644/Item j.

the siege].” He continued, “It seems hardly credible that they [the ladies; DB] should have to provide themselves with a memento to hand down to their descendants!”65 Brent was referring to the institution of the official British China Medal in January 1902 that was to be awarded to British and colonial military and naval personnel who had served in North China and the Yangtze Valley,66 but not to noncombatants. Whereas male civilian British

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volunteer defenders were eligible for the China Medal,67 the Foreign Office and the War Office explicitly stated upon Brent’s request that civilian women were not.68 Frustrated by the British Government’s lack of official recognition of the important role of women during the siege, Brent took up the design suggestions made and balloted during the siege, which his son had sent to him. He explained that the project of the commemorative medal had not been taken up in the immediate aftermath of the siege because the “siegeites” had lost contact with each other and rumors about the creation of an official medal had been circulating.69 However, as it became clear that the latter would not be created, Brent took the initiative, aiming above all to create a supplementary form of recognition for the role of British women.70 However, it was not just the “siegeites” and their family members who were convinced that the British Government had not adequately acknowledged the role of women during the siege. The influential Shanghai-­based “North-­China Herald” shared Brent’s critique of the government’s attitude. One contributor wondered how it could be that the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, who had served during the Boxer crisis but had not actually fought any battles, was to be awarded the “China Medal with clasp,” while “there are others whose much more arduous and dangerous services have received no recognition at all from the King.” The paper concurred with Brent’s view, stating that it was “a grave omission that the British ladies who nursed the sick and wounded and did so much to keep up the spirit of the defenders of the Legations, while themselves subjected to all the dangers and privations of the siege, have not been awarded the medal and clasp which would have been given them had they been Army Nurses.”71 Note that, here, as in Brent’s letters, it was not a question of a medal for all women; the center of attention was once again the role of British women. This whole discussion was situated in a British context and reflected contemporary British debates. Brent himself directly alluded to the official British China Medal when elaborating on the design of the siege medal he was promoting, stating that “the owner’s name will be stamped or engraved on the edge as is done with service medals.”72 Unlike official service medals, which were worn, the Peking Siege Medal should be kept at home as a memento of the siege of the legations. Whereas the official British China Medal had the sovereign’s (the late Queen Victoria’s) portrait on the obverse and the name of the theater of operations on the reverse, the reverse of the



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Peking Siege Medal showed the burning Ch’ien Men gate and, apparently departing from the original designs made during the siege, Betsy73 as well as a Latin inscription indicating the duration of the siege and the year 1900. On the obverse, it showed the engraving “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin— Ichabod!” referring to King Belshazzar’s feast in the book of Daniel.74 At the center of the obverse were the allegorical representations of the United States, Japan, and Europe reaching out to each other and trampling on the Chinese dragon. This allegorical representation of the “civilized states,” standing united against the Chinese dragon, also illustrated who would be allowed to purchase this medal. Brent explicitly stated that “all present during the siege—men, women, and children—of any nationality, except Chinese” could apply for this medal.75 Thus, the community that was celebrated here and was eligible to acquire this medal was one of the “civilized states” that naturally included the European powers, the United States—and Japan, as the imagery of the medal also showed.76 The original idea behind the siege medal was to perpetuate the memory of the volatile coalition in the Beijing Legations. Brent’s initiative, however, left a strong British imprint on the project and contributed to a significant shift in the medal’s message. Whereas the original medal design and the quotation from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War stressed the role of the male defenders and underlined martial qualities, the actual execution of the latter emphasized the unity of the besieged and their overcoming of the commonly faced threat. Together with the biblical quote, it had nevertheless a triumphalist thrust. Brent, by repeatedly linking his initiative in creating the medal to the lack of recognition for the British female participants of the siege, turned the medal more into a substitute for the British China Medal. The creation of the medal for an international subscriber base was a byproduct of Brent’s primary aim of having an ersatz decoration for British female participants of the siege of the legations. As his letters were printed in British and American newspapers, Brent was successful in generating an adequate subscriber base.77 In May 1903, Brent signaled that he had already received 150 applications for the medals.78 Ironically, today, these unofficial medals are quite rare and are sold for high prices.79 The Peking Siege Medal, at the beginning an unofficial initiative aimed at creating a lasting souvenir of the siege, first fell into oblivion in the immediate aftermath of the siege, when rumors about the creation of an international medal were circulating. Due to the lack of official government recognition

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for the British female participants of the siege, Brent took the initiative. By addressing newspapers that circulated in Britain and treaty-­port China, he was able to generate a subscriber base for this decoration that created a lasting memory of international unity during the Siege of the Beijing Legations— even though only as a byproduct to create a memento for the British female participants of the siege.

Militarized Forms of International Memory: Cemeteries, Monuments, and Orders The Peking Siege Medal represented a memento for a heterogeneous community brought together by the dangers to which it was exposed. It used the language of established military decorations. If the language of the military award was indeed reflected in the way this episode of international unity was remembered, then the question arises as to whether a trend toward internationalization can also be seen where it is little expected—namely, in debates about military sites of international memory. The following section will show that the Boxer War in fact led to initiatives aiming at creating military sites of international memory. The seemingly contradictory reciprocity between allegedly nationally oriented armed forces and their shaping by processes of globalization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is receiving an increasing amount of scholarly attention. In the nineteenth century, the “internationale of the sword” was shaped by shared values, “concurrence . . . cooperation and especially professional interests, [a] professional ethos and professional tradition.”80 The officer corps of the different armies gained an international orientation,81 and following the Prussian model, most Western and Westernized militaries pursued a strategy of professionalization, which included the acceptance of an international state of the art.82 In this context, then, the Boxer War also allowed military personnel to experience the decidedly international side of their profession. The war offered countless opportunities for comparisons and socializing in such ways that mostly the officers would remember even long after the end of hostilities in China. Places like the Cercle International de Pékin, the characteristically international officers’ club situated in the southeastern part of the imperial city, allowed these officers to meet, to read the news, and to interact with one another.83 The personnel links developed in China sometimes transcended



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national boundaries and could last for years.84 However, these personnel contacts and temporary forms of cooperation beyond the borders of empires were also direct results and byproducts of the local necessities in China. Nevertheless, members of the officer corps of the armies involved in the Boxer War also discussed military projects of international memory. The discussed options remained linked to the well-­known military conditions. While some civilian foreigners initiated their own project of commemoration with the Peking Siege Medal, the officers present in China discussed various projects that would create the conditions for international forms of remembrance. The language of international remembrance referred therefore to national role models, revolving around internationalized versions of monuments, cemeteries, and awards. The following section discusses the plan for an international military cemetery in Tianjin. In October 1900, the German-­dominated but officially international Army High Command East Asia (Armee-­Oberkommando in Ostasien, AOK) approached the council of the Tientsin Provisional Government (TPG), the international occupation administration that controlled the Chinese city of Tianjin. It presented its idea for concentrating and centralizing the graves of the soldiers and officers who had perished “in the service of their fatherlands and of civilization”85 during the recent hostilities by creating a “common cemetery.” This would, so the AOK stated, allow the maintenance of the graves and their protection against desecration even after the approaching withdrawal of the intervening forces. The TPG replied in favor of the request and took up the idea of an international cemetery. Apparently, this cemetery was to be open to all military personnel who had perished during the hostilities in China. A specific spot, “sur le côté sud du champ de course,” was selected and a plan of the different sections of the cemetery was sent to the AOK. Going further than the AOK, the provisional government even suggested constructing a commemorative monument for the Allied soldiers.86 However, this project of a common international cemetery was ultimately not realized, as “several of the allied contingents in Zhili are hindered to acquire a common cemetery in Tientsin by measures already taken.”87 The plan of an international cemetery in Tianjin thus failed due to national counterprojects. In Beijing as well, no decidedly international monument to commemorate the international intervention in China was built. In a compilation of the various monuments erected by the nations that took part in the China relief expedition in Beijing, there was no mention of any international monument.88 Nevertheless, the lack of such monuments does not mean that the

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international dimension of the military intervention had no consequences in terms of commemoration or that it was too unimportant to be remembered. Rather, a contrary interpretation should be considered: the policy of remembrance was too sensitive in political terms to have its monopoly left to the German-­dominated AOK or the Tientsin Provisional Government. Strategies of commemoration were powerful tools when they were initiated or controlled by official circles.89 While this official German initiative failed, plans for a semiofficial American-­initiated remembrance policy were more successful, as the creation of the Military Order of the Dragon illustrates. Although clearly American, the order’s international profile was well accepted by members of the other military contingents. Austro-­Hungarian officers, for example, were told not to register for the Military Order of the Dragon, because their commander was aware of parliamentary debates in Britain that might lead to the creation of an international medal.90 Even before the United States had officially created a campaign medal for its troops serving in China, a committee of American officers expressed their wish to “perpetuate the memories of The China Relief Expedition of 1900.”91 The intention was to “record the history and conserve the memory of the military compaign [sic] in China in the year 1900” by founding the Military Order of the Dragon.92 The Military Order of the Dragon had, from its very beginning, an explicitly international orientation in the way its membership was organized, but it was also the target of ridicule by members of the US military.93 Its constitution stipulated that it would only accept officers, as well as diplomatic personnel and male civilians who had taken part in the defense of the legations as members. There was, however, a hierarchical difference between American members and those belonging to the Allied forces. Americans fulfilling specific requirements were eligible as “Active members” and their descendants could become “Active members” upon election, thus allowing for a continuity of members and a longer-­lasting preservation of China-­ related memories.94 International members could also join the order. They were, however, relegated to the status of “Honorary Members, or members of the Third Class” upon election by the Executive Committee. These members of the third class, however, could not hold any office, nor could they vote. Those eligible were all foreign military and naval officers present or active in military operations in North China and their descendants over twenty-­one years of age, all male [!] civilians “engaged with the enemy during the siege



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of the legations in Peking and all civilians, not connected with the services of government, accompanying the United States Forces of the China Relief Expedition.”95 To accommodate the descendants of the honorary members, an additional class was introduced: the Honorary Hereditary Membership. The membership was truly international, depicting the unity of strangers in the international defense of the legations—as illustrated in the many press reports and eyewitness accounts—although there was an absolute and relative dominance of American, British, and Japanese members.96 The Japanese officers, together with Major-­General Pratap Singh of Idar of the British Indian Army, were the only non-­Euro-­American officers who were members of this order. The British, American, and Japanese members combined made up 88 percent of the order’s membership.97 The order, whose activities were followed by the press, was presented by the latter (and slightly exaggeratedly so) as an “international military society, with a membership that included Japanese Princes, French Nobles, members of the reigning German families, various British, Austrian, Italian and Russian nobles of high degree, and a generous proportion of Americans.”98 The order’s annual banquets served to recall memories of the operations in China. At the first annual banquet of the order, held in Manila in 1901, Adna R. Chaffee, commanding officer of the American China Relief Expedition and the order’s president, “spoke highly of the discipline of the Germans.”99 With the outbreak of the war in Europe, the order began to lose its international character.100 It comes as no surprise that, at the tenth annual reunion of the order in December 1917, the recollections of German behavior in China starkly contrasted with Chaffee’s memories in 1901. Now, it was not the good discipline of the kaiser’s army that the participants recalled but the “German Kultur which wrought havoc in China.”101 Nevertheless, this order did not disappear even after the First World War. Traces of its existence can be found in the 1930s.102 The order still exists today. Without its international context and its connection to the China Relief Expedition, membership in the order is now awarded by the US Army Chemical Corps.103 The closer examination of examples of military forms of international commemoration showed that, in the case of military forms of commemoration, official mementos explicitly addressing the international dimension of the intervention in China were very unlikely to be realized. The Tianjin international cemetery project failed and so did the creation of an international service medal. The Military Order of the Dragon was primarily an American

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order that allowed international members to join. The chances of military efforts of commemoration being realized decreased the more official the initiator of the commemoration was.104

Conclusion The French General Frey’s dream of building a monument to commemorate all those who fought side by side in China against the Boxers did not materialize nor did the other official projects for creating mementos that explicitly addressed the international dimension of the Boxer War analyzed in this chapter. Private and semiofficial initiatives like the Peking Siege Medal and the Military Order of the Dragon filled the commemorative void that the lack of state-­initiated international commemorative strategies had created. Most of these examples could be incorporated into national and international commemorative narratives. Sometimes these incorporations happened simultaneously—as the example of Betsy and the siege of the legations has shown. The international context could serve as a background to stress the particular achievements of a specific individual or group (Mitchell in the former case, British women participating in the siege in the latter). International and national forms of commemoration were not mutually exclusive; they could even promote each other. As the example of the Peking Siege Medal has shown, the very fact that this medal could compensate for the British Government’s refusal to award campaign medals to British women brought this whole project of an international memento of the siege of the legations back to life. Despite being a rare occasion of an, originally, explicitly stated wish of some of the siege of the legation’s participants to perpetuate the memory of this event, its actual production made it a byproduct of creating an ersatz decoration for British women. The fact that an official international medal for the relief of the legations was not created and an international military cemetery in Tianjin was not built, points to the basic contradiction of the imperialist project in China and the military profession in particular. Whereas both were profoundly international, this international dimension could only be displayed in semiofficial and/or volatile forms. The changing tides of imperial cooperation in China— not the least influenced by political developments in the immediate aftermath of the relief of the legations and the quickly growing disintegration of the coalition—made these forms of commemoration inopportune. To perpetuate



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the memory of the Boxer War internationally, then, semiofficial and private initiatives were key, as the established official forms of commemoration were for the most part unable to mirror the realities of cooperative imperialism.

Notes 1. I will use the term “Boxer War” to refer to the events from the beginning of the siege of the legations in mid-­June 1900 to the official signing of the Boxer Protocol in September 1901 as they transformed the interior troubles in China into an international conflict. See Susanne Kuss, German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 16. 2. “The Progress of the World,” Review of Reviews, no. 22 (1900): 9–19. 3. For a brief introduction to internationalism at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and Alfred Fried, see Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), chapter 1; for Fried, 15–16. 4. Other, similar events, were, according to Fried, the occupation of Crete in 1898 and the international blockade of Greece in 1886. See Alfred H. Fried, Das internationale Leben der Gegenwart, Aus Natur und Geisteswelt 226 (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1908), 78–79. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 79. 8. “Progress of the World.” 9. Frey had been in command of the French troops during the first phase of the military operations, until the arrival of General Voyron from France in September 1900. Frey, Henri-­ Nicolas (born 1847, died 1932), LH/1037/37 Archives Nationales, Paris; Henri-­Nicolas Frey, Français et alliés au Pé-­tchi-­li: Campagne de Chine de 1900 (Paris: Hachette, 1904), chapter 7. 10. Fried, preface to Das internationale Leben der Gegenwart. 11. “Cooperative imperialism” refers to the nature of imperial cooperation that was a characteristic feature of pre–World War I forms of imperialism. See Volker Barth and Roland Cvetkovski, “Introduction—Encounters of Empires: Methodological Approaches,” in Imperial Co-­Operation and Transfer, 1870–1930: Empires and Encounters, ed. Volker Barth and Roland Cvetkovski (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 3–34, 16. 12. For innovative trans-­and international approaches, see Robert Bickers, “Moving Stories: Memorialisation and Its Legacies in Treaty Port China,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 42, no. 5 (2014): 826–56; and Jonathan Chappell, “Some Corner of a Chinese Field: The Politics of Remembering Foreign Veterans of the Taiping Civil War,” Modern Asian Studies 52, no. 4 (2018): 1134–71. 13. Isabella Jackson, Shaping Modern Shanghai: Colonialism in China’s Global City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Bryna Goodman and David S. G. Goodman, “Introduction: Colonialism and China,” in Colonialism and China: Localities, the Everyday and the World, ed. Bryna Goodman and David S. G. Goodman (London: Routledge, 2012), 1–22. 14. Dominik Geppert and Frank Lorenz Müller, eds., Sites of Imperial Memory: Commemorating Colonial Rule in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Studies in Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015); Jürgen Zimmerer, ed., Kein Platz an der Sonne:

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Erinnerungsorte der deutschen Kolonialgeschichte (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2013); Robert Aldrich, Vestiges of the Colonial Empire in France: Monuments, Museums, and Colonial Memories (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Aldrich’s analysis, however, is centered on manifestations of the French colonial empire in metropolitan France. 15. For interimperial approaches, see Barth and Cvetkovski, Imperial Co-­Operation and Transfer, 1870–1930, 3–34. Transimperial history is the approach suggested by Nadin Hée and Daniel Hedinger to capture the triad between “connectivity, cooperation and competition” analytically by providing an analytical perspective that centers on multiple empires. See Daniel Hedinger and Nadin Hée, “Transimperial History—Connectivity, Cooperation and Competition,” Journal of Modern European History 16, no. 4 (2018): 429–52. Newer research highlights the importance of “intersections of empires,” which addresses the various official and private forms of interactions between empires and, more generally, follows a transimperial approach to imperial history. See Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 14. For examples of different forms of cooperation beyond and between empires, see Florian Wagner, “Private Colonialism and International Co-­Operation in Europe, 1870–1914,” in Imperial Co-­Operation and Transfer, ed. Barth and Cvetkovski, 79–106; Ulrike Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen: Deutschland und Großbritannien als Imperialmächte in Afrika 1880–1914 (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2011). 16. The contemporaneous and contemporary Chinese appropriation and reinterpretation of these sites of memory is beyond the scope of this contribution, but it might offer interesting insights into how these initiatives were perceived and reinterpreted in China. For places of memory in modern China, cf. Marc Andre Matten, ed., Places of Memory in Modern China: History, Politics, and Identity, Leiden Series in Comparative Historiography 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 17. When quoting sources, I will not transliterate Chinese names. However, when I do refer to places, names, etc., I will use the pinyin transliteration: e.g., “Peking” in the sources would be “Beijing” in modern-­day usage, “Tientsin” would be “Tianjin,” etc. 18. Note that the examples given here are mostly examples that were discussed in British and American circles. These examples were chosen due to the overarching cultural and diplomatic importance of the British Empire in China. A further analysis of how these initiatives were perceived and discussed transnationally and transimperially and how they, in turn, were influenced by commemorative practices of other imperial powers (such as Japan, Russia, etc.) could offer interesting perspectives on the circulation of commemorative practices of cooperative imperialism in the early twentieth century. 19. Note that there never existed a proper declaration of war between the Qing Court and the powers. The powers stressed that no state of war existed, as this war might have led to diplomatic implications that could have prompted an international discussion about the future of the Chinese Empire. Cf. Kuss, German Colonial Wars, 19. 20. The genesis of the Boxer movement is explained in detail in Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); and Paul A. Cohen, History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 21. Cohen, History in Three Keys, 42–51. 22. Ibid. 23. Due to the differing interests of the powers in China, Waldersee was never able to exercise a real “unified command.” See Annika Mombauer, “Wilhelm, Waldersee, and the Boxer



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Rebellion,” in The Kaiser: New Research on Wilhelm II’s Role in Imperial Germany, ed. Annika Mombauer and Wilhelm Deist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 91–118, 112–15. 24. Urs Matthias Zachmann, China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period: China Policy and the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 1895–1904 (London: Routledge, 2009), 132. 25. Kuss, German Colonial Wars, 15–24. 26. “Joint Note Regarding the Conditions for Re-­ Establishment of Normal Relations Between China and the Powers: December 22, 1900, and January 16, 1901,” in Treaties and Agreements with and Concerning China 1894–1919, vol. 1, Manchu Period (1894–1911), ed. John V. A. MacMurray (New York: Oxford University Press, 1921), 309–10. 27. Cf. Articles Ib and IV of the Boxer Protocol, in Paul H. Clements, The Boxer Rebellion: A Political and Diplomatic Review (New York: Columbia University Press, 1915), 214–15. 28. Matthew P. Fitzpatrick, “Kowtowing Before the Kaiser? Sino-­German Relations in the Aftermath of the Boxer Uprising,” International History Review 41, no. 3 (2018): 1–26. Zaifeng, Prince Chun, was sent to Germany as part of a “mission of atonement.” 29. James L. Hevia, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-­Century China (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 245. 30. Ibid., 195–96. 31. Frederick Brown, China’s Dayspring After Thirty Years (London: Mudday and Evenden, 1914), 163. 32. Recollection of F. D. Gamewell, in A. H. Mateer, Siege Days: Personal Experiences of American Women and Children During the Peking Siege (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1903), 128. 33. Mateer, Siege Days, 338. 34. Jürgen Dinkel, Florian Greiner, and Christian Methfessel, “‘Murder of a European’: Der ‘bedrohte Europäer’ als Leitmotiv im Kolonialdiskurs vom Zeitalter des Hochimperialismus bis zur Epoche der Dekolonisation,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 62, no. 3 (2014): 219–338, 225n7. 35. Claude MacDonald, “Forwards Report on Military Events at Peking from 20th June to 14th August,” in Further Correspondence Respecting Events at Peking: China No. 3 (1901), ed. Foreign Office (London: Harrison and Sons, 1901), 1–30, 4. 36. Mateer, Siege Days, 235. 37. Ibid., 172. 38. Nicholas Ray, director, 55 Days at Peking, Allied Artists, 1963, 153 minutes. 39. Ray, 55 Days at Peking, 1:10:54–11:11:16. 40. This topic is introduced at the beginning of the movie, by showing the different legation compounds, easily identifiable by larger-­than-­life national flags that are raised while the respective national anthems are played by the various military bands. Ray, 55 Days at Peking, 00:06:52–00:08:42. 41. The artillery of the defenders, he wrote, consisted of only three machine-­guns/mitrailleuses and one quick-­firing 1-­inch gun. MacDonald, “Forwards Report,” 5. 42. B. L. Putnam Weale, ed., Indiscreet Letters from Peking (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1907), 192. 43. MacDonald, “Forwards Report,” 17; Henry Borzo, “Diary of an Iowan Under Fire in Peking,” Annals of Iowa 36, no. 8 (1963): 629, https://​doi​.org​/10​.17077​/0003​-4827​.7674. 44. The various efforts to portray the gun as international as possible were also ridiculed: “According to Reuter, the most valuable weapon in the possession of the Legations at Peking was an old British gun which was found by an American in a junk shop, mounted on a Russian

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carriage and supplied with Italian ammunition. It was christened the ‘International Gun.’ There are one or two points about its international character that have been omitted. Parts of it were japanned and French polished, and it was used to shoot the Chinese.” See “By the Way,” Globe, 1 September 1900, 1. 45. Putnam Weale, Indiscreet Letters from Peking, 195. 46. This is illustrated by the respective stanza of the “Song of the Siege,” Mateer, Siege Days, 340. 47. Mateer, Siege Days, 261, 367; MacDonald, “Forwards Report,” 18, 21, 27. 48. “The ‘International Gun,’” Globe, 31 August 1900, 5. 49. MacDonald, “Forwards Report,” 29. 50. Mateer, Siege Days, 128. 51. William Augustus Mowry and Arthur May Mowry, American Heroes and Heroism: America’s Great Men and Their Deeds (New York: Silver, Burdett, 1903), 165–66. 52. Theodora Marshall Inglis, “‘Betsy’—the Story of an International Gun,” Washington Post, 20 May 1917, 2. 53. Mateer, Siege Days, 400–408. 54. “Army and Navy Men,” Los Angeles Times, 7 April 1901, 1. 55. William O. Stevens and Carroll S. Alden, A Guide to Annapolis and the Naval Academy (Annapolis, MD: Lord Baltimore Press, 1910), 31; Annual Reports of the Navy Department for the Year 1902: Report of the Secretary of the Navy, Miscellaneous Reports, Elihu Root Collection of United States Documents Ser. D, Misc. Doc., v. 35 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902), 444. 56. J. Michael Miller, “Origins of Marines’ Longtime North China Association,” Fortitudine: Bulletin of the Marine Corps Historical Program 28, no. 1 (1988): 18–20. 57. “Siege of Peking: An Event Memorable in History,” Pall Mall Gazette, 31 August 1900, 7; “Medal for the Defenders,” Globe, 31 August 1900, 5. 58. “Scenes in Peking When Relief Came: Reception Given to Allies Worth Hardships They Underwent,” New York Times, 31 August 1900, 2; “La Médaille du Siège de Pékin,” Journal Républicain du Soir Absolument Indépendant, 2 September 1900; “La Médaille du Siège de Pékin,” Gil Blas, 1 September 1900, 3. 59. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Charles Forster Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), book 7, 77. 60. Roland Allen, The Siege of the Peking Legations: Being the Diary of the Rev. R. Allen (London: Smith, Elder, 1901). 61. The Zhengyangmen gate used to be one of the central gates of Beijing’s inner city and, due to its proximity to the Imperial Palace, it was considered the most important one. A fire started by Boxers on 16 June 1900 damaged it and it was further damaged during the powers’ attack on Beijing. See Osvald Sirén, The Walls and Gates of Peking: Researches and Impressions (London: John Lane, 1924), 167. 62. Allen, Siege of the Peking Legations, 264. 63. Ibid., 260. The demands for the respective design suggestions were made at a time when the besieged had received messages from British and Japanese forces informing them that Allied troops were on their way to Beijing. However, other accounts suggest that an international siege medal had already been discussed on 5 August 1900 and thus before the messages of Major General Fukushima and General Gaselee had been received. Arthur H. Smith, China in Convulsion (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1901), 422; Mateer, Siege Days, 334.



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64. Arthur Ditchburn Brent, born 1874, worked for Hongkong Shanghai Bank in Beijing. His mother, Charlotte Louise Brent, visited him in Beijing, so they both experienced the siege. Susanna Hoe, Women at the Siege, Peking 1900 (Oxford: Holo Books, 2000), 380. 65. Arthur Brent, “To the Editor of the ‘London and China Express,’” Celestial Empire 35 (1903): 328. 66. “China Medal, 1900,” London Gazette, 3 January 1902, 2. The bronze version of the China Medal was issued to “all authorized Government followers and the followers of the Imperial service troops who accompanied the troops in the operations.” See “Medals for the Operations in China,” Globe, 9 April 1902, 8. 67. Volunteers organized in the Tientsin Volunteer Corps as well as the (unofficial and makeshift) Carving Knife Brigade in Beijing were eligible for this medal. William J. Duiker, Cultures in Collision: The Boxer Rebellion (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978), 101; “Mementoes of the Siege,” North-­China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette, 21 January 1903, 106. 68. “Mementoes of the Siege,” 106. 69. According to Brent, the original idea of the “siegeites” had been to have the medal produced in Japan out of sycees, an ingot currency in use in China until the beginning of the twentieth century. Brent believed that the “siegeites” intended to use already obtained “loot” for this. “Mementoes of the Siege,” 106–7. 70. As only British citizens and subjects were eligible for the China Medal, his requests to the Foreign and War Office about the eligibility of women was only relevant for British women. 71. “Mementoes of the Siege,” 106–7. Similar discussions about the appropriate recognition of services rendered during the Boxer War were also taking place with regard to the Tientsin Volunteer Corps, a militia made up mostly, but not exclusively, of British residents of Tianjin. Although it contributed significantly to the defense of the Tientsin settlement, its members were, at first, not awarded with a clasp in addition to the China Medal, a signifier for battles fought. When turning down the China Medal without clasp offered to them, discussions even reached the House of Commons, where the secretary of state for war was questioned in this respect. On 11 June 1903, however, the Tientsin Volunteers who took part in the defense of the foreign concessions were awarded the China Medal with clasp for the Relief of Peking. See “A Very Interesting Account of a Night Skirmish,” North-­China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette, 18 June 1903. 72. “Mementoes of the Siege,” 107. 73. In an earlier description of the medal, Brent also did not refer to Betsy as being part of the design of the medal. “Mementoes of the Siege,” 107. 74. In this story, a mysterious hand writes these words on the wall, predicting the downfall of Belshazzar and his empire. Isidore Singer and M. Seligsohn, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, vol. 8, ed. Cyrus Adler and Isidore Singer (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1914), 490–91. 75. A writer for the Globe stressed that he would also prefer to “see it [the medal] obtained in some other way.” “Men and Matters,” Globe, 1 December 1902, 6. That Brent excluded the Chinese is, economically speaking, surprising as he seems to have been unsure about the overall financial feasibility of the whole project and even stated that, in case of insufficient subscriptions, he would return the advance payments made to him. “Mementoes of the Siege,” 106. 76. With an estimated 600 to 700 people, the Chinese Christians in the legation compound were far from being a quantité négligeable. MacDonald, “Forwards Report,” 2.

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77. “News and Comments,” Army and Navy Register, 30 May 1903, 3. 78. “Peking Siege Medals: To the Editor of the Globe,” Globe, 2 May 1903, 8. The total number of medals produced seems to have been limited to two hundred. Cf. “Pall Mall Gazette Office,” Pall Mall Gazette, 1 December 1902, 7. 79. At an auction in 2010, one of these medals sold for £1,700. “Peking Siege Commemoration Medal,” accessed 15 January 2022, available online https://www.noonans.co.uk​/auctions​ /archive​/lot​-archive​/results​/187181​/?keywords​=peking​+siege​+commemoration​&discipline​ =&category​=&date​_on​=&date​_start​=&date​_end​=&lot​_no=. 80. Heinz Gollwitzer, Internationale des Schwertes: Transnationale Beziehungen im Zeitalter der “vaterländischen” Streitkräfte, Rheinisch-­Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften Vorträge G 291 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1987), 43. 81. This can be illustrated by the fact that military journals reviewed developments in other countries, and officers were sometimes posted as students at foreign military academies, participated as observers in the colonial wars of other powers, or served as military attachés in foreign capitals. Gollwitzer, Internationale des Schwertes, 24–25. Recent studies of the imperial ambitions of the German officer corps prior to the large-­scale acquisition of German colonies have clearly outlined the imperial and global orientation of this group. Christoph Kamissek, Kriegslust und Fernweh: Deutsche Soldaten zwischen militärischem Internationalismus und imperialer Nation (1770–1870) (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2018). 82. Dirk Bönker, Militarism in a Global Age: Naval Ambitions in Germany and the United States Before World War I, The United States in the World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 252. 83. Fred R. Brown, History of the Ninth U.S. Infantry (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley and Sons, 1909), 529; Frey, Français et alliés, 41–100. 84. A famous example is the friendship between Erich von Falkenhayn, the German member of the Gouvernement Provisoire de Tientsin and his French counterpart, Louis-­Eugène Arlabosse. See Holger Afflerbach, Falkenhayn: Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich, Beiträge zur Militärgeschichte 42 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1994), 41. 85. Fedor von Rauch, Mit Graf Waldersee in China: Tagebuchaufzeichnungen (Berlin: F. Fontane, 1907), 107. 86. Fifty-­Fourth Session of the TPG, 13 October 1900. See Procès-­verbaux des Séances du Conseil du Gouvernement provisoire de Tien-­Tsin (Tianjin: China Times, 1911[?]), 48. 87. Von Rauch, Mit Graf Waldersee, 243. 88. “Monuments and Memorial Tablets Erected by the Nations Taking Part in the Relief of the Legations at Peking, China,” Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States 38 (1906): 565–74. A guidebook to Beijing, published in 1904 and indicating numerous sites and memorials of the siege, does not mention any international monument. Mrs. Archibald Little, Guide to Peking (Tientsin: Tientsin Press, 1904). 89. In the case of the German China-­Denkmünze, the German emperor explicitly reserved the possibility to “award the medal to the members of the extra-­German contingents that were allied with the German troops.” See “Nr. 212. Stiftung einer Denkmünze für die an den kriegerischen Ereignissen in Ostasien betheiligt gewesenen deutschen Streitkräften,”Armee-­ Verordnungsblatt, 12 July 1901, 20. 90. Von Rauch, Mit Graf Waldersee, 250; KuK Escadre-­Commando in Ostasien an kuk Kriegsministerium Marinesection, Foosung, 16 June 1901, KA MS/OK 1901-­XI-­2/1, f 300 (hereafter cited as KA MS/OK).



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91. Military Order of the Dragon, ed., Bronze Tablets Erected to Commemorate the China Relief Expedition of 1900 (New York: Wynkoop, Hallenbeck, Crawford, 1912), 3. 92. KA MS/OK 1901-­XI-­2/1, f 300. 93. The Military Order of the Dragon was also ridiculed by American servicemen in the Philippines who created a different military society, the Military Order of the Carabao. It was destined to “foster a high standard of military and social duty and to perpetuate the memories and associations of military service in the Philippines during the early days of American occupation.” The structure and constitution of the Military Order of the Carabao resembled the structure of the Military Order of the Dragon for obvious reasons. See Military Order of the Carabao, Historical Sketch Constitution and Register of the Military Order of the Carabao Together with Songs That Have Been Sung at “Wallos” in Various Places, with the assistance of W. E. Horton, J. M. Heller, and J. A. Moss (Washington, DC: Press of W. F. Roberts, 1913 [?]). 94. The chief of the general staff of the French Corps Expéditionnaire de Chine forwarded the statutes and application forms to the different units of the French Expeditionary Corps. The French honorary secretary of the order, Hocquart, then took care of forwarding these forms to the secretary of the order, Franck-­Ramsay, based in Manila, and would, in turn, receive the brevets and the insignia of the order. Cf. Service Historique de la Défense, Dossier concernant L’ordre Militaire du Dragon, Service Historique de la Défense, 11 H 5. 95. Constitution of the Military Order of the Dragon, adopted 30 March 1901, in KA MS/ OK 1901-­XI-­2/1, f 308. In a newer version of the order’s constitution, significant adaptations were made: (1) the timespan to be eligible for active membership was extended from 15 June to 31 December 1900 (instead of 1 October); (2) Hereditary members were explicitly excluded from voting or holding office but, at the same time, it was stressed that they would become active members “upon the death of the Active member from whom the hereditary member derives eligibility.” See Military Order of the Dragon, Bronze Tablets, 38–40. 96. The great number of Japanese members in the Order of the Dragon is striking and could be explained by the fact that their admittance to this institution illustrated their achievement of equality with the Western military forces. The recognition of this equality was a repeated concern of Japanese officials and the media alike. See Urs Matthias Zachmann, China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period: China Policy and the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 1895–1904 (London: Routledge, 2009), 136–39. 97. In 1912 the Military Order of the Dragon had a total of ca. 1,441 members, consisting of the following nationalities: Austria-­Hungary, 1 member (≈0.07 percent); USA, ca. 445 members (≈30.88 percent); Great Britain, ca. 414 members (≈28.73 percent; without 9 members marked as “deceased”); France, ca. 19 members (≈1.31 percent); Germany, ca. 75 members (≈5.2 percent); Italy, ca. 35 members (≈2.43 percent); Russia, ca. 28 members (≈1.94 percent); as well as Japan, 424 members (≈28.73 percent). 98. E. J. Edwards, “Men Who Head America’s Exclusive Patriotic Societies,” New York Times, 13 November 1910, 6. 99. “Chaffee Talks of Soldiers: In Banquet at Meeting of New Order of Dragon He Praises Discipline of Germans,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 15 July 1901, 4. 100. Hevia, English Lessons, 306. 101. “Tells of German Cruelty in China,” New York Times, 2 December 1917, 12. 102. “China Comrades,” North China Herald, 5 June 1935, 1. 103. Marissa C. Blunt, “The Order of the Dragon,” Army Chemical Review (Summer 2016): 31.

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104. One of the rare examples of a successful and officially sanctioned enterprise to commemorate the achievements of the intervening powers in China came from the Gouvernement Provisoire de Tientsin which had a great deal of autonomy vis-­à-­vis the foreign diplomats and military officials and had the necessary funds and the legal leeway to initiate such a project. With its abolition approaching, the members of the Conseil, the Gouvernement’s highest decision-­making body, tried to shape the picture posterity would have of it. One strategy was the creation of an international commemorative medal in three classes—gold, silver, and bronze. It was awarded to military and foreign civilian employees, according to their status; Chinese employees were not eligible. On its obverse, the medal shows the flags of the seven countries represented in the council, the Latin motto “Pax Labor” and the inscription “Gouvernement Provisoire du District de Tientsin 1900–1902.” On the reverse is the Chinese phrase “Tientsin, Tu-­Tung Yamên”—literally, “gouvernement de plusieurs nations à Tien Tsin”—surrounded by a laurel wreath. Cf. P. B., “La Médaille du Gouvernement Provisoire de Tientsin (1900–02),” Revue Numismatique 10 (1906): 343–47; and Pierre Singaravélou, Tianjin cosmopolis: Une autre histoire de la mondialisation (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2017), 311.

CHAPTER 5

The Arctic: Memory Beyond Territoriality? Madeleine Herren

Introduction Unlike the continental South Pole, the Arctic is an empty space. Covered by unstable, moving ice, traversable by neither ship nor surface transport, this area challenges one of history’s most fundamental concepts: territoriality. Territories explain ownership and conquest and are at the core of our understanding of power and wealth. They are formed culturally and carry long-­lasting memory.1 The Arctic has no “territory” per se, and the question of whether or not the Arctic should be considered as a potential site of memory came up as recently as 2018, when UNESCO added Inuit hunting grounds in West Greenland to its World Heritage list.2 However, established heritage grounds reflecting the specific global characteristic of the Arctic are still missing, despite the fact that this space exerts a power understood by all Sami and Inuit, whalers, explorers, fur traders, and other peoples on the move between Russia, Japan, the United States, and Scandinavia. The Arctic is a link between continents, a complex common ground and therefore an almost perfect case study for discussing the question of whether nonterritorial spaces are reminiscent in different ways—indeed, whether places of global interconnectedness can become part of international memory. The Arctic, as a site of memory, challenges the idea of the politics of memory, and in this way allows us to examine the role that sites of memory play when they are conceived outside of personal identity formation and outside of a patrimonial history, yet still relate to a global space. Is the Arctic suitable as a memory site of the Anthropocene and a cosmopolitan focal point of environmentalism? As a site of peaceful scientific cooperation? In some of the contributions in

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this volume, the metaphor of palimpsest and stratigraphy allows us to examine the layers of memory. In the case of the Arctic, we can observe the same phenomenon as a projection into the future. There is almost nothing in the arsenal of memory politics that has not been used in the Arctic in recent times—sunken ships as justification for the territorial claims of Canada, for example, or a Russian flag placed on the bottom of the sea as a symbolic form of appropriation of raw materials—both from the arsenal of an imperialist policy of discovery and conquest. At the same time, with the Arctic Council, a new generation of international organizations developed. Rather a forum for cooperation than an intergovernmental organization, the Arctic Council addresses the interest of regional states but also the indigenous population groups living across states’ borders. In addition, the organization with the cute arctic fox as their emblem admitted nonadjacent states to the council, with observer status. Here, the example of Switzerland shows that the mountains as a place and symbol of patrimonial memory is now transformed into a common ground for all those connected to permafrost whether vertical or horizontal. Using the example of the Arctic, this chapter discusses the potential of international and even global memory beyond territoriality. In the twentieth century, communication technologies literally shifted the Arctic from a peripheral region to a center of global networking. In 1928, this process entered popular consciousness when the Italian general Umberto Nobile launched an airship to cross the Arctic. Shortly after the successful crossing, what had looked like a propaganda coup for Fascist Italy ended in disaster: the Italia exploded and crashed onto an ice floe. The few surviving crew members managed to send an SOS message, which was picked up by an amateur radio operator in the Soviet Union. The accident prompted a series of rescue activities that crossed all ideological and political borders worldwide and finally became a global media frenzy. We can think of these many rescue activities as part of an epistemic shift in the understanding of globality, particularly as the barrage of media information surrounding these events transformed the Italia incident into an opportunity to understand the challenges of global memory-­making, their trajectories and their epistemic framework. The enduring rich source material at the core of this memory-­making includes eyewitness accounts,3 memoirs,4 news reports,5 films,6 pictures, audio recordings,7 and popular and scientific literature,8 ranging from polar research to aviation. This flood of engagement from around the world gained unexpected and lasting attention.9 In addition to having all the elements of heroic drama, the many facets of Nobile’s rescue



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and its representations allow us to track an important shift in the understanding of the Arctic itself from vacant space to a metaphor of globality. Literally, the disaster followed Nobile through a downward spiral of diverse realities. At aircraft altitude, new technology promised the connection of continents in ways never known before. Stranded on an ice floe, the Nobile expedition opened up a new perspective on the Arctic: the space became a terra nullius. This ontological ambivalence was translated across competing epistemologies, from the Arctic as a metaphor of global connectivity, to the Arctic as a memory of discovery and territorial conquest (of which Roald Amundsen was the preeminent figure). Insofar as the Arctic as empty space was transformed into a new image of connectedness, we gain a historical insight into the difficult task of finding a narrative capable of transforming the worldwide war alliances into a metaphor of peaceful collaboration. At the end of this period of competing epistemologies, the emblem of the United Nations offered the Arctic the centerpiece of the newly established multilateral order.10 This chapter unfolds the epistemological paradox resulting from these two diverse ontologies. It follows the complex transformation of the Arctic to a paradigm of global connectivity. It presents the way the Arctic became inscribed in public awareness as a moment in memory-­making connected to the impact of new technologies. In this history of memory-­ making, air transportation came to represent a certain world outlook, not just aircraft. My aim is to answer the question why, out of those many things, perspectives, and claims, did the Arctic end up as the core symbol of the UN’s iconic flag. As I will show, the many mappings of the Arctic trace how and why it shifted from the margins to the epistemological center of the modern world at a time of ideological tensions and war. I argue that the memory-­making which culminated with the UN logo laid the groundwork for our current perception of the Arctic as a focal point of the historicity of the globe.

Historicizing the Arctic: Creating International Memory as an Invention of Tradition Beyond, Against, and Within Territoriality There are different ways to historicize the Arctic. One common approach follows the history of discoveries from Captain James Cook and Sir John Franklin to Roald Amundsen, with their different quests to find the Northwest

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Passage as key. More recent literature variously looks at the region in terms of human exploitation and environmental history, as a sphere of competing political claims, and as a convincing example for the history of science, from complex data retrieval in meteorology to global warming.11 Understood in its spatial definition as the Arctic Ocean, the Arctic provides a site for testing one of the key questions facing global historians: If the point of global history is not simply to add more regions outside of the West, should historiography, then, focus on confrontation—examples and situations in which the normative patterns of territoriality and Western chronology find their limits? International sites of memory reified in the historical process of memory-­making crucially disrupt and confront national patterns of establishing traditions. Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall mention the Canadian National Heritage Authority declaring Franklin’s ships Erebus and Terror to be historical monuments, although their location was not clear at the time. The intense national interest in two shipwrecks was an obvious example of how the Arctic provides “a space for projecting a specific national sovereignty and identity politics.”12 Sverker Sörlin came to the same conclusions in the case of Sweden, where the northern territories outside the reach of territorial sovereignty started to shape the history of the nation.13 These findings highlight the importance of investigating the potential dissolution of national claims within an international site of memory. This approach allows us to contextualize the well-­documented Italia incident in new ways.14 The Arctic is therefore a testing ground for a better understanding of the extent to which memory-­making closed the gap between ontological globality and the absence of a language for connecting beyond territoriality. The twenty-­ first-­century experiences allow for describing territoriality in new forms, with spaces beyond terra—airspace and polar regions, among others—presenting their own historicity.15 As I argue in this chapter, when detached from territory, the power of connection shapes international memory and raises awareness of acting as one world. Although such connectivity is linked to a level of technological development, there are at least two good reasons for not simply choosing a history of modernization. First, most technical innovations in mapping and navigation did not work properly in the harsh Arctic environment. And second, connectivity in its deterritorialized form requires the awareness of the public worldwide. I define connectivity as a public sphere that overlaps with existing national identities and is commemorated in specific ways. The coming together of access and public attention



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helps us identify the sources and events in which the history of exploration transcended its own limits and turned into a global moment that shaped the master narrative of its time. With regard to the Arctic, this specific moment unfolded in the year 1928 with a tragedy that attracted worldwide attention: the catastrophic end to a Fascist propaganda stunt, the transit of the North Pole by the airship Italia. From this moment on, the race to claim connectivity was a critical element in the ideological and political quest to control the very idea of the globe. I turn now to the transformation of the notion of connectivity into changing mental maps that influenced contemporary education and popular culture. Global memory-­making was a process of accessing the Arctic from different perspectives, with the specificities of the polar region adding a unique character to an already strong and important narrative. The intertwined elements of memory-­making are the model of the (male, tragic) hero and explorer; rescue operations telling the story of life and death to an international public; the appropriation of space as a contest between multilateral agreements and military power; and affect, where art, radio, and newspapers thrillingly transfer connectivity from the brink to salvation. Connecting power culminated in an understanding of the world as monosphere and the wide dissemination of a new way of approaching territorial grounds: from a bird’s-­eye view. These historical transformations created the new world view, memorialized in the United Nations flag.

The Global Spread of a Catastrophe: Enshrining a Global Moment in Collective Memory Across National and Ideological Borders During the stormy night of 24 May 1928, an Italian airship successfully traversed the North Pole. The captain, General Umberto Nobile, confirmed by radio what he had prerecorded for the cameras of the Fascist film agency Istituto Luce16 long before the ship left Spitsbergen, Norway. He sent a radio message to the pope, Benito Mussolini, and the king of Italy, confirming that at the moment of crossing the North Pole the crew had thrown overboard the Italian flag, a cross blessed by the pope, and the flag of the city of Milan. This carefully choreographed event was radioed to the Città di Milano, an Italian ship in the Arctic Ocean carrying an exclusive group of international

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journalists. Eagerly awaiting news, they learned much about the splendid scenes aboard the Italia. As related to the press, a gramophone played the Fascist anthem and the Italian crew gave the Fascist salute as corks popped, celebrating the crossing of the North Pole at the exact moment of the anniversary of Italy’s entry into World War I. The ship was expected to land a few hours later in Ny Ålesund, a small village in Spitsbergen, still today the northernmost village in the polar region. However, the local miners hired to bring the airship back down waited in vain. Mere hours after the extravagant celebrations, regular transmissions of the airship’s position suddenly ceased. More than ten days later, on 5 June, radio stations in California, Sweden, and the Soviet Union received a broken SOS, which allowed the airship’s surviving crew members to be located. Although the reasons for the crash remain unclear, the most likely cause was bad weather. According to an explanation that emerged, after much debate, as the most credible, the shell of the airship had iced over. The weight induced loss of altitude, which ended in a fatal collision with razor-­sharp pack ice that severed much of the cabin from the helium-­filled balloon. While some crew members were borne aloft to an unknown end in the sky, those flung out found themselves on a drifting ice floe, injured but alive with one exception. The stranded group found a tent, food, arms, and ammunition in the debris. They also discovered a small radio apparatus, enabling the surviving radio operator to receive messages and later to transmit their position. From the instant that radio stations around the world received the SOS signal from the Arctic, rescue missions were launched from all corners of the earth, and Italian diplomatic missions received expressions of sympathy worldwide.17 Every effort was documented by the new media that had started a new century of information dissemination defined by photography, film, and wireless radio transmission. The journey of the Italia had started life as a propaganda stunt (postcards of General Nobile in a heroic pose were printed even before the airship set off) and ended in an extremely expensive race to rescue it, won by the Soviet Union on the other side of the political spectrum. The USSR sent its heavy icebreakers; the Krassin finally broke through and reached the survivors.18 The successful rescue of the Fascist crew by a ship under Communist leadership spawned another propaganda event—this time orchestrated by the Soviet regime—that included one of the few women involved, Alexandra Kollontai, the Soviet representative in Oslo and the only woman ambassador at the time. The Soviet version introduced a Marxist counternarrative to the Fascist hero tale. In this telling, a Russian farmer and amateur radio operator in Siberia



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Figure 5.1. The airship Italia commanded by Umberto Nobile in an illustration in 1928, Image F778C8, MARKA/Alamy Stock Photo.

had received the first SOS call from the stranded crew, and a collective of sailors and dockers decided to send the icebreaker.19 The ships became a symbol of powerful and massive pathbreaking success, fortuitously the perfect showcase for the first Soviet five-­year plan, which promoted heavy industry for fostering a superior societal structure—and ended with a starving agrarian population. Among the many scientific papers, newspaper articles, and eyewitness accounts available, few addressed the cost of the rescue operations. The financial implications, however, made it clear that taxpayer money was involved. In addition to the many private rescue initiatives, the navies of at least six countries offered warships, experts, and technological know-­how. The Norwegian journalist Odd Arnesen counted fourteen ships taking part in the rescue operations, some with more than two hundred crew members. The airship’s failure underscored the importance of airplanes, representing a less advanced but clearly less dangerous technology. Arnesen counted twenty-­ two planes involved in the rescue efforts.20 Of these, many crashed or never returned. Simple accidents contributed to the growing number of victims. In the end, saving the eight stranded crew members cost seventeen lives, nine of these in a plane crash.

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Rescue: A Story of Life and Death Shapes the International Public Sphere The rescue operations in 1928 had an unusual scope since the search for the stranded crew focused on places outside of those areas used by hunters and explorers. Icebreakers working with aerial observation teams scoured places that had been of no interest prior to the accident. Wherever territories were involved—such as heretofore unknown islands or islands of contested national status—well-­established forms of appropriation could be observed in action. The Soviet rescue ship Krassin claimed for the Soviet Union every territory and island it found in passing, following the res nullius principle, which allows the occupation of no-­man’s-­land. Even more importantly, the rescue operations produced traces and trails that focused public attention on apparently empty spaces, ignoring indigenous hunting grounds. While many rescue operations took place in such settings, one thing distinguished the Italia tragedy: it was closely followed and observed by a wide public, by individuals whose participation did not depend on proximity to the North Pole. In the golden age of radio, media coverage created a new immediacy that included public participation. Amateurs with their own shortwave receivers increasingly occupied the field of information transmission, constructing a widespread and deterritorialized but participatory and unexpectedly attentive public sphere. In the contemporary master narrative of the Italia rescue, a Soviet farmer living in a village near Murmansk received the SOS signal sent by the stranded crew, while the convoy of Italian ships following the Italia’s route did not. The effort then developed its own momentum, which grew considerably when the well-­known polar expert (and Nobile’s nemesis) Roald Amundsen set out on a rescue flight in a French hydroplane.21 He never returned. Amundsen’s disappearance boosted media attention, prompted additional private rescue operations, and called into question the use of planes.22 The tragedy prompted hundreds of tourists to set out for the region, people for whom the Artic now seemed within eyewitness distance as a result of the media coverage. The Krassin lost precious time going to the aid of the German luxury cruiser Monte Cervantes. Its captain wanted to give his 1,500-­plus passengers a historic view of the rescue operations. His ship went too close to the unpredictable pack ice and required urgent assistance after colliding with an ice floe.23 In terms of nontextual sources, the Italia was one of the best-­documented events of the time. Recordings of radio messages and photos taken from ships



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and airplanes gave great authenticity and immediacy to the Arctic tragedy. In this inhospitable area, radio news added a new form of witnessing, literally transcending the snow and fog that blurred the camera lens. The oldest radio play available in the German language, SOS rao rao Foyn, reduces to its essence the audio representation of connecting with the Arctic.24 It replicated the sound of the ship’s engines, overlaid with jazz as an audio cue representing the listening public in the United States, thousands of miles distant from the howling winds and ships’ sirens. The contemporary success of this and other radio plays, along with the photographic documentation of the Arctic, were based on a changing understanding of authenticity. However, neither the Frankfurt School’s philosophical debates nor the panic set off in 1938 by Orson Welles and his radio broadcast War of the Worlds provide sufficient explanation for the rising credibility of nonterritorial approaches. Rather, this sea change was affected by technical, legal, and political reinterpretations of the Arctic coinciding with a worldwide awareness of the empty space that cradled the Italia. This multilayered package ended up turning territorial claims into an understanding of connectivity as a source of power.

How the Arctic Shaped an Ambivalent Mindset of Internationalism and Military Conquest The legal, political, and technical reinterpretations of the Arctic came from two different sources. Only one related to the Arctic itself; the other was the legal consequence of air travel. To start with the Arctic, four years before the crash, the elite of polar researchers abandoned overland access to the Arctic by founding the Aeroarctic, an international organization that aimed to explore the poles exclusively by airplane. Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen, both preeminent explorers with increasing political influence, spearheaded this movement. Amundsen, who had discovered the Northwest Passage between 1903 and 1906, dashed hopes that the route would provide a shortcut between the continents. Like others, Amundsen had made several failed attempts to cross the North Pole by plane in the early 1920s and then decided to buy an Italian military airship in 1926—a decision that led him to Nobile, the best-­known airship engineer outside of the German Zeppelin company.25 Financed by an American sponsor and the Norwegian Aero Club, Amundsen hired Nobile as the pilot. In 1926, the airship crossed the North Pole successfully and landed in Alaska. This encounter ended in an acrimonious public

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spat between Nobile and Amundsen. The Italian government decided to finance another flight across the North Pole, this time under the Italian flag and as an exclusively Italian endeavor. The successful crossing of the Arctic in 1926 and again by the Nobile expedition in 1928 had both answered a long-­standing question: the North Pole was in fact just frozen ocean. It was uninhabited. It had no land territories but a drifting surface, with atmospheric turbulence unconducive to radio communication, and special day/night conditions that rendered standard navigational systems unusable. In short, the region was difficult to handle. The usual positioning systems failed, and even geographical definitions of the Arctic Circle varied, providing incompatible location systems. It was these difficulties—more than the hostile climate—that challenged the established forms of Western appropriation and made any fixed claims difficult. However, the expeditions of 1926 and 1928 both confirmed that crossing the Arctic had acquired an almost incalculable value. The Canadian polar researcher Vilhjalmur Stefansson explained this in a memorable way often quoted in the 1930s.26 Before Magellan, he said, the earth was flat, and Asia was accessible only by going east. After Magellan, the earth became a cylinder, with Asia accessible from both east and west. For Stefansson, after the Amundsen/Nobile expeditions by air, the earth became a globe, with Asia reachable from the east, west, and north.27 The idea of this additional dimension had far-­reaching consequences and was at the center of the newly proclaimed Air Age. In an instant, the narrative of the Arctic as the key to accessing the world started closing the epistemological gap. A territorial perception still dominated, but the crossing of the North Pole was described as introducing a third dimension, as accessing a global space. The new approach focused on a new technology, the airplane, which had outgrown the military sphere after World War I and begun to influence civil commercial transport and the regular transportation of passengers. Air mobility began to make its presence felt as an important factor in connecting international communities. Air transportation became one of the most influential and highly visible topics in a variety of fields entirely unrelated to air transport. In 1935–36 the Oxford University Arctic Expedition participated in this field of popular research, as did others.28 In 1930 the lawyer and aeronautic specialist Warren Jefferson Davis published a handbook of air law, going so far as to state that “Aviation—and this is said in all seriousness—gives all law a new direction.”29 To him, aviation and radio “leap over old time boundaries and prejudices with little or no regard for frontiers and limitations except such as Nature imposes.”30 Absurd only at



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first blush, contemporary debates about who owns the air offer a good insight into paradigm shifts. The discussion posited various positions: According to Roman law, the air was free (res omnium commune). According to the understanding of sovereignty, state borders represented vertical limits. Legal pragmatism evolved in the gap between these two positions. After World War I, the Paris Convention relating to the Regulation of Aerial Navigation recognized that every state had “complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory” but also noted that states had to grant “freedom of innocent passage.”31 In handbooks of international law, the air remains a contested space, pushing the 300-­year-­old Westphalian understanding of territoriality to its limit. As mentioned by Daniel-­Erasmus Khan, a consensus on the different qualities of sovereignty connected to the airspace is still lacking.32 Due to the spread of communication technologies, the crash of Nobile’s airship caught the imagination of people living far from the Arctic. It was, however, the omnipresence of the airplane that started connecting these icy and deserted places with the awareness that daily life had become more globally connected than ever before. However, the process of memory-­making did not start with the Arctic—seen as the focal point of what today we call the Global Commons—nor with creating memories out of making modern communication technologies memorable; rather, international memories developed from the confrontation of internationalism and military conquest. Starting with the rationale of internationalism, territorial appropriation as practiced by the frontier generations changed to claims of crossing, which had become embedded in a huge variety of global governance regulations. John Jay Ide, air transportation expert for the American government, presented a long list of global governance–related areas, in which air transportation had set new regulations.33 To continue this list, in 1937 the League of Red Cross Societies discussed aircraft registries at a conference in Budapest. By this time, aviation insurers had already formed their own international institutions, and the League of Nations had opened an information bureau for aeronautics. There were radiotelegraphy conferences to discuss the accessibility of wavelengths for planes, and the Universal Postal Union debated the question of air cargo and how to establish a worldwide air mail delivery system. Both of these issues interested the International Chamber of Commerce. The International Meteorological Organization too paid special attention to aeronautical meteorology. In addition, weather forecasting from the Arctic, it was believed, would substantially shape agribusiness. The International Office of Public Hygiene was concerned with the establishment of sanitary airports,

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as there were discussions on whether increasing connections via airplanes posed a danger in terms of spreading epidemics and epizootics around the globe. The International Hydrographic Bureau introduced standards in the use of symbols on air maps, and the International Lighting Commission discussed the appropriate lighting of runways. Such complex and intertwined regulations pertaining to the air prepared the stage for the young and audacious heroes who—as Amundsen noted bitterly—preferred a smart military uniform to the Inuit’s fur coat and missed no opportunity to organize an admiring public for their activities. As presented by Sörlin, polar science virtually guaranteed success and brought the respective epistemic community “to the public eye” and made them “part of public memory.”34 While an international elite of polar researchers presented new and successful forms of scientific careers, scions of wealthy families offered their money and opportunities worldwide for further investigation. However, in the Italian case the interest in connectivity merged with the special position of aviation in Fascist Italy’s program of building an air force at an early stage. Nobile’s successor was Italo Balbo, who successfully took a fleet of Italian airplanes from Rome to Chicago and New York in 1933. In the 1930s, almost every nation claimed a presence in the air, and increasingly, crossing the Arctic became the locus of affection, fear, and various other emotions. Breaking ties with internationalism, Arctic crossings remained closely connected to the role of the Arctic in military conquest.

Affection, Fear, and Other Emotions: The Arctic as the Focus of Military Conquest If we refrain from reading the Air Age as just another chapter in the history of modernization, we can see that debates on the legal context of air regulations started challenging both territoriality and sovereignty as key elements of national power. In the contemporary discourse, territoriality and sovereignty were eclipsed and laid the groundwork for the question of who should drive the process of increasing accessibility to the world, and from where. In the memory-­making process, the Air Age was related to two epistemologies, which rendered visible the tensions over the monopoly of interpretation. One shaped the memory discourse in pictures and maps taken from the bird’s-­eye view, as explained below. The other connected the Arctic to the memory of the flying heroes and used the well-­established



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language of landmarks as a reference to remembrance. To this day, the airship mast erected to commemorate the first transpolar flight in 1926 situates Ny Ålesund as a spatial reference of memory-­making. Fixed at the mast, a copper plate shows the airship Norge and the flags of Norway, Italy, and the United States, “honoring a glorious achievement of human endeavor.”35 In 1931, the small French town of Caudebec-­en-­Caux erected a monument with a full-­size Latham 47, the airplane Amundsen had taken in search of Nobile. This site of memory is part of a lieux de mémoire aeronautique, telling the story of the Arctic in the language of war memorials and retaining an ongoing function in the remembrance culture related to Amundsen, whose place of death is unknown.36 Besides the celebration of (male) heroes, the presence of the Arctic gained importance in the public debate as a metaphor for global connectivity. In the public and scientific debate of the 1930s, the Arctic Ocean took on the form of the Mediterranean Sea, which Mussolini had claimed for a second Roman Empire. Interestingly, the strange idea of a Mediterranean Arctic spread widely. It became part of the American spatial discourse during World War II and contributed to the rhetoric of Italian propaganda celebrating Italy’s successful transatlantic flights.37 Moreover, Italian futurism offered an expandable and ambivalent cultural framework within which connectivities outside of territorial and temporal constraints gained the importance and value of a promise for the future. Aeropittura, a group of futurist artists, developed the aesthetic concept of accessing the world from above. Fascist claims became public with the Italian contributions to the World’s Fairs in Chicago in 1933 and New York in 1939 on the brink of World War II. Italy’s national pavilion was designed in the shapes of airplane wings and parts. The form of these buildings did not just quote the airplane as a machine: the air as a connecting medium was rendered inhabitable. The new approach spread across ideological borders. In 1939 the World’s Fair slogan “Building the World of Tomorrow” paired with a logo representing a modified bird’s-­eye view.38 Recent scholarly contributions have argued that this American World’s Fair was related to the aero-­futurist program, and that in the buildings and designs presented there, the aerial perspective gained yet another new quality as an integral part of a new city-­building program.39 The character of the Arctic changed dramatically from a marine or mari­ time periphery hostile to all forms of life to an identity-­building space of connections and a contested field for military reasons. The connecting power of an uninhabited space without territories increased substantially in political

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value during World War II. The American Aviation Education Research Group launched an Air Age Education book series during the war. George Renner, a professor at Columbia University, published Human Geography in the Air Age for high school students.40 The book presents a pole-­centered world, heralding the emergence of a new world and a new worldview. Like many others, the book explained the political message of this new cartography—the United States closely connected to the other continents, its splendid isolation replaced by an investment in its connecting powers. This version of geopolitical connectivity caught on during World War II, especially in the version prepared by the American artist and geographer Richard Edes Harrison. On his artistic maps, continents faced each other around the Arctic Ocean, narrating the world from an Arctic-­centered perspective.41 Harrison published these maps under the title Look at the World: The Fortune Atlas for World Strategy in 1942. The widely read publication dealt with the military situation but, as the editors of Fortune magazine explained in the preface, the maps’ “main purpose is not to locate supply routes and battle lines”—rather, the maps “try to show why Americans are fighting in strange places and why trade follows its various routes.”42 For Harrison, the Arctic Arena was of recent but clear importance: “By air, the capitals of all the great powers, except Chungking, are closer to the Arctic Circle than they are to the equator.”43

Conclusion One of the most unfriendly and hostile areas in the world, the Arctic nonetheless offers intoxicating promise. Unlike the South Pole, the Arctic is empty space covered by an unstable, icy surface. Traversable neither by ship nor surface transport, this area challenges us to redefine territoriality, one of the most fundamental concepts in historiography. Territories explain ownership and conquest and underlie our understanding of power and wealth. They are culturally formed and carry long-­lasting memories. The Arctic has no territories; it is, however, a link between the continents, a complex common ground, a precondition for understanding the world as a globally connected entity. The Arctic became part of global memory when an epic tragedy turned the North Pole into a rescue scape. The rescue of the Fascist Nobile mission touched people from all continents, who, while far from the ice floes,



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were engaged by listening to radio transmissions from the Arctic and were seduced by the immediacy. Thus, the North Pole inspired a new perception of the globe. Described as connecting power, or as the power to connect, communication technologies departed from and left behind the established forms of claiming territories by conquest, or by fostering a frontier society. The connecting third dimension had broken the linearity of time and the territoriality of space with legal consequences on one hand and the awareness of unregulated ambiguities on the other. This connecting third dimension found expression in visual and audible media characterized by their ability to produce a global synchronicity and, in a new reading of the bird’s-­eye view, a new perspective. The grounding of such an example in a specific historical context seems crucial, all the more so because Fascism was a factor. The Fascist version of connectivity introduced a strong, persuasive, and aggressive reach over empty spaces. During World War II, the Allies developed similar ideas of connecting, with the United States as the prime mover in translating, championing, and communicating the value of the far-­distant Arctic. The Arctic now became a contested field of connectivity and offered a perspective for potential collaboration. In the Allies’ bird’s-­eye view, continents faced each other around the Arctic Ocean. The metaphor had such strong symbolic power  that the image came to be used as the flag of the United Nations. However, the question of power remained visible—with the Arctic at its center, the UN flag clearly established a Western-­centered form of connecting power with the Southern Hemisphere in its shadow.

Notes 1. As mentioned by Charles S. Maier, “Territory is not just land. . . . It is a global space that has been partitioned for the sake of political authority, space in effect empowered by borders.” Charles S. Maier, Once Within Borders: Territories of Power, Wealth, and Belonging since 1500 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 167. 2. UNESCO World Heritage List, accessed 7 November 2022, https://​whc​.unesco​.org​/en​ /list​/1557/. 3. Rudolf Samoilowitsch, S-­O-­S in der Arktis: Die Rettungsexpedition des Krassin (Berlin: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1929); Davide Giudici, The Tragedy of the “Italia”: With the Rescuers to the Red Tent (New York: D. Appleton, 1929), xv, 207. 4. Nobile published his own views extensively and on several occasions. His book “L’Italia” al Polo Nord was translated into various languages, and the German version was reissued several times. See Umberto Nobile, Im Luftschiff zum Nordpol: Die Fahrten der “Italia” (Berlin: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1929).

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5. Nobile had the journalist Cesco Tomaselli onboard. Within two years, Tomaselli's book was published in various versions and in four editions. Tomaselli, L’inferno bianco, 1st ed. (Milan: Edizioni Unitas, 1929). 6. The Fascist Educational Film Union, Istituto Luce, covered the Nobile expedition. See Archivio Luce, accessed 7 November 2022, https://​www​.archivioluce​.com. For additional documentation by Reuters and British Pathé, Norway: First Pictures of General Umberto Nobile at Arctic Base During North Pole Expedition 1928, accessed 7 November 2022, https://​www​ .britishpathe​.com​/video​/vlva1ydg2b3di9c37z800bl5qhn6p​-norway​-first​-pictures​-of​-general​ -umberto​-nobile​-at​-arctic​-base​/query​/Umberto​+Nobile. 7. In addition to the radio play mentioned above, you can listen to a recording of the song “Umberto Nobile, Gloria d’Italia,” accessed 7 November 2022, https://​archive​.org​/details​/78​ _umberto​-nobile​-gloria​-ditalia​_raoul​-romito​-abbondandolo​-pennino​_gbia0070808a. 8. Odd Arnesen, The Polar Adventure: The “Italia” Tragedy Seen at Close Quarters (London: V. Gol­lancz, 1929), accessed 7 November 2022, https://​archive​.org​/details​/polaradventureit00arne​ /page​/n7. 9. Today, the history of Nobile’s rescue features prominently in the floating museum Krassin, one of St. Petersburg’s newest attractions. Icebreaker Krasin, accessed 7 November 2022, http://​www​.saint​-petersburg​.com​/museums​/icebreaker​-krasin/. 10. Peter Macalister-­Smith, “Emblems, Internationally Protected,” in Encyclopedia of Public International Law (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1986), 113–19. 11. William J. Mills, Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-­CLIO, 2003); Eric Paglia, “The Northward Course of the Anthropocene: Transformation, Temporality and Telecoupling in a Time of Environmental Crisis” (PhD diss., KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, 2016); Mark Nuttal, ed., Encyclopedia of the Arctic (New York: Routledge, 2005). 12. Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall, The Scramble for the Poles: The Geopolitics of the Arctic and Antarctic (Cambridge: Polity, 2016). See also “Canada Finds Ship from Doomed 19th Century Franklin Expedition,” 10 September 2014, accessed 7 November 2022, https://​www​.reuters​ .com​/article​/us​-canada​-franklin​/canada​-finds​-ship​-from​-doomed​-19th​-century​-franklin​ -expedition​-idUSKBN0H41LF20140910. 13. Sverker Sörlin, “Rituals and Resources of Natural History,” in Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices, ed. Michael Bravo and Sverker Sörlin (Canton: Science History Publications/USA, 2002), 73–122. 14. Wilbur Cross, Disaster at the Pole: The Crash of the Airship “Italia” (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2002). 15. Kimberly Peters, Philip Steinberg, and Elaine Stratford, eds., Territory Beyond Terra (London: Policy Network, 2018). 16. Istituto Luce was a well-­known propaganda tool in the world of international organizations. Tomoko Akami, “The Limits of Peace Propaganda: The Information Section of the League of Nations and Its Tokyo Office,” in International Organizations and the Media in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Jonas Brendebach, Martin Herzer, and Heidi Tworek (London: Routledge, 2018), 70–90. 17. See the letter of gratitude from the Italian Embassy in Tokyo, Attaché Naval d’Italie F. Vanzini to Capitaine Komaki A.D.C. de S.Ex. Le Ministre de la Marine, Tokio 5.6.1928, JACAR (Japan Center for Asian Historical Records) Ref.C11080460600, Embassy Military Attaché



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correspondences 1928 (National Institute for Defense Studies), accessed 7 November 2022, https://​www​.jacar​.archives​.go​.jp​/das​/image​-en​/C11080460600. 18. Now a floating museum in St. Petersburg harbor, the ship is presented on an interactive website, with a special section on the Nobile expedition, accessed 7 November 2022, http://​www​ .krassin​.ru​/en​/o​-ledokole​-en​/podvig​-vo​-ldakh​-en​.html. 19. Samoilowitsch, S-­O-­S in der Arktis. 20. Arnesen, Polar Adventure. 21. Amundsen knew Nobile from a previous expedition with the airship Norge. In his autobiography, he explained his personal animosity toward Nobile. This fact took on greater significance after Amundsen went missing. Roald Amundsen, My Life as an Explorer (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1927). 22. The rescue operations for Amundsen even included one of the rare female polar travelers. See Joanna Kafarowski, The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame: A Life of Louise Arner Boyd (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2017). For the rescue operations see Madeleine Herren, “European Global Studies: Grenzüberschreitungen auf 90 Grad Nord” in Fuzzi Boundaries, ed. Hans Amstutz et al. (Hamburg: Widmaier Verlag, 2015), 601–618. 23. Maurice Parijanine, Un drame polaire: Le “Krassine” au secours de l’“Italia” (Paris: Les Editions Rieder, 1928); Robert E. Martin, “Armored Ships Win Thrilling Battles with Polar Ice: Flirting Daily with Death,” Popular Science Monthly, January 1929. 24. Deutsches Rundfunktarchiv et al., Friedrich Wolf—Ein Rundfunkpionier: “SOS . . . rao rao . . . Foyn—‘Krassin’ rettet ‘Italia’” und andere ausgewählte Tondokumente (Stiftung Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, 2013). For a more extended presentation of this radio play, see Madeleine Herren, Christiane Sibille, and Martin Rüesch, Transcultural History (Berlin: Springer, 2012), 125–31. 25. See Amundsen, My Life, 1927. 26. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Friendly Arctic (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 162. 27. His statement was important enough to be quoted worldwide: “Air Mail to China: Explorer’s Plan for Service via Bering Strait,” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 10 September 1928, 3. 28. A. R. Glen and D. B. Keith, “The Oxford University Arctic Expedition, 1935–36,” Nature 135, no. 3416 (1935): 604–6, https://​doi​.org​/10​.1038​/135604a0. 29. Warren Jefferson Davis, Aeronautical Law (Los Angeles: Parker, Stone, and Baird, 1930). 30. Ibid. 31. Quoted in Daniel-­Erasmus Khan, “Territory and Boundaries,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law, ed. Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 246. 32. Khan, “Territory and Boundaries,” 246. 33. John Jay Ide, “International Aeronautic Organizations and the Control of Air Navigation,” a lecture delivered by John Jay Ide under the James Jackson Cabot professorship of air traffic regulation and air transportation at Norwich University, 3 February 1935 (Northfield, VT: Norwich University, 1938). 34. Sörlin, “Rituals and Resources,” 100. 35. Garth James Cameron, From Pole to Pole: Roald Amundsen’s Journey in Flight (South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Books). In Tromsø a Nobile monument remembering those who died during the expedition and the rescue is mentioned as a place of interest for visitors. Polar

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History, accessed 7 November 2022, https://​www​.visittromso​.no​/inspiration​/field​-trip​-to​ -tromso​/history​/polar​-history. 36. See Stèles, monuments, plaques commémoratives, accessed 7 November 2022, https://​ www​.aerosteles​.net/. 37. Michelle Paluch-­Mishur, “‘The Mutable Perspectives of Flight’: Futurist Aeropittura and the ‘Golden Age’ of Aviation” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2004). 38. EXPO 1939 New York, accessed 7 November 2022, https://​www​.bie​-paris​.org​/site​/en​ /1939​-new​-york. 39. Alan Lovegreen, “Aerial Homesteading: Aerofuturism in Interwar America,” Criticism 57, no. 2 (2015), 235–57. 40. George T. Renner, Human Geography in the Air Age, Air Age Educational Series (New York: Macmillan, 1942), 22: “This new world is not hemispheric; it is monospheric. Most of its lands are clustered about a world mediterranean sea. The name of this small but important central body of water is the Arctic Ocean. Outward from this global basin, the lands radiate like the points of a star, a pole-­centered world indeed.” 41. Richard Edes Harrison, “One World, One War: Complete Azimuthal Equidistant Projections,” in Look at the World: The Fortune Atlas for World Strategy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944), accessed 8 March 2022, https://​www​.davidrumsey​.com​/luna​/servlet​/detail​/RUMSEY​~8​ ~1​~266317​~5504873:​One​-World,​-One​-War. 42. The Editors of Fortune, Preface, in Richard Edes Harrison, Look at the World: The Fortune Atlas for World Strategy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944), 7, accessed 7 November 2022, https://​www​.davidrumsey​.com​/luna​/servlet​/detail​/RUMSEY​~8​~1​~266316​~5504872:​Preface​ -​-Look​-At​-The​-World​-​-The​-For​?qvq​=​q:​pub​_list​_no​%3D​%221970​.000​%22​;lc:​RUMSEY​~8​~1​&​ mi​=​8​&​trs​=​42. 43. Richard Edes Harrison, “Arctic Arena: Orthographic Projection,” in Look at the World: The Fortune Atlas for World Strategy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944), accessed 7 November 2022, 51 https://​www​.davidrumsey​.com​/luna​/servlet​/detail​/RUMSEY​~8​~1​~266339​~5504895:​ Arctic​-Arena​?qvq​=​q:​pub​_list​_no​%3D​%221970​.000​%22​;lc:​RUMSEY​~8​~1​&​mi​=​31​&​trs​=​42.

CHAPTER 6

Antarctica and the Stratigraphy of International Memory Rohan Howitt

T

he polar regions are significant sites for the study of international and global histories. The high Arctic, as Madeleine Herren has shown, is defined by its status as an “empty space,” an unstable and untraversable ice-­covered sea that challenges conventions of territoriality.1 Antarctica, by contrast, is a continental landmass covered by ice and subject to formal territorial claims by seven states, albeit claims that have been placed in abeyance for the duration of the Antarctic Treaty. In the twentieth century, both polar regions belied their positions at the geographical margins of the world to become increasingly central to ideas about the global commons, international governance, conservation, sovereignty, territoriality, and, particularly in the case of the Arctic, globality. Yet, while these shifts mark the polar regions as important sites of analysis for the formation, remembrance, and forgetting of these ideas, the differences between the Arctic and Antarctic lend themselves to contrasting modes of analysis. The high Arctic, with its absence of territory and its potential as a connective space between Asia, Europe, and North America, is particularly suited to the study of events, such as the sudden burst of international interest in the 1928 airship Italia disaster examined by Herren. The Antarctic, however, with its vast landmass, encircling ocean, and surrounding islands, is ideally suited to an analysis of spaces as sites of international memory. The Antarctic region, defined broadly as the Antarctic continent and the subantarctic islands of the Southern Ocean, has accumulated a multitude of contradictory meanings and uses over time. It has been imagined as a place of

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near-­boundless economic potential—a “golden El Dorado down South” in the words of one Australian booster—and used as a base for exploitative industries such as whaling, sealing, and krill harvesting.2 It has been understood as an extension of states’ sovereign territories and became the focal point of a scramble to assert territorial claims in the mid-­twentieth century.3 At the same time, the region came to be understood as a global commons uniquely suited to novel forms of cooperative international governance. Despite the tensions between these understandings, the Antarctic Treaty System that has governed Antarctica since 1959 has been heralded as a triumph of twentieth-­ century internationalism, described as “one of the most successful international regimes of recent times” and “a beacon of international cooperation.”4 Since the 1990s, the region has been formally designated “a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science” under the Madrid Protocol, one of the bundle of international agreements and advisory bodies that make up the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS).5 In spite of its industrial and imperial past, the Antarctic is frequently portrayed as “Earth’s most pristine wilderness.”6 Perhaps the most prominent layer of meaning in the twenty-­first century is the idea that, as the British Antarctic Survey puts it, Antarctica is “a sensitive barometer of environmental change.”7 Each of these palimpsestic layers of meaning and use are encoded in specific sites of communal significance that can be found throughout the Antarctic region. Ninety-­two such sites, ranging from research bases to statues, have been recognized and protected as Historic Sites and Monuments under the Antarctic Treaty. Many more sites are unlisted, while one, New Zealand’s subantarctic islands, falls outside of the geographical limits of the Antarctic Treaty but is on UNESCO’s World Heritage list.8 Such sites, and Antarctica generally, have been studied extensively as sites of national memory and for the production of national mythologies. Anne-­Marie Brady, for example, argues that New Zealanders consider the Antarctic “an intrinsic part of their national history and heritage.”9 Building on this idea, Katie Pickles locates Mount Erebus—the site of an airplane crash that killed 257 passengers and crew on a sightseeing flight operated by Air New Zealand in 1979—as the focal point for New Zealanders’ imagination of Antarctica as “an intrinsic part of their national history and heritage.”10 Brigid Hains similarly sees Antarctica as a crucial site for the production of an Australian frontier mythology, arguing that Australians in the early twentieth century saw the taming and development of the Antarctic frontier as a way to build the emergent national character.11 There is a substantial historiography examining the centrality of

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Antarctica and the subantarctic islands to conceptions of Argentine and Chilean sovereignty, national integrity, and identity.12 In this chapter, I aim to build on and extend this existing scholarship on the Antarctic as a site of national significance, memory, and mythology. I do so by examining the multiple, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory layers of individual, national, and international significance that have been attached to the Antarctic region and to its array of specific sites. I first examine how Antarctica itself, as an entire continent placed under a novel system of international governance and formally devoted to peaceful, cooperative scientific endeavor, can be understood as a site of memory that reveals the emergence and decline of multiple strains of nationalist and internationalist thinking with regard to the management of the global commons. I then consider three illustrative examples of smaller, more specific sites within the Antarctic region that emphasize various aspects of individual, nationalist, and internationalist significance: a post office at Port Lockroy, Goudier Island; a whaling station at Grytviken, South Georgia; and a graveyard at Port Ross, Auckland Island. The approach I use to investigate these cases, but which could be applied to any number of similar ones, is to analyze what may be termed the “stratigraphy” of memory at these sites. The addition of another term to the already rich vocabulary of the history of memory may seem unnecessary, yet there are distinct advantages to thinking about sites of memory in Antarctica—and perhaps elsewhere—in this way. First, the language of stratigraphy recognizes, and indeed emphasizes, the fact that sites of memory (international or otherwise) are frequently multilayered. A site that is vested with significance by a specific group at a specific time may have been vested with an entirely different, and perhaps even contradictory, type of significance by another group or at a different time. To examine the stratigraphy of memory at a site is to recognize that layers of meaning, memory, significance, and use accumulate at sites over time. Second, the metaphor of stratigraphy provides a way to think critically about the relationships between these layers. Archaeological strata are not necessarily linear, frequently containing residual or intrusive artifacts from earlier or later periods. The same is true of the layers of use and significance attached to memory sites. Older layers of use may endure for longer than more recent ones. In other cases, older patterns of significance may disappear but be revived at a later time and given new meaning. Layers can overlap, contradict, disappear, be revived, and be replaced. In treating these layers as strata, I do

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Figure 6.1. Map 13991: Subantarctic Islands, Australian Antarctic Data Centre (2011), Copyright Commonwealth of Australia, reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution license.

not presume any linear relationship between them but rather recognize that relationships between layers are unique products of the site and its context. Finally, the metaphor of stratigraphies provides a way of thinking systematically about relationships between multiple sites of memory. Just as archaeologists draw conclusions about the material cultures of past communities from patterns of similar artifacts from similar periods found at multiple sites, so too can historians deduce broader historical processes from similar patterns of use, meaning, and significance at multiple sites of memory. In this, the idea of stratigraphies goes further than that of palimpsests. Where the

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idea of palimpsests emphasizes the significance of the existence of multiple layers of meaning at sites of memory, this idea of stratigraphies emphasizes the relationships between layers and between sites.13 By examining the stratigraphy of memory at sites in the Antarctic, I aim to contribute to an understanding of the broader ideas, practices, and institutions that have shaped the region; internationalism in particular, but also layered across and in between colonialism, empire building, industrial development, and tourism.

Antarctica as a Site of International Memory As a successfully internationalized global commons, Antarctica is vested with enormous significance by the international community and those who study it. Antarctica and the ATS have become a part of internationalism’s symbolic heritage, a continental memorial to the actors and institutions that ensured the Antarctic would be protected as a reserve dedicated to peace, conservation, and science. As such, Antarctica itself can be understood as a site of international memory, an entry point to remembering the veins of internationalist thinking that have shaped it. The existence of an internationally protected Antarctic has its origins in two distinct traditions of internationalist thought. The first was the idea that the Antarctic was particularly suited to international scientific cooperation. This can be traced to the “Magnetic Crusade” of the 1830s, a campaign to study terrestrial magnetism and improve the safety and reliability of global shipping by collecting magnetic data from around the world. Antarctic data was crucial, and Britain, France, and the United States each dispatched expeditions there between 1839 and 1842.14 The 1874 and 1882 Transits of Venus triggered a similar surge of interest in the Antarctic as a site for cooperative science, resulting in American, British, French, and German expeditions being dispatched to the subantarctic Auckland, Campbell, St. Paul, Kerguelen, and South Georgia islands.15 This scientific internationalism took a more concrete form during the first International Polar Year (IPY) in 1882. The IPY was organized at a series of International Polar Conferences held in 1879–81 and was intended to facilitate synchronized scientific observations in the polar regions at regular intervals over an entire year. While dominated by Arctic research, the first IPY also established southern stations in South Georgia and Tierra del Fuego.16 This broadly cooperative approach to Antarctic science continued

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during the so-­called Heroic Era of exploration at the turn of the twentieth century. The International Geographical Congress, for example, facilitated cooperation between British, German, Scottish, and Swedish Antarctic expeditions in 1901–1904. Even at a time of escalating political rivalry between Britain and Germany, these four national expeditions agreed to coordinate their programs to systematically explore specific sectors, make simultaneous magnetic and meteorological observations, and exchange scientific data.17 Preparations were made for a second IPY during the 1920s, though plans for Antarctic expeditions were dropped from the final program in 1932–33 for financial reasons.18 The idea was revived after the Second World War, however, and an International Geophysical Year (IGY) was organized from July 1957 to December 1958. This eighteen-­month program of collaborative, multidisciplinary geophysical research by sixty-­six participating states was envisaged as a worldwide extension of the earlier IPYs and included a program of Antarctic research by twelve states.19 The second tradition of internationalist thinking about the Antarctic was political and legal, focusing on the idea that the Antarctic was a global commons peculiarly suited to international governance. Thomas Willing Balch was the first to suggest some form of internationalization in 1910, recommending that the Antarctic regions “become common possessions of all of the family of nations.”20 The idea reemerged in the interwar period, being proposed or endorsed by a range of lawyers and writers without ever being seriously taken up by national governments or the League of Nations.21 For example, in 1945 the American economic and peace activist Emily Greene Balch (no relation to Thomas Willing Balch) called for the Antarctic to be given “the new status of an international territory” and administered collectively by the international community.22 These proposals for a form of international trusteeship over Antarctica, potentially within the framework of the United Nations, were discussed after the Second World War. After flirting with this idea, the United States instead came to favor a form of condominium jointly administered by itself and the seven states with formal territorial claims in the Antarctic.23 This idea of internationalization outside the structures of the United Nations, which would better protect the interests of the small group of states already actively involved in the Antarctic, gained momentum throughout the 1950s, and was ultimately a major factor in the organization and funding of the IGY.24 This desire to preserve states’ existing interests through internationalization highlights the fact that these scientific and political veins of internationalist

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Figure 6.2. Map 13567: Antarctica: Territorial Claims (Black and White), Australian Antarctic Data Centre (2011), Copyright Commonwealth of Australia, reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution license.

thinking overlapped with commitments to expansionist nationalism. Even scientifically minded explorers took advantage of opportunities to claim newly discovered territories and, by the outbreak of the First World War, the map of Antarctica comprised a patchwork of small and largely unrecognized territorial claims. These claims were consolidated, justified, and challenged in the period from the 1920s to the 1950s, culminating in the proclamation of seven formal territorial claims by Britain (via the Falkland Islands), New Zealand, France, Australia, Norway, Argentina, and Chile.25 A number of other states, including the United States, Russia, Uruguay, and Brazil, did not make

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formal sovereignty claims in this period but reserved their right to do so in the future.26 This contest between nationalist and internationalist visions of the Antarctic region’s future was only decided in favor of internationalization in 1959. The twelve states that had declared an interest in Antarctica and had participated in the Antarctic component of the IGY—Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union, and the United States—agreed on the desirability of avoiding military conflict in the Antarctic, of keeping the region freely accessible to scientists of all nations, and of keeping it outside of UN control. These principles, combined with the relative success of cooperation between them during preparations for the IGY, formed the basis for an agreement.27 Negotiations continued throughout the 1950s and culminated in the signing of the Antarctic Treaty on 1 December 1959. The treaty neither recognized nor disavowed the existing territorial claims, instead agreeing to suspend them for the duration of the treaty. It further committed the signatories to abstaining from military activities in the Antarctic, keeping the continent nuclear free, and maintaining the open and cooperative approach to scientific research developed during the IGY.28 In addition to the twelve original signatories, forty-­two other states signed the Antarctic Treaty between 1959 and 1999. Of these, seventeen have become consultative members, granting them a say in decision-­making at annual Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings. Since 1961 the consultative states have reached a number of additional agreements on issues that fell beyond the scope of the original treaty, such as pelagic sealing, whaling, krill fishing, and mineral exploration.29 Most prominent among these was the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, commonly known as the Madrid Protocol.30 The protocol prohibited mining in Antarctica, overturning an unratified agreement from 1988 to create an international regulatory authority to oversee mining, and enshrined the protection of the Antarctic environment as one of the key considerations for the approval of any activity in the region. Today, the Antarctic is seen as a genuine success of international cooperation and governance. Yet this internationalist vision of the Antarctic is just one of many layers of meaning and significance attached to the region. The idea that the Antarctic was a site of untapped economic potential destined to be developed into productive dependencies serving national interests has an even longer genealogy than the idea that it fell naturally within the

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international sphere. That mining was a very real possibility in the 1980s is a reminder that this vision of a productive Antarctic continued to overlap with visions of an internationally protected region well after the emergence of the ATS. Closely related to this economic ideal was the belief that the subantarctic could be colonized and transformed into a region for permanent occupation and pastoral settlement. This idea of colonizing the Antarctic faded into obscurity, but new forms of significance have emerged since the signing of the Antarctic Treaty. Tourism, for example, has added new layers of significance to a range of Antarctic sites as tourist attractions, and new forms of international regulation. These relationships between layers of memory, meaning, and significance are complex, often nonlinear, and occasionally contradictory. This is evident in the imaginings of the Antarctic as a site of geopolitical contest between expansionist states and a unique space eminently suited to internationalization but is even more apparent when considering the stratigraphy of memory at smaller, more specific sites within the Antarctic region.

Port Lockroy, Goudier Island Port Lockroy, a British station on Goudier Island, just off the Antarctic Peninsula, is one of the ATS’s ninety-­two historic sites and monuments. It is a heritage site, not an active research station, and is staffed and maintained by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust for visitors over the summer tourist season. The site was a scientific base from 1944 to 1962 but, since 1996, has been home to a museum, gift shop, and post office. It is one of the most visited tourist sites in the Antarctic, receiving 22,291 visitors in the summer of 2018–19, and proceeds from these visits are used by the trust to subsidize its heritage conservation work at a range of Antarctic sites.31 Port Lockroy has enormous symbolic significance for tourists. Visiting the museum and post office is frequently treated as one of the unmissable staple experiences of Antarctic tourism.32 When tourists begin contemplating and planning an Antarctic cruise, they are likely to come across effusive reviews of Port Lockroy on tourism sites such as Tripadvisor and Google Reviews, including statements describing a visit to the post office as “obligatory” and an Antarctic stamp as something “no world traveller’s passport is complete without.”33 When they arrive, they can peruse a range of stamps, books, clothing, and other souvenirs that are shipped in at the start of each tourist season, and can even pay for their purchases with Mastercard or Visa.34

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That Port Lockroy is a cultural landmark for tourists is a reminder that Antarctica has been fully incorporated into the structures of global tourism. Antarctic tourism is a relatively recent phenomenon, with dedicated tourist cruises beginning in 1958 and occurring annually since 1966. The industry expanded rapidly in the 1990s, growing from ten operators and 6,704 passenger landings in 1992–93 to forty-­four operators and 42,576 passenger landings in 2017–18.35 Since 1991 the industry has been represented by the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO). It self-­regulates the tourism industry, providing guidelines for its members that cover practices such as waste disposal, passenger-­guide ratios, and exclusion zones around wildlife.36 The IAATO is also the industry’s representative body and has a place in the international governance of Antarctica, attending ATS Consultative Meetings as an “Invited Expert” organization.37 Port Lockroy is clearly a site of significance for Antarctic tourists and tourism operators, and the significance vested in the site reveals the ways in which Antarctica has been incorporated into global tourism structures and tourism operators have been incorporated into the international systems that govern the Antarctic region. Yet this significance can also be read in other ways. Most notably, Port Lockroy provides a way to remember the increasingly remote technical practices and institutions that were a crucial element of late nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century internationalism.38 Visitors to Port Lockroy place enormous significance in what would, in almost any other context, be regarded as tedious administrative minutiae. Tourists take genuine delight in the ability to purchase a bona fide stamp accepted as legal issue around the world, place postcards in an incongruously located Royal Mail post box, and acquire a legitimate Antarctic stamp in their passport. One Tripadvisor review goes so far as to say that visiting the post office was “almost as exciting as stepping onto the Antarctic continent itself.”39 This delight seems to stem from one’s surprise that something as ordinary as the international postal system extends to the Antarctic. The juxtaposition of the extremity of the environment with the ordinariness of the process helps make interesting and visible the normally banal and unseen functions of the Universal Postal Union (UPU)—one of the earliest, most successful, and most enduring of international organizations.40 Indeed, the UPU was described by F. H. Williamson in 1933 as “one of the mainsprings of modern civilisation” that “works in an obscurity which is the direct result of its efficiency.”41 At the height of the summer tourist season, Port Lockroy hosts three ships a day, or around 150 tourists. Tourists deposit up to 1,000 postcards daily, each

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costing US$1 to send anywhere in the world. At the end of the day the post box is emptied, the mail sorted, weighed, franked, and bagged, and eventually placed aboard the next visiting ship that calls at the Falkland Islands. The ships deposit the mail at the Stanley Post Office, and a weekly Royal Air Force flight takes it to England to be sorted and sent to its final destinations. The process takes a minimum of two weeks, and usually much longer. Approximately 525 kilograms of mail was processed in this fashion across the 2018–19 season.42 This process draws attention to several core principles and functions of the UPU. Until the union was established in 1874, the international postal service was a haphazard process governed by bilateral postal treaties between states. If mail needed to be sent between two states without a treaty, it had to be sent to a third party who could forward it. There were no standardized maximum rates based on weight or distance, so the cost of postage varied widely for similar items. There were no standardized limits on size and weight. Prepayment of postage was compulsory when posting to some states, optional for others, and in some cases was not permitted. Sending a letter could potentially require stamps for every postal jurisdiction it passed through. The UPU radically reformed this system, creating a single worldwide postal territory with uniform regulations on everything from maximum fees to stamp design. Central to the union’s vision of a truly international system was the principle of freedom of transit, which in practice means that every member state is entitled to use any postal service provided by any member to deliver its mail. The state of origin charges the sender a fee based on a complex system of UPU flat rates that vary by weight, distance, and mode of transit. Income from fees is then used to cover the cost of transit and to compensate other states for processing and delivering mail.43 The principles and processes developed by the UPU, which became a specialized agency of the UN in 1948, remain the core of the international postal system. Thus, a tourist of any nationality can post a letter from Port Lockroy to anywhere in the world by prepaying a flat rate of US$1 to the British Royal Mail, which takes responsibility for the costs and logistics of transit. In line with the UPU’s founding principles, the Royal Mail gives no preference to post bound for Britain, treating all mail equally and allowing mail bound for anywhere in the world to be sent via cruise ship and Royal Air Force flight. The British Antarctic Territory stamps available at Port Lockroy are designed in accordance with UPU regulations, and copies of every new issue are sent to the UPU International Bureau in Berne and from there to the postal administrations of member states. As a result, they are the only stamps required and

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are accepted as legitimate by every postal administration they pass through. The banality of posting a letter internationally is in direct contrast to the complexity of the system that makes it possible. Port Lockroy and its incongruous post office therefore helps make visible the internationalist ambitions and efficient functions of the UPU and provides a unique site for remembering the often mundane, technical, and increasingly distant institutions and practices of nineteenth and twentieth-­century internationalism. Port Lockroy also provides a site for remembering the ways in which this administrative internationalism was co-­opted to support national geopolitical imperatives. The question of how, or indeed whether, sovereignty could be claimed over polar regions was a source of debate among international legal scholars in the interwar period, but it was generally accepted that some form of administration was required to justify a claim.44 Some scholars, such as the Norwegian Gustav Smedal, went further, arguing that administration could only form the basis of a sovereignty claim when administered from within the claimed territory.45 Post offices and their administrative accoutrements such as stamps and cancellation marks provided a relatively simple way to demonstrate a basic form of administration within an Antarctic territory. They also had the advantage of being regulated by an international organization, so any mail successfully sent from an Antarctic post office constituted de facto international recognition of the state’s right to administer that territory. Argentina pioneered this strategy in 1904, creating a post office within a meteorological station at Laurie Island in the South Orkneys to support a claim to the islands.46 This post office became a central battleground for an increasingly bitter sovereignty dispute between Britain and Argentina over South Georgia and the South Orkneys, as both states claimed to have sole authority over the islands’ postal and telegraphic administration.47 The present Royal Mail post office at Port Lockroy, the one that is vested with significance by Antarctic tourists, dates only to the base’s restoration in the 1990s. Yet it occupies the site of an earlier post office that was established in 1944 and vested with an entirely different layer of meaning. As the Anglo-­ Argentine dispute escalated, Britain established a network of bases across the Falkland Islands Dependencies between 1943 and 1945. To support Britain’s claim to administration, each base had its own fully functioning post office.48 Beneath the layers of significance vested in Port Lockroy by the ATS, tourism operators, and Antarctic tourists can be seen another layer of geopolitical significance attached to the site, one that faded rapidly after the signing of the Antarctic Treaty. A stratigraphic approach to this site therefore provides a way

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to remember the kinds of sovereignty disputes that were placed in abeyance by the Antarctic Treaty, as well as the largely forgotten ways in which states attempted to co-­opt ostensibly neutral administrative international organizations such as the UPU to legitimize their sovereignty claims. Taken together, the interrelated layers of historical and communal significance attached to Port Lockroy can contribute to an understanding of the internationalization of the Antarctic. A focus on the small-­scale and the local helps reveal international practices and institutions that are easily neglected in more general international histories of the region.

Grytviken, South Georgia Port Lockroy is a clear example of the multiple and frequently contradictory layers of meaning attached to sites in the Antarctic; tourism, internationalism, and the co-­option of international organizations for assertions of national sovereignty are all evident there. When tourists arrive at Port Lockroy, they are also briefly reminded of an even older layer of significance attached to this space. Tourists come ashore next to mooring chains left behind by whaling factory ships in the 1910s. This is a small and fleeting part of the tourist experience that is easily overlooked. On the island of South Georgia, however, this history of industrial whaling is inescapable and forms one of the most obvious layers of significance attached to the site. The Norwegian Carl Anton Larsen established the first whaling station on South Georgia at Grytviken Bay in 1904. His enterprise proved immediately profitable. With just one ship and a temporary factory his fledgling company killed 183 whales and produced 5,302 barrels of oil in its first season of operations. Production more than doubled to 12,002 barrels the following season.49 This success attracted the attention of other whaling companies and, by 1911, the island had a summer population of 1,003 spread across four stations.50 Another two stations were established on South Georgia in 1912 and 1917, while still another station was constructed further south at Deception Island in 1912.51 The industry reached its peak in 1925–26, when 7,825 whales were killed in a single season to produce 404,457 barrels of oil, but continued until 1966.52 Its demise was in many ways an achievement of internationalism. Attempts were made to regulate whaling through conventions facilitated by the League of Nations in 1931 and 1937, and a separate International Whaling Commission was established in 1946.53 These conventions established

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the principle of international regulation of common resources in the high seas, laying the groundwork for the development of a more robust regulatory framework in the 1960s and ultimately a moratorium on commercial whaling in the 1980s that allowed whale populations to begin to recover.54 The physical remains of this enormously profitable but ecologically destructive industry can still be seen on South Georgia. When the stations were closed in the 1960s the buildings, machinery, and equipment were largely left in situ, partly in case whaling resumed on the island and partly because the cost of retrieving the equipment exceeded its value on the secondhand market. While harsh environmental conditions meant that these remains deteriorated rapidly, archaeologists have identified the vestiges of various sites and buildings, including houses, workers’ barracks, factories, warehouses, chapels, hospitals, libraries, cinemas, greenhouses, ski slopes, football pitches, and even a coffee roastery.55 Penguins and seals have reclaimed the sites and live among the rusted barrels, abandoned boats, decaying buildings, and whale bones. Reindeer, descendants of animals introduced by Norwegian whalers, still roamed the island’s interior until an extermination project in 2014.56 Asbestos was widely used in the station buildings, and access to all but one site is heavily restricted due to contamination.57 The only station that is open to the public is Grytviken. The British Antarctic Survey, which occupied a base at nearby King Edward Point, maintained Grytviken’s church, graveyard, and football pitch after the station was abandoned in 1964. The rest of the buildings deteriorated rapidly but were decontaminated, conserved, and partially restored in the 1990s. As part of these conservation and restoration efforts, the former manager’s house was converted into the South Georgia Whaling Museum in 1990 to cater to increasing numbers of tourists.58 Tourism has continued to increase, reaching 8,946 visitors in the 2016–17 season.59 Tourists cannot avoid uncomfortable reminders of industrial whaling at Grytviken, but if Grytviken is a site of memory for the Antarctic’s brutal industrial history, it is a reluctant one. Bjørn Basberg has noted that the history and heritage of whaling on South Georgia, as well as at other tourist sites in the Antarctic, is “downplayed rather than highlighted” to the extent that the museum dropped the word “whaling” from its name, becoming simply the South Georgia Museum, and in the twenty-­first century has shifted to focus on exploration as much as whaling.60 The enormous economic significance once attached to South Georgia, a significance that is encoded in the physical remains of the whaling industry, has been supplanted by other layers of meaning. One layer is political

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and strategic, as South Georgia was drawn into the Anglo-­Argentine sovereignty disputes over the FID and the Falklands themselves to the extent that it was occupied by Argentina during the Falklands War.61 The most prominent layer, however, is the island’s significance to the story of the “Heroic Era” Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton famously embarked on an attempt to sledge across the Antarctic continent in 1914 but was forced to abandon it when his ship was crushed by ice. He successfully led his men to safety, then embarked on an open-­boat journey to South Georgia to request help. Arriving on the unoccupied south side of the island, Shackleton and two companions made the first crossing of the island’s mountainous interior on foot to reach a whaling station at Stromness.62 Shackleton died during another Antarctic voyage in 1922 and was buried in the whalers’ cemetery at Grytviken. It is Shackleton’s story that dominates tourist visits to Grytviken and Shackleton’s grave that is the focal point of tour itineraries.63 Drinking a toast at Shackleton’s grave has become the quintessential tourist experience of South Georgia, an experience that treats the decaying factories across the bay and the whalers’ graves that surround Shackleton’s as peripheral. Grytviken’s trajectory as a site of memory offers an important corrective to notions that the Antarctic can be treated as a single entity. When the Antarctic is viewed holistically the success of international governance and regulation is prominent. At South Georgia, however, the legal internationalism that eventually brought an end to an Antarctic whaling industry which slaughtered 175,250 whales in sixty-­two years has largely been forgotten.64 The site’s significance to the whaling industry is also downplayed despite its physical presence, while its status as a site of historical significance for the heroic exploration of Antarctica has become the dominant layer of memory and meaning.

Port Ross, Auckland Island Grytviken’s is not the only graveyard in the Antarctic. Whaling was a dangerous occupation and most of the stations on South Georgia and Deception Island required their own graveyards. On the opposite side of the Antarctic, 450 kilometers southeast of New Zealand, the remains of another graveyard can also be seen amid southern rātā trees at Port Ross, Auckland Island. This graveyard, and its trajectory as a site of memory, is another notable example of the competing layers of use and significance that accumulate over time at specific sites.

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The oldest grave at Port Ross belongs to three-­ month-­ old Isabella Younger, who died in November 1850. Younger was born and died at Port Ross, one of approximately two hundred British colonists who participated in a failed attempt to colonize the Auckland Islands between 1849 and 1852. Her gravestone—fashioned from a grindstone brought from England with the expectation that it would be needed for clearing rātā forests and constructing a town—provides a site for remembering the ideas and ambitions that motivated an attempt to transform a remote, subantarctic archipelago of just 625 square kilometers into a flourishing colony. Colonizing Port Ross was the brainchild of Charles Enderby, the third-­ generation director of the whaling firm Enderby & Sons. The company pioneered British whaling in the Pacific, Indian, and Southern Oceans between the 1780s and 1830s, but its fortunes were in seemingly terminal decline by the 1840s. The withdrawal of various concessions previously granted by the British government, increasing competition from the Australasian colonies and the United States, and declines in whale populations due to overhunting had effectively ended British whaling in the Southern Hemisphere.65 In an effort to revitalize the industry, Enderby called on all businessmen with interests in southern whaling to combine their capital and form a joint stock company to establish a permanent whaling station at Port Ross. A permanent station in the heart of the Southern Ocean whaling grounds would allow whales to be hunted year-­round, offering greater efficiency than voyages from England.66 Enderby also envisaged the station as part of a broader colonial project. Whalers, “respectable workmen,” and their families would settle the island, building roads, houses, a school, and a hospital and turning the land over to farming. The project would be carried out “in accordance with the modern principles of colonisation,” and over time would develop into a flourishing colony capable of supporting a whaling fleet of 600–700 vessels and selling its surplus produce to passing ships.67 Enderby was able to persuade the Privy Council, Board of Trade, and Colonial Office to tentatively support his proposal, granting him a lease for the Aucklands at a nominal rent, and establish a chartered company, the Southern Whale Fishery Company.68 He subsequently received dual appointments from the Crown as lieutenant-­governor of the Auckland Islands and the company as its resident commissioner, granting him virtually unlimited authority over the first wave of settlers who departed London in three ships in July 1849. The project almost immediately proved a debacle, however. The start of whaling operations was delayed by the need to clear land and

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construct buildings before the ships could be unloaded and begin whaling. When operations did commence, the crews encountered only rorqual whales, which they were not equipped to hunt, and the first voyage returned empty-­ handed. The failure of this and subsequent voyages forced Enderby to send ships far afield and to diversify into hunting elephant seals on other islands in pursuit of a return. On land, the colonizing project was plagued by complaints about Enderby’s leadership and strikes over conditions.69 By 1852 dire returns and constant complaints about Enderby persuaded the company’s board of directors in London to abandon the venture entirely.70 There are few physical traces of the colony at Port Ross today. Unlike the whaling stations of South Georgia, the colony’s buildings and their contents were dismantled and shipped to Australia to be sold.71 Neither the Southern Whale Fishery Company nor Enderby & Sons survived the fallout. Amid confusion over their political status, the Auckland Islands were incorporated into New Zealand in 1863.72 The small graveyard at Port Ross, and particularly Isabella Younger’s roughly carved gravestone, therefore became the focus of memory for the settlement. The graveyard was visited and maintained by the passengers and crews of ships that called at the islands, and each visit to the graveyard served to briefly revive memories of the colony.73 When sailors rediscovered it in 1865, their reports inspired a search for information that culminated in a local newspaper tracking down Isabella’s father, Thomas Younger, who had settled in New Zealand when the colony was abandoned.74 There were similar surges of interest in 1890, 1899, 1905, 1907, 1910, and 1926.75 As recently as 2018, retellings of the story have focused on the graveyard as the enduring symbol of the islands’ short-­lived colonial history.76 While Port Ross’s graveyard continued to provide periodic reminders of this bungled effort to colonize the subantarctic, new layers of use and meaning were also attached to the Auckland Islands. A German scientific expedition established a base at Terror Cove, 800 meters from the cemetery, to observe the Transit of Venus in 1874.77 This expedition attached international significance to the islands, as subantarctic observations were crucial to the cooperative international effort to systematically observe the transit. During their stay at Terror Cove, the German scientists encountered Frederick Nelson, who was living with his wife in a small farmhouse on the site of Enderby’s settlement. A New Zealand surgeon F. A. Monckton had acquired a pastoral lease for the Aucklands, released a flock of sheep, and hired the Nelsons as farm managers. Monckton’s pastoral venture was abandoned in 1877, but new leases were issued, and regular attempts were made to institute farming

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on the islands until 1934, when the New Zealand government declared them a flora and fauna reserve.78 While sitting outside the ATS area, the Aucklands have been internationalized in their own way. Since 1998 they have formed part of the New Zealand Subantarctic Islands UNESCO World Heritage Site. Their World Heritage status is based on the universal significance of their biodiversity, as the islands are home to dozens of species of plants and animals, particularly seabirds, that are endemic or unique to New Zealand’s subantarctic islands.79 Tourist cruises visit the islands and often anchor in Port Ross, but the histories and vestiges of whaling, sealing, colonization, international science, and pastoralism play little or no part in the tourist experience. Itineraries emphasize “thrilling wildlife encounters from nesting albatross and rowdy penguin rookeries to lazing seals and sea lions” over heritage sites.80 When history is mentioned it tends to be the history of castaways stranded on the islands against their will rather than those who chose to settle there in the hope of exploiting and transforming the unique environment that now attracts international protection and tourist attention.81 New Zealand’s Department of Conservation maintains and protects historic sites on the island, but it has shown little interest in cultivating these as memory sites.82 The cemetery at Port Ross, for example, has no interpretative or commemorative signs to acknowledge the site’s historical significance. In common with much of the Antarctic region, the Aucklands’ environmental significance and incorporation into international systems has obscured older layers of meaning. The graveyard, however, provides an ideal site for excavating and remembering these obscured layers. Whether seen in person or through photographs, the presence of a cemetery in the midst of a site protected and visited for its natural heritage administers a dose of culture shock, a sudden reminder that these islands meant something radically different to people in the past.

Conclusion Individually, each of the spaces examined in this chapter illustrates the idea of a stratigraphy of memory, each having accumulated multiple layers of use, significance, and meaning. The Antarctic Treaty System and the polar environment it governs and protects are vested with symbolic significance as an archetype for successful international governance of a global commons. The idea of an internationalized Antarctic has a relatively recent genealogy,

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however, first emerging in 1910 and only attaining significant political support in the 1950s. The belief that the Antarctic was a unique and pristine environment in need of —and uniquely suited to—international protection overlapped with, and to some extent was a response to, older layers of geopolitical, imperial, and economic significance and use attached to the region. Port Lockroy has a similarly complex stratigraphy; it was a site of significance for the whaling industry, then a focal point for an Anglo-­Argentine geopolitical struggle in the 1940s and 1950s, a geophysical laboratory of great importance for the scientific internationalism of the IGY, and finally a site of cultural and symbolic significance for Antarctic tourism. Grytviken likewise shifted from whaling center to strategic imperative to tourist destination, while Port Ross was a site of significance for a colonial project, scientific internationalism, pastoral settlement, tourism, and biodiversity. By excavating these multiple and occasionally contradictory layers of significance and use, each site also provides an opportunity to recover and consider the ideas, mentalities, institutions, and practices that shaped them. In particular, each site provides opportunities for considering how internationalism has and has not been remembered. The tourist rituals associated with Port Lockroy, for example, which center on administrative tasks such as posting letters and stamping passports, are a reminder of the technical practices of international institutions such as the UPU that profoundly shape these rituals, but they also reveal the extent to which this ambitious technical internationalism has been forgotten.83 They are a reminder, too, of the ways that states co-­opted technical practices and institutions in support of national sovereignty claims. Yet both of these layers, along with the site’s whaling past, are downplayed. Port Lockroy’s museum and its presence in tourism networks emphasize its significance as a site of geophysical research and scientific internationalism, and as a quintessential Antarctic tourism experience. At Grytviken, both the whaling industry and the international institutions and regulations that brought about its downfall are downplayed, while its historical significance for peaceful and heroic exploration is cultivated by the tourism industry and by tourists themselves. As Shackleton’s grave has become increasingly accessible to tourists, other layers of significance attached to Grytviken have become less prominent. Like the derelict factories of South Georgia, the graveyard at Port Ross provides a site for remembering the increasingly distant mentalities that saw the colonization, exploitation, and development of the Antarctic region as both desirable and inevitable. Yet the international recognition and protection of the Auckland

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Islands that stems from their UNESCO World Heritage status has seen these types of memory fade. Older layers of significance have been obscured by ideas that treat the region simply as an internationally protected natural wilderness. Studied collectively, these sites provide insights into large-­scale processes and mentalities. By recognizing that these are multilayered sites of memory, it becomes possible to identify assemblages of common forms of use and significance attached to multiple sites. While this chapter gives a necessarily brief overview, it is nonetheless possible to draw a few conclusions. Most notably, it is apparent that the pristine environment international actors set out to protect was nothing of the sort. The internationalization of the Antarctic and the development of a system of environmental protection under the ATS was predicated on an ahistorical vision of the region as pristine, untouched, and empty that ignored physical and historical realities. As Adrian Howkins has argued, the “future-­oriented focus” of Antarctic policymakers means “there is little perceived need for engaging with a complex and, at times, contradictory past.”84 Protecting earth’s last wilderness was a more obviously achievable and compelling political project than restoring a landscape littered with the detritus of industry, colonialism, and geopolitical disputes. As a site of international memory, the Antarctic reveals both the idealistic vein of internationalist thinking that inspired new forms of collective governance and the ahistorical nature of this internationalism. To create a new layer of meaning for the Antarctic region, it was necessary to reimagine or forget the layers that had already formed.

Notes 1. Madeleine Herren, “The Arctic: Memory Beyond Territoriality?,” in this volume. 2. “Mawson Expedition,” Sydney Morning Herald, 14 June 1911, 14. 3. See Shirley V. Scott, “The Three Waves of Antarctic Imperialism,” in Handbook on the Politics of Antarctica, ed. Klaus Dodds, Alan D. Hemmings, and Peder Roberts (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2017), 38–49. 4. B. W. Davis, “Antarctica as a Global Protected Area: Perceptions and Reality,” Australian Geographer 23, no. 1 (1992): 39–43; P. A. Berkman, Science into Policy: Global Lessons from Antarctica (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2002), xiii. 5. “Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty,” Polar Record 29, no. 170 (July 1993): 256. 6. See, for example, “Antarctica,” World Expeditions, accessed 14 June 2019, https://​ worldexpeditions​.com​/Antarctica.

Antarctica 135 7. “Climate and Climate Change,” British Antarctic Survey, accessed 22 November 2019, https://​www​.bas​.ac​.uk​/science​/our​-research​/topics​/climate​-climate​-change/. 8. For a discussion of the politics behind which sites are and are not listed as historic sites and monuments, see Dag Avango, “Remains of Industry in the Polar Regions: Histories, Processes, Heritage,” Entreprises et Histoire 87 (June 2017): 133–49; and Ricardo Roura, “Antarctic Cultural Heritage: Geopolitics and Management,” in Dodds, Hemmings, and Roberts, Handbook, 468–84. 9. Anne-­Marie Brady, “New Zealand’s Antarctica,” in The Emerging Politics of Antarctica, ed. Anne-­Marie Brady (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 148. 10. Brady, “New Zealand’s Antarctica,” 148. 11. Brigid Hains, The Ice and the Inland: Mawson, Flynn, and the Myth of the Frontier (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002). 12. See, for example, Jack Child, Antarctica and South American Geopolitics: Frozen Lebensraum (New York: Praeger, 1988); Jack Child, Miniature Messages: The Semiotics and Politics of Latin American Postage Stamps (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); and Adrian Howkins, Frozen Empires: An Environmental History of the Antarctic Peninsula (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 13. See Jay Winter, “Palimpsests: National, International, and Transnational Sites of Memory,” in this volume. 14. See Edward J. Larson, An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 27–59. 15. Robert K. Headland, Chronological List of Antarctic Expeditions and Related Historical Events (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 194–207. 16. William Barr, The Expeditions of the First International Polar Year (Calgary: Arctic Institute of North America, 2008). 17. Cornelia Lüdecke, “International Cooperation in Antarctica 1901–1904,” in The History of the International Polar Years (IPYs), ed. Susan Barr and Cornelia Lüdecke (Heidelberg: Springer, 2010), 127–34. 18. Cornelia Lüdecke and Julia Lajus, “The Second International Polar Year 1932–1933,” in Barr and Lüdecke, History of the International Polar Years, 135–73. 19. Klaus Dodds, Irina Gain, and Adrian Howkins, “The IPY–3: The International Geophysical Year (1957–1958),” in Barr and Lüdecke, History of the International Polar Years, 239–57. 20. Thomas Willing Balch, “The Arctic and Antarctic Regions and the Law of Nations,” American Journal of International Law 4, no. 2 (April 1910): 275. 21. Rip Bulkeley, “The Political Origins of the Antarctic Treaty,” Polar Record 46, no. 1 (January 2010): 9–11; Rip Bulkeley, “Polar Internationalism, Diplomacy, and the International Geophysical Year,” in National and Trans-­National Agendas in Antarctic Research from the 1950s and Beyond: Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop of the SCAR Action Group on the History of Antarctic Research, ed. Cornelia Lüdecke, Lynn Tipton-­Everett, and Lynn Lay (Columbus, OH: Byrd Polar Research Center, 2012), 24–42; Glenda Sluga, “The International History of (International) Sovereignty,” in Spatializations and the Global Condition, ed. Matthias Middell and Steffi Marung (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019). 22. E. G. Balch, “The Polar Regions as a Site for an Experiment in Internationalism,” WILPF Int. Circ. Letter 1 (1945): 18–19, in reel 23, Papers of Emily Greene Balch, 1875–1961, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Scholarly Resources microfilm edition, cited in Sluga, “International History of (International) Sovereignty,” 264.

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23. Bulkeley, “Polar Internationalism,” 29–39; Rip Bulkeley, “Origins of the International Geophysical Year,” in Barr and Lüdecke, History of the International Polar Years, 235–38; Peter J. Beck, “The United Nations and Antarctica,” Polar Record 22, no. 137 (1984): 137–44. 24. Adrian Howkins, “Defending Polar Empire: Opposition to India’s Proposal to Raise the ‘Antarctic Question’ at the United Nations in 1956,” Polar Record 44, no. 1 (January 2008): 35–44; Bulkeley, “Origins of the International Geophysical Year,” 235–38. 25. See figure 6.2 for a map showing these territorial claims. 26. For overviews of these territorial claims, see David Day, Antarctica: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Scott, “Three Waves of Antarctic Imperialism,” 38–49. 27. Bulkeley, “Polar Internationalism,” 24–42. 28. “The Antarctic Treaty, 1959,” Polar Record 10, no. 65 (May 1960): 157–63. 29. See, for example, Alessandro Antonello, “Nature Conservation and Antarctic Diplomacy, 1959–1964,” Polar Journal 4, no. 2 (2014): 335–53; “Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals,” Polar Record 16, no. 102 (September 1972): 435–44; and “Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources,” Polar Record 20, no. 127 (January 1981), 383–95. For a detailed discussion of the development of environmental protections within the Antarctic Treaty System, see Runyu Wang, International Law on Antarctic Mineral Resource Exploitation (New York: Peter Lang, 2017); and Alessandro Antonello, The Greening of Antarctica: Assembling an International Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 30. “Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty,” Polar Record 29, no. 170 (July 1993): 256–75. 31. “Vessel Tourist Site Visits by Activity 2018–19,” International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (2019), accessed 6 June 2019, https://​iaato​.org​/information​-resources​/data​ -statistics​/visitor​-statistics​/visitor​-statistics​-downloads/. 32. See, for example, Shaney Hudson, “Six of the Best Antarctic Highlights,” Traveller, 19 March 2016, accessed 20 June 2019, http://​www​.traveller​.com​.au​/six​-of​-the​-best​-antarctic​ -highlights​-gngdkh; and Suravi Thomas, “Best of Antarctica: 10 Must See Highlights,” Y Travel Blog, 4 October 2018, accessed 10 June 2019, https://​www​.ytravelblog​.com​/best​-antarctica​-10​ -highlights/. 33. “Jeanna007,” “Point of Interest,” Tripadvisor, 25 June 2018, https://​www​.tripadvisor​.com​ .au​/ShowUserReviews​-g668287​-d7735965​-r590305198​-Penguin​_Post​_Office​-Port​_Lockroy​ .html; “KV1234,” “Penguin Post Office,” Tripadvisor, 14 February 2015, https://​www​.tripadvisor​ .com​.au​/ShowUserReviews​-g668287​-d7393490​-r253997376​-Bransfield​_House​-Port​_Lockroy​ .html. As of 6 June 2019, Port Lockroy had 214 reviews on Tripadvisor across two separate listings for the post office and the museum/gift shop. These averaged ratings of 4.5 and 5 out of 5 respectively. It also had 94 Google Reviews with an average rating of 4.8 out of 5. See “Things to Do in Port Lockroy,” Tripadvisor, accessed 6 June 2019, https://​www​.tripadvisor​.com​.au​ /Attractions​-g668287​-Activities​-Port​_Lockroy​.html; “Port Lockroy, Goudier Island, Wiencke Island, Antarctica,” Google Reviews, accessed 6 June 2019. The Port Lockroy site was removed from Google Reviews c. 2020, with some of the original reviews moved to “Goudier Island”, Google Reviews, accessed 1 November 2022, http://​bitly​.ws​/w89u. 34. “Visiting Port Lockroy,” UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, accessed 6 June 2019, https://​www​ .ukaht​.org​/visit​/visiting​-port​-lockroy/. 35. An additional 9,131 tourists visited on cruises that did not include landings in 2017– 18. “IAATO Overview of Antarctic Tourism: 2017–18 Season and Preliminary Estimates for

Antarctica 137 2018–19 Season,” International Association of Antarctic Tourism Operators, 12 May 2018, accessed 6 June 2019, https://​iaato​.org​/information​-resources​/data​-statistics​/download​-iaato​ -information​-papers/ 36. For an overview of IAATO guidelines, see “Don’t Hug the Penguins and Other Rules in Antarctica,” International Association of Antarctic Tourism Operators, 19 December 2018, accessed 10 June 2019, https://iaato.org/visiting-antarctica/visitor-guidelines-library/. 37. Robert K. Headland, “Historical Development of Antarctic Tourism,” Annals of Tourism Research 21, no. 2 (1994): 269–80; Bjørn L. Basberg, “Antarctic Tourism and Maritime Heritage,” International Journal of Maritime History 22, no. 2 (December 2010): 227–46. 38. For further discussion of the place of technical and administrative international organizations and practices in late nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century internationalism, see, for example, Bob Reinalda, Routledge History of International Organizations: From 1815 to the Present Day (New York: Routledge, 2009); Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Douglas Howland, “Japan and the Universal Postal Union: An Alternative Internationalism in the 19th Century,” Social Science Japan Journal 17, no. 1 (2014): 23–39; and Douglas Howland, “An Alternative Mode of International Order: The International Administrative Union in the Nineteenth Century,” Review of International Studies 41, no. 1 (January 2015): 161–83. 39. “fantasticv0yage,” “The Southernmost Post Office in the World: Review of Penguin Post Office,” Tripadvisor, 22 April 2015, accessed 6 June 2019, https://​www​.tripadvisor​.com​.au​ /ShowUserReviews​-g668287​-d7735965​-r267193168​-Penguin​_Post​_Office​-Port​_Lockroy​.html. 40. See Reinalda, Routledge History of International Organizations, 89–90. 41. F. H. Williamson, “The International Post and the Universal Postal Union,” Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs 9, no. 1 (January 1930): 68–78. 42. Sarah Aufret, “Postcard from the Penguin Post Office,” Ends of the Earth 24, accessed 6 June 2019, http://​www​.ends​-of​-earth​.com​/adventure​/penguin​-post​-office/; UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, correspondence with author, 30 July 2019 and 5 August 2019. 43. For a discussion of the development and functioning of the UPU, see Williamson, “International Post and the Universal Postal Union”; Mark W. Zacher and Brent A. Sutton, Governing Global Networks: International Regimes for Transportation and Communications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Francis Lyall, International Communications: The International Telecommunication Union and the Universal Postal Union (London: Routledge, 2011), 213–308; and Richard R. John, “The Public Image of the Universal Postal Union in the Anglophone World, 1874–1949,” in International Organizations and the Media in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Exorbitant Expectations, ed. Jonas Brendebach, Martin Herzer, and Heidi Tworek (London: Routledge, 2018), 38–69. 44. For a detailed discussion, see Andrew Fitzmaurice, Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 1500–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 302–31. 45. Gustav Smedel, Acquisition of Sovereignty over Polar Areas, trans. C. Meyer (Oslo: I Kommisjon Hos Jacob Dybward, 1931). 46. W. S. Bruce, Polar Exploration (London: Williams and Norgate, 1911), 193–216; Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI): MS 100/13/12, “Letter from W. S. Bruce to H. R. Mill, 17 December 1902”; R. N. Rudmose Brown, W. S. Bruce, and Robert C. Mossman, The Voyage of the “Scotia” Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration in Antarctic Seas (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1906), 79–109, 315–66; Geoffrey N. Swinney, “The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902–04) and the Founding of Base Orcadas,” Scottish Geographical Journal

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123, no. 1 (2007): 61; John R. Dudeney and W. H. Walton, “From Scotia to ‘Operation Tabarin’: Developing British Policy for Antarctica,” Polar Record 48, no. 247 (2012): 346–60. 47. Antarctica (United Kingdom v. Argentina) (Application Instituting Proceedings against the Argentine Republic) (1956) ICJ Reports 8 (May 1955), in Antarctica in International Law, ed. Ben Saul and Tim Stephens (Oxford: Hart, 2015), 813–28; Dudeney and Walton, “From Scotia to ‘Operation Tabarin,’” 346; Charles Cawley, Colonies in Conflict: The History of the British Overseas Territories (Newcastle-­upon-­Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015), 136–37. 48. Saul and Stephens, Antarctic in International Law, xxxiii–xxxix; Stephen Haddelsey and Alan Carroll, Operation Tabarin: Britain’s Secret Wartime Expedition to Antarctica, 1944–46 (Brinscombe Port: History Press, 2014); Richard W. Bagshawe, “Postal History of the Falkland Islands Dependencies,” Polar Record 5, nos. 33–34 (December 1947): 45–59. Port Lockroy is not the only example of a post office becoming a site of geopolitical significance in the period from the 1930s to the 1950s. For example, New Zealand established post offices at Ross Island in 1907, 1911, and 1957; the United States sparked a brief diplomatic dispute by establishing an American post office within the borders of the Ross Dependency in 1934; Chile established two post offices within its territorial claim in 1947; and France, Australia, and South Africa established post offices at Adélie Land, Heard Island, and Marion Island respectively in 1948. See Richard W. Bagshawe and John Goldup, “The Postal History of the Antarctic, 1904–1949,” Polar Record 6, no. 41 (January 1951), 45–79; Alexander J. Séfi, King Edward VII: Land; A History of the Special Postage Stamp Issued for Use in the Antarctic Regions, for Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Expedition of 1907–09 (London: D. Field, 1912); Headland, Chronological List of Antarctic Expeditions, 379; and Malcolm Templeton, A Wise Adventure: New Zealand and Antarctica, 1920–1960 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2000), 61–67. 49. Robert K. Headland, The Island of South Georgia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), appendix 2. 50. SPRI: MS 240/1; ER, “Enclosure to Despatch No. 114/1911, Falkland Islands Report on Census 16 September 1911.” 51. For a detailed account, see J. Stephen Dibbern, “Fur Seals, Whales and Tourists: A Commercial History of Deception Island, Antarctica,” Polar Record 46, no. 238 (2010): 210–21. 52. Headland, Island of South Georgia, appendix 2. 53. The Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (1931), the International Agreement for the Regulation of Whaling (1937), and the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (1946). For a detailed discussion of the development of international whaling regulations, see Ray Gambell, “International Management of Whales and Whaling: An Historical Review of the Regulation of Commercial and Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling,” Arctic 46, no. 2 (June 1993): 97–107. 54. Gambell, “International Management of Whales and Whaling,” 97–107. 55. Bjørn L. Basberg, The Shore Whaling Stations at South Georgia: A Study in Industrial Archaeology (Oslo: Novus Forlag, 2004); Headland, Island of South Georgia, 110–37; Avango, “Remains of Industry in the Polar Regions,” 133–49. 56.  Nathan Leader-­Williams, Reindeer on South Georgia: The Ecology of an Introduced Population (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 57. Basberg, Shore Whaling Stations. 58. Ibid.; Basberg, “Antarctic Tourism and Maritime Heritage,” 241–43. 59. “Annual Update to IAATO 2017,” Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, 2017, accessed 10 June 2019, http://​www​.gov​.gs​/docsarchive​/GSGSSI​/Presentations​ /GSGSSI​%20IAATO​%20update​%202017​.pdf.

Antarctica 139 60. Basberg, “Antarctic Tourism and Maritime Heritage,” 241. 61. Headland, Island of South Georgia, 237–52. 62. Ernest Shackleton, South: The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition 1914–1917 (London: William Heinemann, 1919). 63. For further discussion, see Basberg, “Antarctic Tourism and Maritime Heritage,” 243. 64. Headland, Island of South Georgia, appendix 2. 65. Charles Enderby, Proposal for Re-­Establishing the British Southern Whale Fishery (London: E. Wilson, 1847); B. I. Fotheringham, “The Southern Whale Fishery Company, Auckland Islands” (MPhil diss., Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, 1995). 66. Enderby, Proposal for Re-­Establishing the British Southern Whale Fishery, 25–55. 67. Enderby, Proposal for Re-­ Establishing the British Southern Whale Fishery, 60–61; National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA): BT 1/463/8, Letter from C. and G. Enderby to Committee of Privy Council for Trade, 20 December 1845. 68. TNA: BT 1/463/8; TNA: BT 1/467/40. 69. Charles Enderby, A Statement of Facts Connected with the Fair of the Southern Whale Fishery Company at the Auckland Islands (London: Richardson Brothers, 1854); P. R. Dingwall, C. Fraser, J. G. Gregory, and C. J. R. Robertson, eds., Enderby Settlement Diaries: Records of a British Colony at the Auckland Islands, 1849–1852 (Wellington: Wild Press, 1999). 70. “Auckland Islands,” Empire, 26 April 1852, 2; Sydney Morning Herald, 10 May 1852, 2; “Auckland Islands,” Argus, 20 May 1852, 4; Enderby, Statement of Facts; Fotheringham, “Southern Whale Fishery Company, 57–62. 71. See, for example, “Preliminary Notice,” Empire, 5 June 1852, 4; Otago Witness, 21 August 1852, 2; “Multum in Parvo,” Sydney Morning Herald, 12 October 1852, 3; and Argus, 12 November 1852, 6. 72. New Zealand Parliamentary Papers: “A-­05 Papers Relating to the Auckland Islands,” Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1 January 1863. 73. “The Islands of the Far South,” Otago Daily Times, 29 January 1890, 6. 74. “The Auckland Islands,” Colonist, 1 December 1865, 2; Otago Daily Times, 8 December 1865, 4. 75. “The Islands of the Far South,” Otago Daily Times, 29 January 1890, 6; “A Cruise in the South Pacific,” Lyttelton Times, 7 March 1899, 2; “The Auckland Islands,” Star, 23 March 1899, 2; “An Early Settlement,” Poverty Bay Herald, 6 December 1905, 2; “Castaways on the Auckland Islands,” New Zealand Herald, 2 December 1907; “An Interesting Trip,” Southland Times, 29 December 1910, 7; “Forgotten Settlement,” Thames Star, 13 August 1926, 7. 76. Ellen Rykers, “The Lie of the Land,” New Zealand Geographic, no. 152 (July–August 2018), accessed 1 March 2022, https://​www​.nzgeo​.com​/stories​/the​-lie​-of​-the​-land/. 77. Kevin L. Jones, “Terror Cove, Port Ross: The German Transit of Venus Expedition 1874 and Other Scientific and Discovery Expeditions from 1840 to the First World War,” in In Care of the Southern Ocean, ed. Paul R. Dingwall, Kevin L. Jones, and Rachael Egerton, (Auckland: New Zealand Archaeological Association 2009), 87–104. 78. “Department of Lands and Survey, Settlement of Crown Lands (Annual Report On),” in Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (Session I, 1934, C-­01), 7. For a detailed discussion of pastoralism on the Aucklands, see Paul R. Dingwall, “Pastoral Farming at the Auckland Islands,” in In Care of the Southern Ocean, ed. Dingwall, Jones, and Egerton, 105–22. 79. “New Zealand Subantarctic Islands,” UNESCO World Heritage List, accessed 14 June 2019, https://​whc​.unesco​.org​/en​/list​/877.

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80. “East Antarctica: In the Wake of Mawson 15 Dec 2019,” Heritage Expeditions, accessed 14 June 2019, https://​w ww​.australiangeographic​.com​.au​/australian​-geographic​-adventure​ /destinations​/2019​/04​/east​-antarctica​-in​-the​-wake​-of​-mawson/. 81. See, for example, “Auckland Islands,” Heritage Expeditions, accessed 14 June 2019, https://​ www​.heritage​-expeditions​.com​/destination​/auckland​-islands/; “Subantarctic Islands: Forgotten Islands of the South Pacific 3 Jan 2020,” Heritage Expeditions, accessed 14 June 2019, https://​ www​.heritage​-expeditions​.com​/trip​/forgotten​-islands​-2020​/​#​!prettyPhoto; “Ross Sea Antarctic Cruising: In the Wake of Scott & Shackleton 8 Jan 2020,” Heritage Expeditions, accessed 14 June 2019, https://www.heritage-expeditions.com/destinations/antarctica-travel/ross-sea/. 82. See Department of Conservation, “Regional Coastal Plan: Kermadec and Subantarctic Islands” (2017), accessed 14 June 2019, https://www​.doc​.govt​.nz​/about​-us​/our​-role​/managing​ -conservation​/coastal​-management/regional-coastal-plan-kermadec-and-subantarctic-islands/. 83. On this point, see John, “Public Image of the Universal Postal Union,” 38–69. 84. Adrian Howkins, “Politics and Environmental Regulation in Antarctica: A Historical Perspective,” in Dodds, Hemmings, and Roberts, Handbook, 339.

CHAPTER 7

“I Seem to Hear the Camel Bells”: Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road and the Politics of the Belt-­and-­Road Initiative as a Future Global Memory of Illiberal Internationalism Ralph Weber

T

he supposedly historical Silk Road got its name long after its lived realities became a faint memory, stored collectively and cumulatively in many texts, sites, and minds around the globe. When the German geographer and scientist Baron von Richthofen gave this historical phenomenon its name in the late 1870s, he didn’t merely revive that reality but he also reinvented it by giving it a sense of unity that was missing in its constitutively transregional, multi-­actor, and hybrid character. This meant that, as a memory with a name, the Silk Road became available to all kinds of actors to use at will. Almost one hundred years later, it became possible to imagine a new Silk Road drawing on the memory of von Richthofen’s reference and creation. This opened up a space that has left far more to the power of imagination than any previous attempt at replicating the past. This chapter explores the room for maneuver in view of one such concrete imagination of a New Silk Road; that is, the one at the hands of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) referred to as the Belt-­and-­Road Initiative (BRI, yi dai yi lu 一带一路, literally One Belt One Road, which was also initially the official English label). The BRI is a global infrastructure investment strategy announced in 2013, where the belt and road together would form “two wings of a soaring Asia.”1 The speeches delivered by Xi Jinping 习近平, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and president of the

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PRC, in Astana and Jakarta are often seen as the starting point. Nevertheless, there is good reason to argue that the BRI labeled the efforts that, in several ways, have been underway for some time, both inside and outside of China. Under Xi, it has become a signature policy, permeating all official discourse, ultimately receiving constitutional sanction by the CCP at the 19th National Congress in 2017, along with the mention of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Despite its prominence, the BRI is exceedingly and notoriously vague. It is still caught somewhere between the imagination and the creation of new realities, with the former as something that may potentially lead to new forms of the global and the international, and the latter in its most tangible manifestation as a large-­scale infrastructure project. This essay examines the extent to which the project, with its reference to the Silk Road, involves the creation of a new future global memory as well as a new internationalism. The gap between the real past and its memory (which may be no less real) marks a tension that can be exploited in a variety of ways. In his Memory, History, Forgetting, Paul Ricoeur, who was well aware of Pierre Nora’s groundbreaking work on lieux de mémoire, describes the many facets of the concept of memory with an explicit view of its political uses and abuses.2 In terms of natural memory, remembering what came before, he writes, is quite unlike memorization as an act of learning in order to activate some knowledge at a later point in time.3 When remembering in addition becomes a matter of collective memory, “the soil in which historiography is rooted,” the line between “customary commemoration” and “forced memorization” becomes blurry and even more entangled with difficult ethical questions of the duty of memory and a right of forgetting.4 Understanding historiography as a place of collective memory located between the poles of “customary commemoration” and “forced memorization” means that any critical reflection on the politics of international memory about the BRI cannot simply be about examining different historical analogies and judging their accuracy and whether or not they are warranted. For one thing, this is a mistaken view of what analogies do. It would unduly ignore their main purpose, which is using the analog (whether supposed to be in the past or not) to argue for something in the present; using the familiar to explain the unfamiliar. In the Ricoeurian understanding, historiography is about the present, rather than merely about the past, and this chapter emphasizes that the politics of memory and historiography is also about projections of a future memory.



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Projections of a future memory inform competing agendas of various political actors to shape the present-­day discourse, if not the realities, of the world order that is to come. Such future memory can feature an entirely new, hitherto unseen transnational, even postinstitutional and postinternational global order, or it could resort to any variant of a revived and re-­created order of the past that would also be new in some respects but invoke elements of the past in other aspects. The BRI, I argue, revives and shapes—in line with the purposes of its main actor (the PRC and its Communist regime)—the image of an international order that uncompromisingly revolves around the sovereignty of states but is also tailored to an economically globalized world and reserves advantages for great powers. To the extent that historical analogies invoked to explain the BRI also project an image of a future world order—taking history to explain what may lie ahead—we could instead use the BRI to examine the politics of historiographical analogies. It is through the lens of this mélange that the present chapter examines the politics of international memory and the contours of internationalism projected onto global realities. In this chapter, I first introduce historically competing global connectivity projects with explicit uses of the Silk Road as an image and memory in order to contextualize the BRI from a global perspective. I will then examine some prominent historical analogies advanced in popular and academic works that explain the BRI. I will depart from these accounts and show how the BRI projects a new world order based on the rhetoric deployed in Xi Jinping’s mostly early speeches and the translations of some of this rhetoric into international politics. This will show that internationalism, in this case, is an illiberal project, centered on state sovereignty and working under conditions of economic globalization—merely relying and feeding on liberal elements.

Other New Silk Roads and the New Silk Road The availability of the Silk Road as a transnational and international memory of the late twentieth century is manifest in the genealogy of the expression “New Silk Road.” In the 1990s, the expression perhaps first emerged in the context of the project of a Transport Corridor of Europe-­Caucasus-­Asia (TRACECA), which was launched by the European Union and had a prominent advocate in Eduard Shevardnadze. He would go on to publish an entire book in German on the “New Silk Road” (Die neue Seidenstrasse) as the

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one transport route into the twenty-­first century.5 In 1998 the Jamestown Foundation’s journal Prism (dedicated to the post-­Soviet states) published an article on “Georgia and the New Silk Road,” in which it described the history of TRACECA as a “European Union–sponsored project” going back to 1993 and initially involving the Caucasus and Central Asian states and later also Ukraine and Mongolia: “A transport corridor from Western Europe to China is to be developed, passing through Eastern Europe, the Black Sea, Transcaucasus, the Caspian Sea, and Central Asia. It is to be based upon road, rail and sea communications. The first stage of the project started in 1995 and includes the restoration of transport links along this route and the harmonization of local customs and legislative regulations in participating countries.”6 The article mentions Shevardnadze’s advocacy of the project and the “long-­cultivated idea of a common Eurasian geopolitical and economic space.” The memory of the suppposedly historical Silk Road that was tapped for this incarnation clearly builds on the “restoration of transport links,” while the “harmonization” of customs and regulations appears as a new feature, bent toward the new realities of globalization instead of an analogy with the past. The intergovernmental commission running TRACECA opened a permanent secretariat in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2001; the project exists even today. TRACECA’s homepage still mentions the Silk Road of the twenty-­first century as “the renaissance of the Great Silk Road, one of the ancient routes in the world.”7 But it is telling that the most recent Strategy Paper for 2016–2026 boasts of only one reference to the Silk Road—one that no longer refers to TRACECA’s own project but rather to China’s “Silk Road Economic Belt.”8 Before the PRC, another powerful actor used the expression. The US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a “New Silk Road Initiative” in her speech in Chennai, India, in 2011. She said: Historically, the nations of South and Central Asia were connected to each other and the rest of the continent by a sprawling trading network called the Silk Road. Indian merchants used to trade spices, gems, and textiles, along with ideas and culture, everywhere from the Great Wall of China to the banks of the Bosphorus. Let’s work together to create a new Silk Road. Not a single thoroughfare like its namesake, but an international web and network of economic and transit connections. That means building more rail lines, highways, energy infrastructure. . . . And it certainly means removing the



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bureaucratic barriers and other impediments to the free flow of goods and people. It means casting aside the outdated trade policies that we all still are living with and adopting new rules for the 21st century.9 The United States had tailored the initiative to assist with the recovery of Afghanistan; it mainly involved India, Pakistan, and Central Asia. The idea was to link South and Central Asia by covering four key areas: (1) regional energy markets, (2) trade and transport, (3) customs and border operations, and (4) businesses and people-­to-­people.10 The initiative is interesting for both its invocation of the memory of the historical Silk Road (remembered as a “single thoroughfare”) to be refashioned as an international vision and its anticipation of themes and phrases close to the PRC’s present version. With Clinton’s exit from the State Department in 2013, the initiative apparently lost its momentum; a report from the Atlantic Council even called the result “underwhelming.”11 According to Indian newspaper reports, the New Silk Road Initiative was revived by the Trump administration in 2017 and was referenced as late as 2018 in a congressional statement.12 Nadège Rolland, in her monograph on the political and strategic implications of the BRI, presents and discusses several connectivity initiatives.13 Yet, despite all of these New Silk Road projects, it was the version that Xi Jinping kicked off in 2013 as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Twenty-­First Century Maritime Silk Road that quickly took center stage in global discourse. The image of the Silk Road is now firmly associated with the reappropriation by the PRC and it is a central piece of the Chinese Party-­State. The BRI, according to Rolland, is nothing less than “the organizing foreign policy concept of the Xi Jinping era.”14

BRI Literature in Search of an Analog Several popular and academic books have picked up the topic and the analogy of the Silk Road from a variety of angles. Peter Frankopan is a good example of this. He first published a book taking the historical Silk Road as a window to a new history of the world and then added a book specifically on the New Silk Roads, with the aim of depicting nothing short of the “present and the future of the world.”15 Frankopan credits von Richthofen as the inventor of the term, which, he writes, describes “the networks of exchange linking Han-­dynasty China to the world beyond.”16 The Silk Roads (he uses

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the plural throughout) constituted “the networks that are the world’s central nervous system” and, in Frankopan’s view, symbolize a world “connected for millennia as being part of a bigger, inclusive global past.”17 Frankopan’s descriptions sometimes border on Xi Jinping language. His stress on inclusivity is one example, and so is his observation that, “all across Asia,” there is a cooperative sense among states that “elide[s] their interests while putting differences behind them.” When he writes that “a host of initiatives, organizations and forums have been established in recent years that aim to encourage collaboration, cooperation and discussion, and which provided a common narrative of solidarity and shared future,”18 he is operating not far from Xi Jinping’s “community with shared future for mankind” (人类命运 共同体) (a slogan that Frankopan also references in his book).19 Still, clearly for Frankopan, the analog to hold the BRI against, is the ancient Silk Roads. Another analog not indicated in the name but deployed by many is colonialism or neocolonialism. Much of the literature on the infrastructure dimension of the BRI focuses on this historical analogy. Jonathan E. Hillman, for example, in a report on “Influence and Infrastructure” (meaning largely “three sectors: transportation, energy, and information and communications technology [ICT],”) frames the topic along the binary of “host” and “foreign states” but makes it clear that by the latter he means the People’s Republic of China and its historical analog Britain.20 The analogy is straightforward: “China is updating and exercising tactics used by Western powers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”21 It is used with regard to areas such as finance: “During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European powers frequently pressed for unrealistic lending guarantees.”22 Therefore, the issue of “Chinese-­funded infrastructure projects disproportionately favor[ing] Chinese contractors at the expense of local contractors” is turned into a dependency-­creating practice like the one at play in the “historical precedent” of British colonialism in India, where an estimated “40 percent of the capital raised for India’s colonial-­era railways was spent in Britain.”23 Similarly, Hillman compares the issue of debt diplomacy to Britain’s lending practices to Egypt in the 1860s and 1870s and the issue of intelligence gathering through companies concerned with infrastructure to an intelligence network operated by British officials in the treaty port in Canton in the early 1850s, and so on.24 Steeped in Middle Eastern politics, Robert Bianchi approaches the topic of the New Silk Road from the innovative viewpoint of China and the Islamic world. Bianchi rebuts the critics who describe the New Silk Road as a “Chinese exercise in neocolonialism.”25 However, rejecting the colonial/neocolonial analogy leads Bianchi to a seeming non sequitur. Instead of neocolonialism,



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he writes, “it seems more accurate to view the emerging webs of relations as coevolution of multiple megaregions in the making.”26 He defends a markedly benign view of the PRC and the BRI. No one country can “dominate such a vast collection of megaregions,” he believes, and “China’s leaders are learning to adapt to these changes with flexible statecraft—by showing more effective negotiating and by listening more attentively to popular viewpoints beyond privileged government and business circles.”27 Although Bianchi is clear that the Chinese leaders’ learnings are absent in their domestic politics, he nonetheless holds on to a set of highly idealistic beliefs: “In many matters, particularly ethnic and religious relations, environmental practices, and labor policies—outsiders are influencing attitudes in China at least as much as the Chinese are affecting people along the New Silk Road.”28 One problem with Bianchi’s analysis may be that his pairing of China and the Islamic world already relies on an analogy that equalizes the fear of China as the “China threat” to the fear of “Islamic terrorism.”29 He opines that “the New Silk Road should encourage America to overcome its exaggerated fears of both China and Islam” and that “the societies that today seem to be America’s worst adversaries could instead prove to be its most effective partners in fashioning a safer and fairer world.”30 The dissimilarities in the characters of Islam and China are resolved by ignoring the CCP almost entirely and instead discussing the two as “societies.” To the contrary, Bianchi lauds “China’s edition of the New Silk Road” for its “intimate connections with Muslim societies” and even speaks of “China’s Islamic Silk Road.”31 Although he mentions the “repression against Muslim minorities, particularly young Uyghur men,”32 he strikes an almost Huntingtonian Islamic and Confucian Sinic civilizational connection. Nevertheless, Bianchi also deploys a historical analogy, but one that draws on Fernand Braudel and the Mediterranean, understood as a “diverse and self-­sustaining fusion of natural and human forces that evolved over centuries despite the constant rise and fall of transient political units such as city states, empires, and nations.”33 “Xi’s version of the New Silk Road,” Bianchi asserts, stimulates “creative thinking that Braudel and his followers would never have imagined.”34 He identifies the PRC’s insistence on the sovereignty of the nation-­state as the “Achilles heel of China’s New Silk Road,” which hinders its success in leading “the fight for greater democracy in global governance by promoting wider representation and power-­sharing.”35 Behind this rather idiosyncratic take on the PRC lies the idea that the New Silk Road is an expression of Chinese statecraft that is “grounded in a vision of current history in which developing countries across the non-­Western world are converging toward more integrated transcontinental megaregions,” which

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“co-­evolve to form the backbone of a more inclusive international system.”36 In this way, inclusivity gets stressed again. Finally, Bruno Maçães characterizes “the Chinese plan” as seeking “to build a new world order replacing the US-­led international system,”37 part of the broader horizon of global politics. This way, Maçães presents another analog—one that is supposed to capture a part of Chinese history itself. Referencing Howard W. French’s Everything Under the Heavens (2017), he points to the period between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries in which China dominated the world and reads the Silk Road as a reminder of a “time when China was the center of the global economy and a technological powerhouse.”38 The analog, more precisely, is to the notion of tianxia (天下), often translated as all-­under-­heaven, and its “specific legal and institutional form” as “the tributary system.”39 The BRI, Maçães writes, is less ambitious than the European Union since it does not involve any supranational institution but, at the same time, it is more ambitious: “It touches the core of national sovereignty by propounding a model of state relations where every decision is in principle open to external influence. National sovereignty is never renounced, but neither is it affirmed or consecrated. Tianxia is neither national nor supranational.”40 Maçães states that the idea of tianxia has been appropriated by the Chinese Party-­State because it stands in mainly for “economic relations” while “legally and politically the states included in the Belt and Road would remain fully sovereign and independent.”41 Among this group of commentators, Maçães is the clearest in breaking with the analogy to the historical Silk Road, at least if it is understood very literally. Raising the question of whether the BRI is about “a return to an older time or the dawn of a new age,” he clearly sides with the latter, rejecting “romantic images of the Silk Road or Marco Polo’s adventures,” which “cannot hide the fact that trade along those routes was insignificant and almost no one made the whole journey from sea to sea.”42 Camels are not trains, it seems.

Xi Jinping’s Re-­Creation of the Silk Road Spirit and the Erasure of Its Transnational and Geopolitical Genealogy The Chinese Party-­State and Xi Jinping have propagated the BRI with stories and images that directly evoke the ancient Silk Road. An earlier Xinhua (official state-­run press agency) homepage devoted to the Silk Road (until 2017) is a good example.43 Its visuals draw on the vast terrain that the Silk



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Road apparently spanned: from mountainous areas to the deserts—the latter probably the most dominant motif in depictions and imaginings of the Silk Road. The effect is to emphasize the activities of traders and the transport of goods, alongside the historical Silk Road, creating a continuity with a future memory. The depicted camels stand for goodwill and as alternatives to “guns or swords.”44 Elsewhere on the homepage, the camels are replaced with a high-­speed bullet train that is more modern than the bulky container trains actually used for intercontinental transport. The high-­speed bullet train is an image that Xi frequently uses to depict China’s economic trajectory, welcoming others to jump “aboard the express train of Chinese development,” as he put it in his 2017 Davos speech.45 The continent-­crossing dimension is visually marked by a snippet of the globe and a curious selection of landmark buildings such as the Taj Mahal in India and the Eiffel Tower in France. The Xinhua homepage captures some of the dominant themes and metaphors found in official Chinese discourse, which has mostly settled on referring to the BRI in Chinese as “One Belt One Road” but frequently uses the term “New Silk Road” (新丝路).46 Textual and visual analogies with the historical Silk Road are standard devices in Xi’s toolbox, serving to create a “communion”47 with his listeners (that is, for example, by alluding to a “shared destiny” with Central Asian states). These tactics purposely invoke the imagery of an earlier open, inclusive and trade-­focused past, while Xi’s speeches cry out for a more formal analysis of his use of classical devices (whether pathos or anaphora) and more modern rhetorical techniques (such as those of Kenneth Burke and Chaïm Perelman) than the one this chapter can offer. Foremost, the Silk Road is turned into a story that can be communicated. In fact, the Department of Commentary (评论部) of the People’s Daily has issued a volume highlighting the importance of stories in Xi Jinping’s speeches. Yang Zhenwu 杨振武, president of the People’s Daily, highlights that “one story is better than a dozen arguments,” unleashing “a magic power to quickly establish an emotional connection between the narrator and the audience and to create an ideological resonance between them.”48 Yang gives an example of Xi’s mastery of telling stories: “In his speech at the Meeting Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Establishment of China-­France Diplomatic Relations delivered on March 27, 2014, Xi Jinping said, ‘Napoleon Bonaparte once compared China to a “sleeping lion” and observed that “when she wakes she will shake the world.” Today, China, the lion, has awakened, but it is a peaceful, amicable and civilized lion.’ Such contradictory but meaningful narration cleverly rebutted the ‘Chinese threat theory’ and communicated

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to the world the value of the Chinese dream.”49 From Yang’s comments, it becomes clear that the stories need not be anchored in a historically corroborated account. As Yang adds, Xi “often makes the past serve the present by quoting ancient fables, fairy tales, and historical events to explain the present and reality in a clever way.”50 The volume also features a speech by Xi Jinping on “The History of China-­West Exchanges on the Silk Road” given at UNESCO headquarters in 2014, which begins with the story of Zhang Qian 张骞 and how in the second century BC “China began working on the Silk Road leading to the Western Regions.”51 In the official volume collecting Xi’s speeches, The Governance of China, the translation more straightforwardly says “China started the Silk Road.”52 Zhang Qian is presented as someone who was an “envoy” and who made “trips” and initiated “trade.” Only in a footnote is it mentioned that the main purpose of Zhang’s trip was “to seek alliances among local ethnic groups to fight against the Xiongnu, an aggressive tribe.”53 Gliding over this military background entirely in his famous speech in Astana in 2013, Xi declared Zhang’s “trips” to have been “missions of peace and friendship.”54 Valerie Hansen recounts how when Zhang, after many years of travel, even long captivity, returned to the court of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, he had expressed his amazement that “Chinese merchants and trade goods had preceded him to Central Asia.”55 In fact, as Hansen’s book shows, the Silk Road was not really a road at all, “but a stretch of shifting, unmarked paths across massive expanses of deserts and mountains.” Silk was not at the center of the trade happening in Central Asia (she points to “chemicals, spices, metals, saddles and leather products, glass, and paper” and even “ammonium chloride”).56 Trade was small, mostly local, a series of interconnected networks, for the longest stretches wildly unregulated and then highly supervised and regulated in nodal “oasis communities,” particularly once Chinese troops showed a more constant presence.57 From the point of view of Central Asian studies, much of it was going on for centuries before Zhang Qian showed up.58 But a historical account, helpful as it is to circumscribe the room for imaginative maneuver, is moot to some extent. Xi is telling a story and he does not shy away from making it his personal story by subtly introducing an equivalence between himself and Zhang Qian: “Shaanxi, my home province, is right at the starting point of the ancient Silk Road. Today, as I stand here and look back at history, I seem to hear the camel bells echoing in the mountains and see the wisps of smoke rising from the desert, and this gives me a



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specially good feeling.”59 All of this is not about remembrance but memorization—that is, the making of a memory. Such a memory is still not fully made; it is in the future yet it has a name. Xi Jinping prominently uses the essentializing expression of “the Silk Road spirit” (丝路精神), for example, in his address at the opening of the first Belt and Road forum in 2017 in Beijing.60 He has dedicated several speeches to this topic. In a speech entitled “Promote the Silk Road Spirit, Strengthen China-­Arab Cooperation,” Xi explained “the Silk Road spirit” as follows: “For hundreds of years the spirit embodied by the Silk Road, namely peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning, and mutual benefit, has passed down through the generations. The Chinese and Arab peoples have supported each other in maintaining national dignity and safeguarding state sovereignty, helped each other in exploring development and achieving national rejuvenation, and learned from each other in encouraging people-­to-­people and cultural exchanges and revitalizing national culture.”61 The “Silk Road spirit,” it seems, consists in the projection of some positive mottoes (peace and cooperation, openness and inclusivity, mutual learning, and mutual benefit), on the one hand, and the reassertion of “national dignity” and “state sovereignty” on the other. Within an instant, the Silk Road shows the determinately modern background that it has had since von Richthofen gave it a name. Perhaps, then, one should focus less on the ancient Silk Road and more on von Richthofen’s imaginative re-­imagination. Some important elements of Xi Jinping’s re-­creation of the Silk Road can be traced to von Richthofen. The most obvious one is the name itself, which seems in the 1920s and 1930s to have traveled from European geographers, through von Richthofen’s Swedish student Sven Hedin and translations of his Sidenvägen, to China.62 Along with it came the idea of connecting China and Europe via rail in one “single and definite channel.”63 In this context, the idea of the Silk Road as “relatively straight and well traveled” gained popularity.64 Hedin also influenced the perception that Zhang Qian’s missions stood at the beginning of the Silk Road and in his book called on the “Chinese government” to “construct the ‘world’s longest motor-­road’ spanning Europe and China along this historical pathway.”65 Interestingly, underlining the transnational and global genealogy of the term, it circulated in China from the 1950s up to the 1970s when, through the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States, it was popularized again in the West.66 In the present-­day Chinese discourse, von Richthofen is regularly acknowledged as the inventor of the term “Silk Road” (just as the French sinologist

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Édouard Chavannes is recognized as the inventor of the term “maritime silk road”).67 The degree to which von Richthofen has to be read against the background of the “political and commercial ambitions” of his sponsors, hinging on “the importance of coal and railways to modern warfare and industry,” is often ignored.68 Contemporaries described him as a “capitalist and colonialist” and a “prophet of doom” afraid of a “struggle for existence” in which “the Chinese may easily” emerge as the “master.”69 Tamara Chin puts it succinctly: “Commerce and colonialism were integral to Richthofen’s advancement of geological science and vice versa.”70 Hedin was particularly impactful and transformed von Richthofen’s agenda. Chin writes: “Hedin’s bid to ‘Plan for the Revival of the Silk Road’ transformed Richthofen’s Silk Road from an object of cartographic or geohistorical knowledge (Ptolemy’s Silk Road; Central Asian Silk Roads) into an urgent geohistorical memory. Through him the Silk Road became something ethically as well as geopolitically imperative to remember through collective industrial reconstruction.” Still, Chin emphasizes a fundamental change: the New Silk Roads, she explains, “no longer follow geologic time” but work against and with the new conditions of the Anthropocene.71 Indeed, the BRI as reimagined New Silk Road is only partly about geology and land and sea corridors. Although initially crafted for its “benefit to Asia,”72 today, it is as much about the Arctic and Antarctica regions (the polar silk road) and overall decidedly global in its orientation. More importantly, it is also about the environment at large (the green or clean silk road), the new technological possibilities, and cyberspace (the digital silk road), and even outer space (the space silk road). It is also already a future memory, firmly attributed to the PRC. The BRI’s transnational and geopolitical genealogy has been mostly erased or confined to the margins of popular attention.

The Infrastructure of Our Heads and the Projection of a World Order as a Future Memory The BRI has changed not only in magnitude—as projects were launched and a host of new institutions founded—but also in character. Originally, it was about one belt over land and one road over sea that would connect China with Asia, Africa, and Europe. Corridors were marked out, through which transit routes would be channeled. The cartographical map of this original scheme is still omnipresent, even though starkly anachronistic. While corridors have multiplied, their empirical relevance is at times disputed (with the exception



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of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC). The map also excessively emphasizes infrastructure, the camels-­turned-­trains and ships, the bridges, and ports, while the BRI today, as already mentioned, is also about much more, from the satellite navigation system Beidou, military overseas bases like the one in Djibouti, currency swaps and Renminbi hubs, university and media alliances, to Chinese language courses. All of these activities in one or another way contribute to how the BRI will be remembered in the future, or should be memorized. The making of that future memory, however, targets the infrastructure of our minds as much as the infrastructure of the material world. The BRI projects a vision of a new world order by way of putting words, expressions, and stories into documents, onto posters and banners, screens and art pieces, into mouths that repeat them and come to think them. It is this vision that brings the trains and ships and university alliances into one more coherent whole that persists through the countless and meandering initiatives that make the BRI a moving target. Some of the contours of this vision can readily and quite safely be extracted from Xi Jinping’s pronouncements on “the Silk Road spirit,” but a similar outcome would result from an analysis of “the Chinese dream” (中国 梦) or “a community with shared future for mankind” (人类命运共同体). The envisioned world order is clearly one in which the most relevant entities are sovereign states. In his Astana speech, Xi Jinping reminded his listeners that “valuable inspiration” has been drawn “from the ancient Silk Road” and builds on “the chapter of friendship” that the “countries along the ancient Silk Road” have written.73 The expressions used in the speech to describe the main actors are telling: contrasted with “human civilization” stand “nations and cultures,” “the peoples of various countries,” “countries of different races, beliefs and cultural backgrounds” (often combined with recourse to discourse about “civilizations”), “Eurasian countries,” “Central Asian countries,” and so on. The basic actor in this vision of a global order are “countries,” each defending its “core interests such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, security and stability,” while the benefits arising from the actions should be available to one or another “region” (here, the “Eurasian region”) and finally the world at large.74 Xi has articulated this basic stance repeatedly. Here are two typical quotes from his 2013 speech at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations: The destiny of the world must be left in the hands of the peoples of all countries. Matters that fall within the sovereign rights of a country should be managed only by the government and people of that

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country. And affairs of the world should be addressed by the governments and peoples of all countries through consultation. Herein lies the democratic principle for the handling of international affairs which should be universally observed.75 We stand for the sharing of dignity by all countries and peoples in the world. All countries, irrespective of size, strength and wealth, are equal. The right of the people to independently choose their development paths should be respected, interference in the internal affairs of other countries opposed, and international fairness and justice maintained. Only the wearer of the shoes knows if they fit or not. Only the people can best tell if the development path they have chosen for their country suits or not.76 This international order foresees sovereign states as the sole masters of their “development path,” which may differ based on “national conditions” (国 情). The chosen term is “economic,” and Xi’s speeches frequently invoke the modernization paradigm. The PRC is presented as a soon-­to-­be “culturally advanced, and harmonious modern socialist country,” the party’s second centenary goal.77 At times, the phrase “social system” is added to “development path,” but the difference in the political system is not mentioned.78 The frequent use of the term “democratic”—meaning consultation at the international level and Leninist democratic centralism (Art. 3 of the Constitution of the PRC) at the domestic level—indicates a political dimension but hides its domestically authoritarian character. This is what “explain[ing] China in an acceptable way” may mean as an imperative.79 The “global governance system” is clearly viewed as in need of reform.80 The Chinese Party-­State’s vision is not simply a return to the time before the liberal global order took shape, even if it is in a political sense a profoundly illiberal vision, antithetical to important parts of liberal internationalism. Connectivity is central and interdependence is readily and frequently acknowledged. In today’s world, Xi says, “countries are linked with and dependent on one another at a level never seen before.”81 Therefore, as Xi has repeatedly stressed, China needs the world as much as the world needs China, and this underlies the PRC’s commitment to “promote unimpeded trade,” and “economic globalization.”82 In his Davos speech, Xi specifically and approvingly referred to “the flow of capital, technologies, products, industries and people between economies.” A remarkable sentence in that speech captured



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the focus on economy at the expense of what defined the liberal world order at its progressive and postinternational peak in the 1990s (democracy, international law, an interventionist conception of human rights, responsibility to protect, human security, all of which Xi did not mention). Xi drew on Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address but with a crucial twist: “Development,” he said, “is of the people, by the people and for the people.”83 The BRI project sees a global world order where sovereign states would cooperate economically, technologically, scientifically, culturally, and in any other conceivable way, save for any political cooperation that would restrict sovereignty. Beyond shared economic interests, harmony and friendship should guide international relations. The BRI, itself, Xi writes, “evokes the historical memory of the countries along the route”—for example, the memory that “the ancient Silk Road was more a road of friendship than a road of trade.”84 This vision of international politics as the merely voluntary and harmonious cooperation of fully sovereign states, however, has two concrete consequences. The first has to do with the “equality among all countries,” be they small or large, poor or rich, weak or strong. This supposed central pillar of the international system is in this vision reduced to a mere recognition of state sovereignty. Such “equality” then paradoxically comes to mean “inequality,” as great powers can and will use their greater power in bilateral settings and will usurp the right to judge whether or not sovereignty has been infringed on in a specific case. The PRC as a large and increasingly rich and strong country therefore stands to benefit from such an arrangement. This is particularly the case in the absence of effective multilateral organizations, which is the second consequence arising from the mere insistence on full sovereignty. Such a system built on harmony and voluntary cooperation lacks any effective dispute settlement mechanism. Multilateralism à la chinoise is discussed extensively today, and the attempts to cut out of existing frameworks the potentially sovereignty-­infringing parts or bending the rules to the PRC’s favor are well documented. In his speeches, Xi Jinping has repeatedly noted his satisfaction with the fact that key words and expressions have started to find their way into UN documents.85 From this perspective, his admission that “China needs the UN and the UN needs China” also acquires a different meaning altogether.86 The multilateralism that the PRC seems to favor amounts to an institutionalized asymmetrical bilateralism (asymmetrical since great powers like the PRC determine the agenda and in most cases prevail),87 and is the second best option to straightforward bilateralism.

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The outcome of this making and projecting of a new world order would be that multilateralism becomes largely ineffective for small and middle-­ sized countries and emptied of all its political, transnational, and internationalist aspirations. The BRI with its reference to the ancient Silk Road is an important tool in this effort of creating the infrastructure of a future memory in our minds.

Conclusion: Illiberal Internationalism and Analogy the Other Way Around Analogies as tools to explain the unfamiliar with the familiar are intuitively useful. However, when understood as an exercise by historians to find the best analog with the most explanatory power, it risks ignoring how our understanding of the unfamiliar makes us turn our attention to one and not another historical analog in the first place. Analogies are then unduly taken to explain uniformly and across the field of the explanandum. Focusing on the politics of analogizing, and beyond old-­fashioned historiography as an exercise of creating collective memory, leads to seeing historical analogy as fractured from the beginning and as likely servicing political agendas. Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road and the politics surrounding the BRI are certainly no exception to this. Three conclusions can be drawn through this approach to the topic. The first concerns the New Silk Road in our minds. Although there are many realities and important developments on the ground related to the BRI that scholars should discuss and policy makers heed, the factual power of invoking a future reality and a future memory should direct our attention also to another set of issues. The focus on storytelling and the packaging of the modern BRI into the camel-­evocating image of the Silk Road brings up the importance of discourse, of words that are featured in documents, of visuals that are put on posters. The Chinese Party-­State is consciously and resourcefully pursuing strategies to this end. In his speech in Astana, Xi Jinping referred to the need “to enhance mutual understanding and traditional friendship, and build strong public support.”88 The strategic nature of partyspeak shows in the idiosyncratic use of verbs, invoking a friendship that can be “enhanced” and a support that can be “built.”89 Nadège Rolland’s recent discussion of how the Chinese Party-­State has created a benevolent narrative and “new entities specifically dedicated to influence foreign perceptions about BRI” in the context of united front and propaganda activities also underlines



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this point.90 The New Silk Road and, for that matter, also the Belt and Road Initiative are easy to remember expressions and package ideas that stand in contrast to the much more bulky “EU-­Asia connectivity strategy,” Japan’s “Partnership for Quality Infrastructure,” or the United States’ “Overseas Private Investment Corporation.” The BRI is far from the only connectivity strategy under way, but it is the only one that has entered popular discourse. The second conclusion relates to the transnational understanding of the BRI. The genealogy of the BRI as an idea and project is profoundly transnational. From von Richthofen’s politics of geology and then Hedin’s explicit request to the Chinese government to build the “world’s longest motor-­road” to TRACECA, Clinton’s New Silk Road, and ongoing connectivity strategies, the long-­standing global imagination that is being tapped transcends economic globalization and includes political aspirations. Further attention to these dimensions will make the BRI an object of research with a research vocabulary that resists the forced memorization underway by the Chinese Party-­State, a political actor that in rhetoric seeks to depoliticize the BRI, not just by simply making it a new Silk Road. The ease with which authors of popular and academic literature on the BRI adopt the language of the research object highlights not only an additional element of transnational circulation but also the need to find a new and better vocabulary. The third and final conclusion is more exploratory and regards the discussions around liberal and illiberal internationalism. Recent attempts at examining the global history of internationalism have sought to “deconstruct historiographical assumptions regarding the stability of both ‘liberal’ and ‘illiberal’ as modifiers when referring to internationalism.”91 It is difficult to place the BRI and its projection of a world order in terms of its specific internationalist vision. Its emphasis on the economy suggests, for the time being, a continued commitment to liberal globalization and global capitalism but not to the pronounced liberal progressive internationalism that came to define the world order during the twentieth century and particularly since the end of the Cold War. If internationalism has always been informed by mutually dependent and cooperating liberal and illiberal variants,92 then we need to focus on how the illiberal internationalism that Xi Jinping envisions depends and even cooperates with liberal internationalism. The continuing Marxist-­ Leninist ideological fundament and the increasing authoritarian closure of the PRC need not be analyzed separately and disconnected from the insight that “the kind of international organization that was central to the imagining of twentieth-­century visions of international community is increasingly

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sidelined in the face of imposing world-­scale environmental and economic challenges.”93 One might risk misunderstanding the nature and the reasons for the looming technocratic and deflated internationalism if internationalism continues to have a meaning over and beyond the merely voluntary and harmonious interaction and consultation of sovereign states.

Notes 1. Xi Jinping, “The Belt and Road Initiative and Connectivity Are Mutually Reinforcing,” in The Governance of China II (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2017), 543. 2. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004). 3. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 58. 4. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 85–86, 92. 5. Eduard Shevardnadze, Die neue Seidenstraße: Verkehrsweg ins 21. Jahrhundert (Munich: Econ, 1999). 6. Zaal Anjaparidze, “Georgia and the ‘New Silk Road,’” Prism 4, no. 14 (1998), accessed 29 August 2020, https://​jamestown​.org​/program​/georgia​-and​-the​-new​-silk​-road/. 7. See TRACECA, “The Silk Road of the 21st Century,” accessed 29 August 2020, http://​ www​.traceca​-org​.org​/en​/home​/the​-silk​-road​-of​-the​-21st​-century/; archived at https://​web​ .archive​.org​/web​/20201030162316​/www​.traceca​-org​.org​/en​/home​/the​-silk​-road​-of​-the​-21st​ -century/. 8. Strategy of the Intergovernmental Commission TRACECA for Development of the International Transport Corridor Europe–the Caucasus–Asia for 2016–2026 Worked Out on the Basis of the Master Plan TRACECA and Proposals of the Parties, accessed 29 August 2020, http://​www​.traceca​ -org​.org​/fileadmin​/fm​-dam​/pdfs​/Appendix​_3​_Strategy​_Master​_plan​_TRACECA​_eng​.pdf. 9. Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Remarks on India and the United States: A Vision for the 21st Century,” Anna Centenary Library, Chennai, India, 20 July 2011, accessed 29 August 2020, https://​2009​-2017​.state​.gov​/secretary​/20092013clinton​/rm​/2011​/07​/168840​.htm. 10. See U.S. Department of State, “U.S. Support for the New Silk Road,” accessed 29 August 2020, https://​2009​-2017​.state​.gov​/p​/sca​/ci​/af​/newsilkroad​/index​.htm. 11. Gal Luft, Silk Road 2.0: US Strategy Toward China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Atlantic Council Strategy Paper No. 11 (Washington, DC: Atlantic Council, 2017), 51. 12. Congressional Record—Extension of Remarks, 26 February 2018, E222, accessed 29 August 2020, https://​www​.govinfo​.gov​/content​/pkg​/CREC​-2018​-02​-26​/pdf​/CREC​-2018​-02​ -26​.pdf. 13. See chapter 1 in Nadège Rolland, China’s Eurasian Century? Political and Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (Seattle, WA: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2017). 14. Rolland, China’s Eurasian Century?, 1. 15. Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (London: Bloomsbury, 2015); Peter Frankopan, The New Silk Roads: The Present and the Future of the World (London: Bloomsbury, 2018). 16. Frankopan, New Silk Roads, 2.



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17. Frankopan, New Silk Roads, 3. 18. Frankopan, New Silk Roads, 10. 19. Frankopan, New Silk Roads, 94. 20. Jonathan E. Hillman, Influence and Infrastructure: The Strategic Stakes of Foreign Projects (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2019), 2. 21. Hillman, Influence and Infrastructure, 2. 22. Hillman, Influence and Infrastructure, 5. 23. Hillman, Influence and Infrastructure, 6. 24. Hillman, Influence and Infrastructure, 9 and 17. 25. Robert R. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World: How the New Silk Road Is Transforming Global Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 2. 26. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World, 2. 27. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World, 2. 28. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World, 2. 29. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World, 1. 30. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World, 4. 31. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World, 7. 32. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World, 129. 33. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World, 22. 34. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World, 23. 35. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World, 24. 36. Bianchi, China and the Islamic World, 17. 37. Bruno Maçães, Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order (London: Hurst, 2018), 5. 38. Maçães, Belt and Road, 13 and 23. 39. Maçães, Belt and Road, 34. 40. Maçães, Belt and Road, 29. 41. Maçães, Belt and Road, 35. 42. Maçães, Belt and Road, 2. 43. Xinhua, “新丝路 • 新梦想,” accessed 7 February 2022, http://​www​.xinhuanet​.com​ /world​/newsilkway​/index​.htm; archived at https://​web​.archive​.org​/web​/20210323233757​ /http://​www​.xinhuanet​.com​/world​/newsilkway​/index​.htm. 44. Xi Jinping, “Work Together to Build the Belt and Road,” in Governance of China II, 554. 45. Xi Jinping, “Shoulder the Responsibilities of Our Time and Promote Global Growth,” in Governance of China II, 528. See also Xi “Belt and Road Initiative and Connectivity,” 543. 46. As a Chinese term, it has a longer, if minor, history in the cultural and fashion industry, going back to at least 1989 when the model and fashion company NSR (New Silk Road, 新丝路) was founded. Interestingly, the company homepage describes its international activities also as an effort at “spreading the essence of Chinese culture abroad” (将中国文化精髓传播到国外) while introducing foreign brands and models into China, thereby “laying a new ‘Silk Road’ for cultural exchanges between the East and the West” (为东西方文化交流铺设起一条新的“丝 绸之路”). NSR, accessed 12 December 2020, http://​www​.nsr​.com​.cn​/group/. 47. Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-­Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (1958; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 51. 48. Yang Zhenwu, “Preface: Elaborating on the Governance of China by Telling Stories,” in Narrating China’s Governance: Stories in Xi Jinping’s Speeches, ed. Department of Commentary, People’s Daily, trans. Luo Jing (Singapore: Springer, 2020), v–vi.

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49. Yang, “Preface,” vi. 50. Yang, “Preface,” vii. 51. Xi Jinping, “The History of China-­West Exchanges on the Silk Road,” in Narrating China’s Governance, 229. 52. Xi Jinping, “Exchanges and Mutual Learning Make Civilizations Richer and More Colorful,” in The Governance of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014), 306. 53. Xi, “Exchanges and Mutual Learning,” 309. 54. Xi Jinping, “Work Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt,” in Governance of China, 332. 55. Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 14. 56. Hansen, Silk Road, 5. 57. Hansen, Silk Road, 5–8. 58. Tamara Chin, “The Invention of the Silk Road, 1877,” Critical Inquiry 40, no. 1 (2013): 195. 59. Xi, “Work Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt,” 332. 60. Xi Jinping, “Work Together to Build the Belt and Road,” 554. 61. Xi Jinping, “Promote the Silk Road Spirit, Strengthen China-­Arab Cooperation,” in Governance of China, 360. 62. Chin, “Invention of the Silk Road,” 197 and 217. 63. Von Richthofen, quoted in Chin, “Invention of the Silk Road,” 210. 64. Hansen, Silk Road, 8. 65. Chin, “Invention of the Silk Road,” 217. 66. Chin, “Invention of the Silk Road,” 217. 67. Department of Commentary, People’s Daily, ed., Narrating China’s Governance, 230. 68. Chin, “Invention of the Silk Road,” 208. 69. Chin, “Invention of the Silk Road,” 218. 70. Chin, “Invention of the Silk Road,” 210. 71. Chin, “Invention of the Silk Road,” 217. 72. Xi, “Belt and Road Initiative,” 543. 73. Xi, “Work Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt,” 333. 74. Ibid. Xi Jinping’s speeches are highly tailored to their specific audiences. A “shared destiny” is invoked for different reasons with different audiences (e.g., “the China-­ASEAN community of shared destiny,” “a fraternal bond of shared destiny” between China and Africa), while it all adds up to one “shared destiny” or “future” of “humankind.” Similarly, he will most often quote from an author associated with the audience (e.g., Dostoyevsky when speaking in Moscow) or cite a proverb (e.g., the Russian saying that “Big ships sail far”), just to add lines from a Chinese poem expressing some similar enough content, thus creating “adherence” and “communion.” 75. Xi Jinping, “Follow the Trend of the Times and Promote Global Peace and Development,” in Governance of China, 319. 76. Xi, “Follow the Trend,” 318. 77. See, e.g., Xi Jinping, “Work Hand in Hand for Common Development,” in Governance of China, 384. 78. Xi, “Work Hand in Hand,” 382. 79. Xi Jinping, “Diplomacy with Neighboring Countries Characterized by Friendship, Sincerity, Reciprocity and Inclusiveness,” in Governance of China, 345.



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80. Xi, “Diplomacy with Neighboring Countries,” 345. 81. Xi, “Follow the Trend,” 317. 82. Xi, “Work Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt,” 335. “Economic globalization” was a key term both in Xi’s Davos speech, where he described it as a “double-­edged sword,” while clearly not to blame for many of the world’s problems, as well as in his second BRI Forum speech. See Xi, “Shoulder the Responsibilities,” 520; and Xi Jinping, “Promote High-­Quality Belt and Road Cooperation,” in The Governance of China III (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2020), 569. 83. Xi, “Shoulder the Responsibilities,” 527. 84. Xi Jinping, quoted in Dong Xiangrong, “The Silk Road Spirit,” in Routledge Handbook of the Belt and Road, ed. Cai Fang and Peter Nolan (New York: Routledge, 2019), 81. This handbook is an interesting document itself, co-­issued by Routledge and the China Social Sciences Press, published “with financial support” from “the Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences” (本书由中华社会科学基金资助). All of the thirty-­nine contributors, marketed by Routledge as “leading subject researchers,” are based at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, of which one of the editors, Cai Fang 蔡昉, is a vice president. The other editor’s role seems to have been confined to offering a brief preface since the entire book otherwise is a translation from the Chinese original (“一带一路”手册), and to have cohosted a book launch at Jesus College at Cambridge University. See “国家社科基金资助项目 《‘一带一路’手册》新书发布会 暨‘一带一路’倡议研讨会在英国剑桥大学举行,” no longer accessible online, but archived at https://​web​.archive​.org​/web​/20210821183000​/http://​www​.xinhuanet​.com​/silkroad​/2019​-06​/19​ /c​_1124645714​.htm. 85. A good example is the Human Rights Council (HRC). See Andréa Worden, “China’s Win-­Win at the UN Human Rights Council: Just Not for Human Rights,” Sinopsis (2020), accessed 27 February 2021, https://​sinopsis​.cz​/en​/worden​-win​-win/. 86. Xi Jinping, “Work Together for Mutually Beneficial Cooperation,” in Governance of China, 317. 87. For a recent commentary that comes to similar conclusions, see John Coyne, “Criticism of Five Eyes Points to Flaws in China’s Strategic Thinking,” Strategist (2021), accessed 27 February 2021, https://​www​.aspistrategist​.org​.au​/criticism​-of​-five​-eyes​-points​-to​-flaws​-in​-chinas​ -strategic​-thinking/. 88. Xi, “Work Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt,” 336. 89. On the instrumental notion of friendship in the CCP context, see chapter 2 in Anne-­ Marie Brady, Making the Foreign Serve China: Managing Foreigners in the People’s Republic (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). 90. Nadège Rolland, “Mapping the Footprint of Belt and Road Influence Operations,” Sinopsis (2019), accessed 27 February 2021, https://​sinopsis​.cz​/en​/rolland​-bri​-influence​-operations/. 91. Philippa Hetherington and Glenda Sluga, “Liberal and Illiberal Internationalisms,” Journal of World History 31, no. 1 (2020): 9. 92. Hetherington and Sluga, “Liberal and Illiberal Internationalisms,” 1–2. 93. Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 149.

PA R T III City-­Sites of International Memory

CHAPTER 8

Revolutionary Roads: Tashkent as a Site of Indian Internationalism Carolien Stolte

Suddenly quivered the dust of Samarkand And from an ancient tomb a light shone, pure As the first gleam of daybreak, and a voice Was heard:—“I am the spirit of Timur! Chains may hold fast the men of Tartary, But God’s firm purposes no bonds endure Is this what life holds—that Turania’s peoples All hope in one another must abjure? Call in the soul of man a new fire to birth! Cry a new revolution over the earth!”

Tashkent in the Indian Imagination What might new forms of South and Central Asian unity look like? In the lines from “The Tatar’s Dream” quoted above, they would start with renewed hope in regional collaboration. Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938) appeals to shared Asian heritages as well as futures earned him the epithet “Shair-­e Mashriq,” “Poet of the East.” Both his poetry and his scholarship reached far beyond the borders of British India and resonated in particular with Muslims inside the Soviet Union.1 Though remembered by many today for his influence on the Pakistan nationalist movement, Iqbal was also an ardent internationalist. Writing from and for Muslim Asia, however, Iqbal’s thought

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raises challenges for the category of “internationalist.” Neither fully committed to the vision of Geneva nor that of Moscow, the standard binaries of interwar internationalism are of limited analytical use, even though both were important reference points in his work. Rather, he envisioned alternatives for such forums, built in Asia, on Asian foundations, and serving Asian futures. Iqbal’s work prominently figures themes of Islamic resurgence and connections within and across Muslim Asia.2 He located himself, and India generally, in an anti-­imperialist “revolt of Asia” that might lead to a liberated and federated world of Islam.3 For this reason, Central Asia figures much more strongly in his ideas of Asian unification than the more common reference point of Japan.4 To Iqbal, however, there were two Asias. One was the Asia under colonial domination, for which he uses the term Asia in Urdu and Persian as well: “Asia’s time-­honored cloak grows ragged and wears out / from upstart lands her young men borrow their finery.”5 In Inquilab (Revolution), he declares: “Death to man’s soul is Europe, death is Asia / To man’s will; neither feels the vital current.”6 But when invoking Central Asia, Asian cultural commonalities, or Asian Islam, Iqbal reverts to mashriq (East). And when it comes to resurgent Asia, too, he uses mashriq: “Asia’s Geneva let Tehran be / Earth’s book of fate new statutes may see.”7 As shown in the quote that opens this chapter, Iqbal played with the idea of Turan: “You are still tied to colour and to race / So you call me Afghan or Turkoman / But I am first of all a man, plain man / And then an Indian or Turanian.”8 What did “Turan” invoke in the Indian literary imagination? Its cartography was often vague, but its cultural connotations less so; these included notions of nomads, conquerors, and empire-­builders—often gendered and contrasted positively to ideas of urbanized and cultured but also more effeminate polities. Turan was associated with the might of the Mughals and with (largely North) Indian cultural history. The area that covers present-­day Uzbekistan had long played an important role in Indian conceptions of Asia.9 That in itself is not surprising. In the past both India and Uzbekistan had been ruled by Turkic dynasties with roots in the steppe, and the countries shared cultural similarities as well as historical memory.10 As Timur was considered the Mughal dynastic founder, idealized cultural characteristics had been projected onto the region from the Mughal period onward. A longing for their ancestral homeland influenced much of their ideas about India’s place in the region.11 These ideas had afterlives well into the twentieth century, and such stylized conceptions of Central Asia persisted in Indian Asianist thought.



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In the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, Indian affinity with the region was made tangible by very real connections and interactions. Precisely because of Tashkent’s relative proximity to India—certainly when compared with international hubs like Geneva, Tokyo, and New York—Indians in Tashkent were not a homogeneous group. They consisted of muhajirs and princes, of mullahs and socialists, of musannifs and horse traders.12 In terms of political thought, this resulted in an eclectic internationalist repertoire which I have referred to elsewhere as “polyphonic internationalism.”13 And during the decades in which Indian anti-­imperialist internationalism was at its strongest, Tashkent offered multiple venues in which ideas for a future Asian order could be tried and tested. This chapter posits that, in the period after the Bolshevik Revolution and the establishment of the Uzbek SSR in 1924, a new element was introduced into romantic Indian portrayals of Central Asia in general, and Tashkent in particular. The city reemerged as an ideal Asian site of a new kind, one that had, in the minds of Indian internationalists, modernized and industrialized successfully under Soviet guidance while maintaining its cultural identity as a major Asian city. As shown below, this was an image the Soviet Union actively promoted through the use of Central Asian cultural and diplomatic brokers in its Asian interactions.14 In focusing on Tashkent, this chapter aims to connect to recent anti-­imperialist and international “biographies” of city sites, while unearthing a mode of Indian internationalism that occurred away from cosmopolitan port cities and large metropolitan centers.15 The borders of international thought, both real and metaphorical, were permeable.16 This certainly applies to the highly mobile “expatriate patriots” of the colonial world, who worked with as well as around new sites of internationalism in order to create a more just and equitable international system. Much research has either focused on attempts at Indian inclusion in international institutions and organizations or on Asian regionalist initiatives directed primarily at Japan and its sponsorship of Pan-­Asianist movements. But these narratives do elide the history of Indian internationalisms informed by longue-­durée overland connection. In doing so, they also obscure forms of internationalism that emerged in India itself, rather than internationalisms elsewhere to which Indian activists sought to connect. Collectively, these different engagements with Tashkent tell the story of a city outside India’s borders as an enduring internationalist focal point. The idea of Tashkent as an ideal type of modernity on Asian terms caused it to become a home to radicals, journalists, travelers, artists, and politicians. This

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chapter focuses on three episodes on either side of India’s decolonization: Tashkent as a destination for Indian revolutionary internationalists in the 1920s; as a key interlocutor and host in the burgeoning Afro-­Asian movement of the 1950s; and as the location of Indo-­Pakistani peace talks in 1965, which ended with the death of India’s second prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in the city. By selecting moments across independence in 1947, the lasting nature of Tashkent as a site in the Indian internationalist imaginary is brought out. Physically, this prolonged Indian engagement with Tashkent as an internationalist site has left comparatively few physical traces on its cityscape. This is exacerbated by the fact that Tashkent was remade several times.17 This process of making and unmaking Tashkent was not confined to moments when the city changed rulers. The region is prone to violent earthquakes, and parts of the old city were destroyed in 1966. What is rebuilt and renamed after such destruction, is both historically and politically contingent and sheds further light on the politics of international memory. Evidence of the city’s temporary and permanent Indian residents is largely confined to text today. The importance they attached to Tashkent as a site of international connection, both real and imagined, was committed to script in various ways but not to a single archive and can only be retrieved when bringing sources from multiple locations into conversation with each other. This, then, is an attempt to reconstruct Indian memories of Tashkent as a site of internationalism against this backdrop, excavating trends in remembering Tashkent. The question remains: Why is Tashkent as a site of Indian international memory in need of recovering? What ruptures have caused the fact that Indian internationalists in San Francisco or Tokyo are remembered today, but their counterparts in Tashkent much less so?18 This cannot be explained by the fact that one city was frequented by more famous internationalists than another. As Maia Ramnath has shown, Tashkent was an integral part of revolutionary roads and a regular stopover for Indian internationalists from the early twentieth century onward.19 Nor does the Bolshevik Revolution suffice as a factor. As noted above, the Soviets actively used the Central Asian Republics to build connections to Indian activists and intellectuals.20 What has changed since the 1950s, however, is the physical connectivity between India and the Central Asian region. Hardened borders and the accompanying discontinuation of old land routes do constitute a rupture. The (partial) loss of the Kabul route as the main stopover from South to Central Asia has been consequential.21 Another rupture was epistemological. Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen have called the



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mid-­twentieth century occlusion of Central Asia in global geography a form of “cartographic dismemberment.”22 The region’s disappearance between the cracks of area studies in the 1970s has had far-­reaching consequences for nonacademic memory as well. Between the 1920s and 1960s, however, the roads between India and Tashkent were well traveled.

Tashkent as a Journey The idealized image projected onto Tashkent by Indian internationalists was a mixture of deeply ingrained nostalgia dating back to the Mughal era and futurist hope for an alternative Asian modernity that would be more compatible with India than the archetypal modernist example of Japan. But if Tashkent appeared as a shining city beckoning from beyond the Pamirs, it was precisely the mountain range in between that reinforced its romantic appeal. Tashkent had never been easy to reach overland. Marco Polo purportedly described the hardship of crossing the Pamirs: “There is no habitation or shelter, but travelers must take their provisions with them. No birds fly here because of the height and the cold. And I assure you that, because of the great cold, fire is not so bright here nor of the same colour as elsewhere, and food does not cook well.”23 Hundreds of years later, Indian traders could still wait months at the frontier posts of Peshawar and Kabul for the snow to recede far enough for a caravan to pass through.24 And by the twentieth century, the journey was no less arduous. Rafiq Ahmad, one of several Indian activists to undertake the journey from the North West Frontier Provinces to Tashkent and back, later recollected: “The cold in Pamir was unbearable. . . . It was so steep that the animals could not just make it. We were given sugar in cubes, so that if in trouble over breathing we could put it in our mouths. . . . Having walked continuously on snow-­bound paths, our feet had swollen and our toe-­ nails had dropped off.”25 Rafiq Ahmad made the crossing successfully, and his exploits as a radical internationalist in Tashkent are treated below. Some of his fellow revolutionaries were less fortunate. In revolutionary memoirs, arriving in Tashkent often appears as arriving in a promised land. Shaukat Usmani, another revolutionary whose travels are treated in detail in Ali Raza’s recent Revolutionary Pasts, noted: “Some of us wore only one shoe, carrying the other in hand because it was torn. Everyone had torn clothes. We were feeling ashamed of being in this condition. But crowds came surging forward to see us. Women

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and children were shouting slogans, some in Turkish and some in Russian. We could not understand the meaning of these slogans but this much was clear that they took us to be Indian revolutionaries.”26 Such statements of the kindness of the Red Army were carefully calibrated to please Russian hosts. They appeared with especial frequency in the Russian-­ language press. However, it would be shortsighted to dismiss them as pure propaganda—in India, the Central Asian travel memoir became a genre in its own right.27 From the late 1920s onward, Indian anti-­imperialists journeyed to Central Asia and wrote about their experiences. Minoo Masani, who published his travel writings in installments as An Indian Looks at a Soviet Land, phrased his motivation thus: “Asiatic Russia held particular appeal to an Indian.”28 He was impressed by Soviet Central Asia’s advances but privileged its retention of cultural identity over socialist modernism. His concern was with modernizing on Asian terms rather than on Communist ones. This became particularly clear in the 1950s, by which time Masani had joined the anti-­Communist Congress for Cultural Freedom.29 The British Indian socialist and Labour MP Shapurji Saklatvala reflected on his land of birth in India from My Tashkent Window, declaring that “from Tashkent I feel tempted to penetrate into that farther corner of Soviet Asia. . . . Janges [sic] Khan, Timur Lane and Baber come before my mind’s eye.”30 The Indian socialist Yusuf Mehrally saw the Uzbek SSR’s development as proof that “India’s backwardness need not discourage us. If anything, this backwardness would be helpful to us because it means a much weaker opposition. As for the practicability of applying socialism to a region of industrial backwardness, it is enough to remind the reader of what the Russians are doing in some of the most backward parts of the globe. Socialism is being built up as surely in Uzbekistan as in Moscow.”31 In this development, at least, the Pamirs were not seen as a barrier: “In spite of the fact that lofty mountains cut away India from these regions of Central Asia, consolidation of Socialism there cannot fail to produce important political effects in India.”32 The most poignant example of the interwar years, however, was Mahendra Pratap. Among the self-­styled revolutionary exiles, international careers as long as his are extremely rare. Spanning roughly the period from the Balkan War of 1912 to his days as a Lok Sabha MP in 1962, he spent half a century circumnavigating the globe in an attempt to realize a free and united Asia. Over the course of his travels, Pratap visited Tashkent several times. He knew some of the Indian revolutionaries in Tashkent, and his own anti-­imperialist internationalism occasionally intersected with theirs. Although Pratap flirted



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with socialism early in his career, he was never a Communist, nor was he part of the founding of the Indian Communist Party in Tashkent, treated below. His internationalism was an eclectic blend of ideas that might further his goal of a unified Asia. As a consequence, Pratap was less preoccupied with Tashkent’s status as a Soviet city than he was with its geographic location in the heart of Asia. He did, however, view the Soviet expansion into Central Asia as an indication that the Soviets were moved by Pan-­Turanian sentiments.33 In his writing, Pratap radically redrew the internal borders of Asia with a view to engineering “cultural” provinces that could in turn federate into a single Pan-­Asian government. His Turan was an acronym: Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, SiberiA, TurkestaN. The capital of Turan was to be Tashkent.34 The latter fact is surprising in view of the fact that Pratap’s first visits to Tashkent were less than fortuitous. On his first visit in 1918, he acted as an Afghan emissary but was denied that status because the Anglo-­Afghan agreement was still in effect, and his visit went unreported.35 On his second visit in 1921, he immediately contracted typhus and was rushed to Moscow for treatment. Other visits were more comfortable. In stark contrast to the original Muhajirs, many of whom had left without much preparation after the call for the pilgrimage journey known as hijrat (emigration to escape repression), Pratap came from money and was successful at fundraising and leveraging his status as a raja—albeit a minor one. Though his fortunes turned a few times, especially after the British had declared his Indian assets forfeited, his journeys from Tashkent resemble arduous treks across the Pamirs less than hobnobbing with his fellow architects of a modern and resurgent Asia: “Last November I happened to travel together with the Prime Minister of Tajikistan, Comrade Muhidinof. From Moscow to Tashkent we were in the same railway carriage for four days and had a lot of leisure to talk over different problems concerning this part of our world. He spoke in high terms of the education progress which his people were making.”36 “Comrade Muhidinof ” was in fact Mirzo Abduqodir Muhiddinov, first leader of the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic and later the Tajik SSR. His father had been one of only four Bukharan millionaires in his day, an educator who supported and funded modern education and the press.37 By the time Pratap and Muhiddinov met, the latter was based in Tashkent as a high-­level Tajik representative—a position that would soon cost him his life.38 For the time being, though, the pair could discuss the future of Central Asia in comfort. They stayed at the same hotel and socialized with their mutual acquaintance Nisar Mohemmod, an Indo-­Afghan who had risen to the rank of chief

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officer of education in Tajikistan and “had just then come to Tashkent by an aeroplane for a couple of days.”39 Pleased with the development he saw, Pratap recommended to his readers: “If some people can extend their trip to Russia by travelling to Central Asia, they will be fully repaid by the new and interesting facts which they will harvest for themselves.”40 The frequency with which Mahendra Pratap, as one of India’s most explicit Pan-­Asian activists of the twentieth century, visited Tashkent reveals the importance of the city as a stopover on “revolutionary roads.” It attracted anti-­imperialist sojourners not just because it was a site of Asian nostalgia but because it was also a site of Asian renewal. The latter was a promise that attracted internationalists from a much broader political spectrum than those who saw it as the closest seat of Soviet power. As I will show below, Tashkent did not just connect to Kabul and through it, to India; it was a stopover on Indian revolutionary journeys to Kashgar, Baku, Moscow, and beyond. Finally, some travels to Tashkent were directly inspired by previous journeys. In 1962 a recent recipient of a PhD said that reading Muzaffar Ahmad’s Myself and the Communist Party of India made him feel “a desire to see all the places where the muhajirs lived.” The graduate, Devendra Kaushik, went on to obtain a second doctorate from Lenin University (Tashkent State University, now the National University of Uzbekistan) but remained fascinated by the international roots of the CPI in Tashkent. He later sent an elderly Muzaffar Ahmad texts from Indian revolutionaries that he had found in the Tashkent archives and continued to alternately teach Soviet studies in India and Oriental studies in the Soviet Union.41

Tashkent as a Site of an Internationalist Future Much of the appeal of Tashkent as a site of international anti-­imperialism came from the Indian revolutionaries who added themselves to the number of traders and other settled Indian communities in the city. Pratap was one of the first to travel to Tashkent from his base in Kabul after the Bolshevik Revolution, but his colleague Barkatullah followed soon after. Barkatullah was a staunch Pan-­Islamist as well as a former professor of Hindustani in Tokyo with an impressive record of revolutionary activities.42 He was more successful than Pratap in bringing his agenda to a Soviet audience. He received considerable leeway in the Soviet press to publish his plans. Ishtrokiun, a Tashkent newspaper, published the first draft of “Bolshevik Ideas



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and the Islamic Republic,” which later became his widely circulated manifesto Bolshevism and the Islamic Nations.43 This was the first step in a pragmatic relationship that would grow stronger with the arrival of more Indian revolutionaries. Although the early Indian revolutionaries’ writing was largely religiously inflected, the Communist papers of Tashkent were happy to give them space, and reported frequently on the state of anti-­imperial ferment in India. Both had an interest in amplifying Asian anti-­imperialism. From mid-­1919 onward the muhajirs started arriving via Kabul. Tashkent was not their first choice—they had wanted to proceed to Turkey to help restore the caliphate but were intercepted in Kabul by Abdur Rabb, one of the earliest card-­carrying Indian Communists, who convinced them that it was a good alternative for their anti-­imperialist sentiments. As he wrote to his Soviet contacts: “We are informed that they are all practically prisoners in Afghanistan, and that this treatment in the Mahomedan country must have done a great deal to cure the Pan-­Islamic fervor and Khilafate fanaticism of the poor fellows. . . . Besides it is sure that some revolutionaries must have taken the opportunity to come out.”44 In other words, the recruitment of revolutionary internationalists to Tashkent consisted of “curing” revolutionary internationalists with the right method but the wrong ideas, and the hope that there were already revolutionaries among them with the right ideas. In any case, they were hoping to bring to Tashkent “representatives of several elements.”45 Soon, former Ghadrites joined the muhajirs, attracted by the promise of Asian revolution.46 As the former Ghadrite Abdusubhan Khan wrote in Ishtrokiun: “The East is a single entity, a single body which feels the pain equally if a hand or only a finger is amputated. . . . Only close unity of the peoples of the East can guarantee their liberation.”47 In Tashkent, the Indian revolutionaries had access to funds, housing, printing presses, and roads unwatched by British eyes. As Surendra Gopal has noted, this “created an image of Tashkent which could not be erased from the minds of Indians.”48 This was not without reason; under Soviet direction, Tashkent quickly developed considerable revolutionary infrastructure. By 1919 a Tashkent chapter of the Moscow-­based Union for the Liberation of the Peoples of the East was up and running.49 The Indian revolutionary M. P. T. Acharya was given a typewriter.50 The former muhajirs Abdul Majid and Muhammad Shafiq opened a bilingual Indian newspaper in Urdu and Persian called Zamindar.51 In it, they explicitly located themselves: “Respectful greetings from the organization of Indian residents in Tashkent. India with heart and soul hopes for the fulfilment of your desires. India is so sick of

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the oppressive repression that it is determined to plunge into the battle. Oh, sufferers of the East dreaming of freedom from iron chains, it is your duty to follow the example of India!”52 Further encouragement was intellectual rather than material. On 14 May 1920, Lenin wrote to Abdur Rabb Barq, by then chairman of an official Indian Revolutionary Association in Tashkent: “I am glad of the young union of Muslim and Hindu revolutionaries and sincerely wish that this Association will extend its activities among all the workmen of the East. When Indian, Korean, Japanese, Persian, Chinese, and Turkish peasantry and working p ­ eople will stretch to one another their hands and will fight together for their common cause of freedom—only then is assured the decisive victory over the exploiters. Long live free Asia!”53 And indeed, Acharya and a handful of Tashkent-­ based revolutionaries were sponsored to attend the Congress of the Oppressed Peoples of the East in Baku in September 1920, at which gathering it was clear that their ideological blend of Islamism, Communism, and anti-­imperialism was shared across many groups in West and Central Asia.54 There was a return on Soviet investments as well. Shaukat Usmani and Rafiq Ahmad were sent to remote areas of Turkestan to set up printing presses for propaganda.55 But more importantly, the Indian revolutionaries’ presence in Tashkent and their religiously inflected writings served to counteract the image of Bolshevik cultural destruction reported elsewhere. This included public speeches made by the Indian revolutionaries. On 8 October 1919, for instance, Abdur Rabb called for an anti-­imperialist revolt of Asia’s Muslims from Sheikhantaur’s square in the Old City. Sheikhantaur, as the largest of the original Tashkent dahas, or towns, had entrance gates where Silk Road caravans had once been welcomed and, to an extent, still were. As a site to appeal to Pan-­Asian anti-­imperialist sentiments, this was well-­chosen; this part of the old town combined modernist institutions with crumbling mausoleums, madrasas, and mosques. The Indian Revolutionary Association in Tashkent has not received the scholarly attention that Indian revolutionary centers like Berlin and Moscow have. And indeed, the Indusky Kurs was short-­lived, as the training of Asian revolutionaries was soon consolidated into the University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV) in Moscow. However, there are good reasons to accord Tashkent a more important place as a site of anti-­imperialist internationalism. First, due to its proximity to India, there were far more Indian revolutionaries in Tashkent than in Berlin or Moscow. They also maintained closer contacts with anti-­imperialist allies in India. Second, this era of internationalism had



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consequences for the demography of the city; the makeup of its Indian community was shifting. The old community of traders and moneylenders sought to leave, moving their assets to places where private business was still legal, primarily to Xinjiang and Afghanistan.56 In its place emerged a smaller, more transient but politically very active Indian community. And finally, Tashkent as a site of Asian anti-­imperialism, as a site of developing modernity without loss of Asian identity, and as the site of the founding of the Communist Party of India, had far-­reaching consequences. Throughout the interwar years and into the Cold War, both India and the Soviet Union had reasons to maintain the image of Tashkent as a home for internationalists, which had important consequences for the era of decolonization.

Tashkent as a Site of an Alternative Present On the verge of Indian Independence, Delhi’s Mughal-­era Purana Qila (Old Fort) became the backdrop to the Asian Relations Conference. Though not without a considerable number of politicians and heads of state both present and future, the conference was meant as a nonpolitical gathering to discuss the future of postwar Asia among Asians.57 For that reason, all Soviet Central Asian Republics were invited as separate delegations. The two-­man delegation from the Uzbek SSR hailed from Tashkent. The delegation leader Sarymsakov presented Nehru with an Uzbek robe and cap, stating that “the peoples of Uzbekistan and India are amongst the most ancient peoples of the world. History is full of examples which prove the existence of a close connection between these two people.”58 Sarymsakov primarily used the conference to highlight Uzbek socialist educational modernization and literacy campaigns.59 There were strategic reasons to choose this focus. In India, Uzbekistan was widely seen to be overcoming developmental challenges that India also faced. The ground for this argument was well prepared. Its successes particularly in mass education were the subject of many Indian accounts of Tashkent, including Shapurji Saklatvala’s.60 The Asian Relations Conference resulted in a short-­lived Asian Relations Organization intended to facilitate future intra-­Asian exchanges. Sarymsakov was elected to its General Council.61 Internationalist exchange between Delhi and Tashkent was further cemented in the 1950s through the organization of the Delhi Conference of Asian Countries on the Relaxation of International Tensions in April 1955.62

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Figure 8.1. Uzbek dance troupe in New Delhi, December 1955. Photo Division, Government of India.

Attended by delegates from eighteen countries and drawing from the network of the World Peace Council, its success was largely due to preparatory work in the peace movements in participating countries. The USSR’s Preparatory Committee consisted mainly of Central Asian writers and activists, including the Uzbek trade unionist D. K. Khodjaev and, crucially, Ishan Babahan Ibn Abdul Mejidkhan, the mufti of the Central Asian Tribes from Tashkent, ninety-­three years old and much venerated.63 Further cultural exchanges followed in quick succession. In June 1955 Jawaharlal Nehru visited Tashkent, accompanied by Nuritdin Mukhtidinov, an Uzbek member of the Presidium with whom he discussed the long history of Indo-­Uzbek ties.64 In December 1955, an Uzbek dance troupe toured Delhi (figure 8.1). In December 1956, a delegation visited the Asian Writers’ Conference hosted by India. Though the conference covered a wide range of topics from the possibility of a common Asian language and script to issues of copyright and wages, the most hotly debated issue was whether writers had a responsibility of political engagement or a moral obligation to rise above contemporary politics.65



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The Asian Writers’ Conference was reflective of Delhi’s desire to be central in developing a positive ideology for a postcolonial Third World culture.66 The Soviet Union had a similar desire for Tashkent and, indeed, at the Asian Writers’ Conference in Delhi, the Central Asian delegation had proposed that the second conference of Asian writers should be held in Tashkent in 1958. Subsequently, it was decided that writers from African countries should also be invited to take part in the conference.67 As a nod to the conference’s location, the Uzbek writer—and soon to be Uzbek Communist Party leader— Sharof Rashidov presided over the preparations alongside the Bengali novelist Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, who had been very vocal about shared Asian cultural values at the Delhi Writers’ Conference.68 In keeping with his interwar predecessors, he recorded his experiences of the USSR in a published travelogue.69 He was soon joined by the famous Indian author Mulk Raj Anand whose internationalist credentials dated back to the interwar years as one of the founding members of the Progressive Writers’ Association and a lecturer at the League of Nations School of Intellectual Cooperation.70 The conference itself, held in October 1958, was attended by literary luminaries ranging from Indonesia’s Pramoedya Ananta Toer to W. E. B. Du Bois. Rashidov was later quoted as saying that the Tashkent conference represented a “newer, higher stage in the development of the mutual ties between the writers of the Orient.”71 The final collective communiqué read: “We assembled in Tashkent, the capital of the Uzbek SSR, inspired by our faith in the future of our people and our literatures, inspired by the high ideals of peace and friendship among all people of the world.”72 The Afro-­Asian Writers’ Conference proved to be a durable initiative. It resulted in a Permanent Bureau, the first seat of which was to be in South Asia, in Colombo. The Sri Lankan delegation, which had been led by the Buddhist priest Siri Siwali Thero, declared that they considered it a great responsibility to carry on this “literary Bandung.”73 His colleague K. M. Sirisena returned from Tashkent with the strong conviction that Asian and African countries could jointly build a movement of progressive literature, and that all literature should reflect the life of the people, particularly workers and peasants.74 The Afro-­Asian Writers’ Conference gave rise to additional Afro-­Asian Writers’ Conferences from 1968 to the publication of the Lotus, a trilingual quarterly journal of Afro-­Asian writings.75 Its translations enabled Afro-­Asian writers to reach audiences across the decolonizing world. It was not without local influence, either. Crowds of workers and students welcomed the delegates onto the square in front of the Navoi Theater (figure 8.2). The conference

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Figure 8.2. Punjabi Poet Pritam Singh, member of the Indian delegation to the Afro-­Asian Writers Conference, signs autographs in front of the Navoi Theatre in Tashkent, October 1958. Photo credit: Punjabson, CC BY-­SA 4.0.

included a public session on 13 October, with a (possibly inflated) estimated crowd of 50,000 packed into the Pakhtakor stadium, the biggest venue in the city. Aimed at an Uzbek public ranging from students to collective farmers, it was meant specifically to showcase Afro-­Asian art to an Uzbek public. The stadium itself was brand new. Built to accommodate an audience of 60,000 it was meant to be one of the main modern venues of the Central Asian SSR, and to host events like this one. Such venues were also meant to reinforce Tashkent’s reputation as a “showcase city.” It was not a coincidence that the brand-­new Hotel Tashkent,



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in which the Afro-­Asian delegates were hosted, was completed mere months before the conference was held.76 The twin roles that Tashkent had long played in the Indian imagination—a window onto an Asian past and a beacon of modernity—had been elevated to official Afro-­Asian foreign policy by the Soviets. This carefully calibrated effect was not lost on the Indian delegation. As Krishnalal Shridharani noted: “Despite the world’s biggest textile factory and straight asphalt roads . . . this still remains a colourful Eastern city. . . . Here you can see the faces, beards, and suits that will remind you of Kashmir, Darjeeling and even Bombay.”77

Tashkent as a Site of International Memory The Afro-­Asian Writers’ Conference was a high point, demonstrating how the allure of Tashkent could be harnessed to present visions of an alternative Afro-­Asian order to the world. As evidenced by Indo-­Uzbek cooperation in the events organized in its orbit, Tashkent’s carefully crafted image as a site of socialist Asian modernity continued to have appeal among Indian internationalists. To end there, however, would omit an important episode with considerable consequences for the Cold War international order, and the place of Tashkent in the Indian internationalist imaginary. This is a tale of twin disasters: a death and an earthquake. In 1965 India and Pakistan went to war. The conflict unfolded following Pakistani incursions into Kutch as well as efforts to foment unrest in Kashmir and resulted in what was then the largest mobilization of troops on the Indo-­Pakistani border since independence in 1947.78 In September, a ceasefire was reached following international diplomatic intervention, and upon the invitation from the Soviet Union, both sides attended a summit in Tashkent to resolve the issue. The choice of Tashkent was not a coincidence. This was the first prominent Soviet attempt to settle a dispute between two noncommunist countries. Tashkent’s symbolic significance as an Asian city with an important regional function would aid in this attempt. According to one observer, “It dramatized the recent Soviet stand that it was as much an Asian Power as a European Power.”79 Great pains were taken to emphasize that atmosphere. The delegates were treated to sumptuous Uzbek cuisine, and the conclusion of the final agreement was celebrated with an Uzbek dance performance at the national opera theater in Tashkent. The foreign

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secretary C. S. Jha, who had accompanied the Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri to Tashkent, noted that the setting seemed to relax the Pakistani delegates: “Perhaps like us they felt that this was the beginning of a new era in relations.”80 Shastri and the Pakistani prime minister Muhammad Ayub Khan signed the nine-­point Tashkent Declaration on 10 January 1966. The agreement reestablished the status quo ante between India and Pakistan and appeared, at least initially, to normalize relations between the two countries. The Indian media spoke enthusiastically of the “Spirit of Tashkent.”81 That spirit was short-­lived. The real winner of the Tashkent summit was the Soviet Union, by adding diplomatic substance to what had hitherto been primarily cultural exchanges between South and Central Asia. Ever since the socialist reconstruction projects of 1937, Tashkent had been meant to become a diplomatic center for Asia.82 Tashkent’s citizens were told that the eyes of the world were trained on them as they assumed their role in the postcolonial world.83 Internationally, the summit was a departure, at least in Asia, from a virtual Euro-­American monopoly in settling matters of international peace and security. It was a victory that did not go unnoticed. Even before the Tashkent Declaration was signed, the Indian Express saw the fact that negotiations were held in Tashkent under Russian mediation as a blow to the Commonwealth: “If independence of India and Pakistan were the beginning of the end of Western empire in Asia, the Tashkent meeting is the end of that beginning.”84 British policy documents from the era reveal similar sentiments.85 So too did Indian observers consider it a corrective on Chinese regional power. After years of Indo-­Chinese soft power competition over the “moral” leadership of Asia,86 and with the Sino-­Indian border war not four years in the past, M. S. Rajan gleefully noted that “a rival Communist state with which it has a running ideological dispute and which it has stubbornly refused to recognize as an Asian Power should have arranged a meeting between two Asian states on the Asian part of its territory and close to Chinese borders, must be highly galling to China.87 In any case, as Paul McGarr shows, the summit had improved relations with the Soviet Union and weakened Pakistan’s ties to the Western bloc.88 However, at two in the morning on the day after signing the declaration, Lal Bahadur Shastri passed away in his Tashkent hotel. Given the striking timing of his death, rumors of foul play—particularly by the CIA—soon began to circulate, exacerbated by the fact that a post mortem was never carried out.89 Though these rumors were never fully laid to rest, resurfacing particularly



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in the late 1970s after India’s Emergency and again in recent years as the fifty-­year classification of related documents was not honored, the consensus appears to be that Shastri had suffered a heart attack—it was his third.90 A grief-­stricken Jha would later state that “in Tashkent, Shastri attained his full stature as a world statesman.”91 Though great pains were taken to ensure that Shastri’s passing did not adversely impact the strides made in Indo-­Pakistani relations—Ayub Khan famously joined in carrying Shastri’s coffin for his repatriation—the loss of India’s second prime minister did cast a long shadow over the summit. Then, not three months later, disaster struck again when on 26 April an earthquake rocked Tashkent, destroying much of the old city, and leaving over 200,000 people homeless.92 This, then, was a twofold destruction of internationalist optimism as well as of a city. Massive rebuilding efforts drew the city’s aesthetic closer to that of other Soviet cities, and the influx of construction labor changed the demography of the city. Wide boulevards and large apartment blocks came to dominate the cityscape. However, the process of re-­creating Tashkent tells volumes of the politics of memory, particularly of international memory. What aspects of the city’s identity were forgotten, and which were emphasized through (re)naming and dedication practices? The massive Pakhtakor stadium, which had housed the public meetings of the Afro-­Asian Writers’ Conference, survived the earthquake largely intact and still stands today despite calls for a modern overhaul. There were also new additions to the city, several of which highlight India’s connection to the city. Among these are a Mahatma Gandhi Street and a Lal Bahadur Shastri Street. In later years, this neighborhood was augmented by a Shastri statue, a Shastri monument, and a Shastri school. Designed by the renowned Uzbek sculptor Yakov Shapiro, the monument was erected in 1976 (figure 8.3). It has since become a site of international memory in its own right as an important focus of state visits. When the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh visited Tashkent in 2006, the mayor accompanied him to the monument, stating that “children from schools in Tashkent who are learning Hindi language often come here because they associate this park with India. . . . Many people who have fond memories of India come here to enjoy the serenity of this place.”93 In July 2015, Prime Minister Modi laid a wreath at the monument, praising the people of Tashkent for preserving Shastri’s legacy.94 Today, Shastri’s statue stands as a physical reminder of Tashkent as a site of Indian international memory. It also shows that, though overland trade

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Figure 8.3. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pays tribute to former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in Tashkent. Photo by Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India.

gradually diminished in importance and became more difficult as the twentieth century progressed, the roads from India past Kabul and onward to Tashkent were never fully closed.95 This history, as well as a considerable continuity of cultural identification with the lands beyond the Pamirs, helps explain why Indian anti-­imperialists traveled them so frequently and enthusiastically from the end of the First World War onward. The longue-­durée history of Tashkent as a site of Indian diasporic activity, anti-­imperialist internationalism, and later as a focal point of both postcolonial internationalism and the brokerage of peace, proves the durability of this city in the Indian internationalist imaginary.

Notes An early draft of this chapter has benefited from thoughtful comments by Elena Paskaleva (Leiden) and Hanna Jansen (UvA Amsterdam). Epigraph: Muhammad Iqbal, “The Tatar’s Dream,” from: Bal-­i-­Jibril (Gabriel’s Wing), translated by V. G. Kiernan, Poems from Iqbal, rendering in English Verse with Comparative Urdu/ Persian Text (Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 2009 [1955]), 154.



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1. Hafeez Malik, “The New World Order Within the Iqbalian Framework,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 21, no. 1 (1997): 17–36, 17. 2. On conceptualizing such forms of non-­Western internationalism, see, in particular, Çemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-­Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-­Asian and Pan-­Islamic Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Çemil Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). 3. V.G. Kiernan, Poems from Iqbal. Renderings in English Verse with Comparative Urdu Text, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), xx. 4. On India and Japanese Pan-­Asianism, see, among others, S. N. Hay, Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan, China, and India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970); Tilak Raj Sareen, Indian Revolutionaries, Japan and British Imperialism (New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1993); and Rustom Barucha, Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996). 5. “Ho raha hai Asia ka kharqa-­e-­dairina chaak / naujawan aqwam-­e-­nau doulat ke hain peraya posh.” From Khizar-­e-­Rah (Khizr the Guide). 6. “Na Asia mein na yorap mein souz-­o-­saaz-­e-­Hayat / Khudi ki mout hai ye, aur woh zameer ki mout.” From Zarb-­e-­Kalim (The Rod of Moses). 7. “Tehran ho gar alam-­e-­mashriq ka Jeneeva / Shaid kurra-­e-­arz ki taqdeer badal jaye.” From Zarb-­e-­Kalim. 8. M. H. Husain, A Message from the East: A Translation of Iqbal’s “Payam-­i Mashriq” into English Verse (Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 1977), 161. 9. This chapter largely covers the period in which Tashkent was located in the Uzbek SSR. “Uzbekistan,” in official use since 1991, will be used for general reference purposes. There will be limited reference to the preceding Khanate and Tsarist periods. 10. Scott Levi speaks of a strong psychological attachment to the “homeland of their Timurid ancestors.” Scott Levi, The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and Its Trade, 1550–1900 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 14–15. 11. Ibid., 15. For more detail, see Richard Foltz, Mughal India and Central Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 12. Respectively: migrants, Islamic authorities, and writers. 13. Carolien Stolte, “‘The People’s Bandung’: Local Anti-­Imperialists on an Afro-­Asian Stage,” Journal of World History 30, nos. 1–2 (2019): 125–56. 14. Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2015); Masha Kirasirova, “‘Sons of Muslims’ in Moscow: Soviet Central Asian Mediators to the ‘Foreign East,’ 1955–1962,” Ab Imperio, no. 4 (2011): 106– 32; Paul Stronski, Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930–1966 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010); Ivar Spector, The Soviet Union and the Muslim World, 1917–1956 ­(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1956); Hanna Jansen, “Soviet ‘Afro-­Asians’ in U ­ NESCO,” Journal of World History 30, nos. 1–2 (2019): 193–221; Artemy Kalinovsky, Laboratory of Socialist Development: Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), especially chapters 1 and 8. 15. Among others, Michael Goebel, Anti-­Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Ole Birk Laursen, “Spaces of Indian Anti-­Colonialism in Early Twentieth Century London and Paris,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 44, no. 4 (2021): 634–50; and Stephen Legg, ed., Placing

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Internationalism: International Conferences and the Making of the Modern World (London: Bloomsbury, 2021). 16. Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin, “Rethinking the History of Internationalism,” in Internationalisms: A Twentieth Century History, ed. Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 3–14; Anne-­Isabelle Richard, “The Limits of Solidarity: Europeanism, Anti-­Colonialism and Socialism at the Congress of the Peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa at Putaux, 1948,” European Review of History 21, no. 4 (2014): 519–37. For an overview of the Indian case, see Carolien Stolte, “South Asia and South Asians in the Worldwide Web of Anti-­Colonial Solidarity,” in Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia, ed. Maria Framke and Harald Fischer-­Tiné (London: Routledge, 2021), 463–73. 17. Stronski, Tashkent. 18. On the former two, see Maia Ramnath, Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); and Harald Fischer-­Tiné, “Indian Nationalism and the ‘World Forces’: Transnational and Diasporic Dimensions of the Indian Freedom Movement on the Eve of the First World War,” Journal of Global History 2, no. 3 (2007): 325–44. 19. Ramnath, Haj to Utopia, especially 124–50. 20. See, in particular, Kirasirova, “‘Sons of Muslims’”; and Jansen, “Soviet ‘Afro-­Asians’ in UNESCO.” 21. On continuities and discontinuities in this border region, see Elisabeth Leake, The Defiant Border: The Afghan-­Pakistan Borderlands in the Era of Decolonization, 1936–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 22. Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen, The Myth of Continents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 177–78. 23. Frances Wood, The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 18. 24. Levi, Indian Diaspora, 19. 25. Muzaffar Ahmad, The Communist Party of India and Its Formation Abroad (Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1962), 37–42. 26. Typescript (with corrections) for Shaukat Usmani’s memoirs, P. C. Joshi Archives, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. On this part of Usmani’s journeys, see also Ali Raza, Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 52–65. 27. On interpreting this account and others like it, see also Raza, Revolutionary Pasts, 55. 28. Minosher Rustom Masani, Congress Socialist, 22 January 1936. 29. International Association for Cultural Freedom Records, box 173, country folder 5: India, Special Collections, University of Chicago. 30. Shapurji Saklatvala, “India from My Tashkent Window,” 16, SI 10, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi (hereafter cited as NMML). 31. Yusuf Mehrally, “Changing Asia,” Congress Socialist, 29 February 1936. 32. Editorial, Congress Socialist, 11 January 1936. 33. Carolien Stolte, “Compass Points: Four Indian Cartographies of Asia, c. 1930–1955,” in Asianisms: Regionalist Interaction and Integration, ed. Marc Frey and Nicola Spakowski (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2016), 49–74. 34. M. Pratap, World Federation, October 1939.



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35. Except for the Tatar newspaper Ulug Turkestan, which was enthusiastic about the visit. G. L. Dmitriev, Indian Revolutionaries in Central Asia (Kolkata: Mulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute, 2002), 44. 36. Mahendra Pratap, My Life Story 1886–1979 (Dehradun: self-­published, 1947), 150. 37. Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, 127. 38. Muhiddinov was arrested in 1933 and executed in 1934. Kamoludin Abdullaev, Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), 291. 39. Pratap, My Life Story, 151. 40. Ibid. 41. Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India (Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1970), introduction. 42. On Barakatullah in Tashkent, see most recently Raza, Revolutionary Pasts, 60–65. 43. Dmitriev, Indian Revolutionaries, 48; Gangadhar Adhikari, Documents on the History of the Communist Party of India, vol. 1, 1917–1922 (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1972), 126. 44. Dmitriev, Indian Revolutionaries, 33. 45. Ibid. For this episode from a Soviet point of view, see Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, 104–7. 46. On the Ghadr movement and their anti-­imperialist projects, see Ramnath, Haj to Utopia. 47. Quoted in Dmitriev, Indian Revolutionaries, 53. 48. Surendra Gopal, Indian Freedom-­Fighters in Tashkent, 1917–1922 (Calcutta: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute, 2002), 10. 49. Ibid., 11. 50. RCCSRMH 544-­1-­11, Acharya to Roy, 27 October 1920. Indo-­Russian Relations, 34–36, 35. 51. Adhikari, Documents, 1:137. 52. Ibid. 53. Lenin to Abdur Rabb Barq, in P. Roy, S. D. Gupta, and H. Vasudevan, eds., Indo-­Russian Relations 1917–1947: Select Documents from the Archives of the Russian Federation Part I: 1917– 1928 (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1999), 6. 54. John Riddell, ed., To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920—First Congress of the Peoples of the East (New York: Pathfinder, 1993); Stephen White, “Communism and the East: Baku, 1920,” Slavic Review 33, no. 3 (1974): 492–514. 55. Ahmad, Communist Party of India, 30. 56. This intensified a process of discouragement of Indian trade already set in motion by the Russian occupation of Tashkent in 1865. See Levi, Indian Diaspora, 250–58. On relocation in the 1920s, see Gopal, Indian Freedom-­Fighters, 18–21. 57. Vineet Thakur, “An Asian Drama: The Asian Relations Conference, 1947,” International History Review 2019, Vol.41 (3): 673-­695; Carolien Stolte, “‘The Asiatic Hour’: New Perspectives on the Asian Relations Conference, New Delhi, 1947,” in The Non-­Aligned Movement and the Cold War: Delhi—Bandung—Belgrade, ed. Natasha Miskovic, Harald Fischer-­Tine, and Nada Boskovska (London: Routledge, 2014), 57–75. 58. Asian Relations: Being Report and Documentation of the First Asian Relations Conference New Delhi, March–April 1947 (New Delhi: Asian Relations Organization, 1948), 62. 59. Ibid., 194, 202.

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60. Shapurji Saklatvala, unpublished draft, “Scheme of a book on Central Asia,” SI 14, NMML. 61. Asian Relations, 255–56. 62. Stolte, “‘People’s Bandung.’” 63. Rameshwari Nehru Personal Papers: Conference of Asian Countries, 1955, NMML. On Babahan and the role of Islam in Soviet external relations, see also Eren Tasar, Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia, 1943–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 64. Kirasirova, “‘Sons of Muslims,’” 113–14. 65. M. V. Desai, “The Asian Writers’ Conference, December 1956,” Books Abroad 31, no. 3 (1957): 243–45. 66. Geeta Kapur, “Partisan Modernity,” in Mulk Raj Anand: Shaping the Indian Modern, ed. Annapurna Garimella (New Delhi: Marg, 2005), 28–41, 36. 67. Indonesia National Committee for the Afro-­Asian Writers’ Conference, Documents on Culture of the Struggling Afro-­Asian Peoples (Denpassar: Indonesia National Committee for the Afro-­Asian Writers Conference, 1963), 19–21. 68. Desai, “Asian Writers’ Conference,” 245. 69. Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, Moscow-­te Koyek Din (Calcutta: n.p., 1959). On Bandyopadhyay, though not on his Central Asian travels, see Mahasveta Devi, Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1975). 70. Biographies of Mulk Raj Anand mostly focus on his fiction rather than his activism. On his regionalist and socialist politics, see, respectively, Jessica Berman, “Toward a Regional Cosmopolitanism: The Case of Mulk Raj Anand,” Modern Fiction Studies 55, no. 1 (2009): 142–62; and Kapur, “Partisan Modernity,” 28–41. 71. Foreign Radio Broadcasts Daily Report (FBIS-­FRB-­58-­196), Moscow, TASS, 4 October 1958. 72. Foreign Radio Broadcasts Daily Report (FBIS-­FRB-­58-­200), Moscow, Soviet Home Service, 13 October 1958. 73. Foreign Radio Broadcasts Daily Report (FBIS-­FRB-­58-­210), Moscow, TASS, 28 October 1958. 74. Ibid. 75. Hala Halim, “Lotus, the Afro-­Asian Nexus, and Global South Comparatism,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 32, no. 3 (2012): 563–83; and, most recently, Zed el Nabolsy, “Lotus and the Self-­Representation of Afro-­Asian Writers as the Vanguard of Modernity,” Interventions 23, no. 4 (2021): 596–620. 76. Rossen Djagalov, From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema Between the Second and Third Worlds (Montreal: McGill-­Queens University Press, 2020), 70. 77. Quoted in ibid., translation by Rossen Djagalov. 78. For a thorough account of the war, see Paul McGarr, The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and the Indian Subcontinent, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 301–44. For a personal account, see C. S. Jha, From Bandung to Tashkent (New Delhi: Sangam, 1983), 198–222. 79. M. S. Rajan, “The Tashkent Declaration: Retrospect and Prospect,” International Studies 8, nos. 1–2 (1966): 1–28, 7. 80. Jha, From Bandung to Tashkent, 237. 81. Ibid., 17.



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82. Stronski, Tashkent, 252. 83. Ibid. 84. Editorial, Indian Express, 3 January 1966. 85. McGarr, Cold War in South Asia, 340–42. 86. Rahul Mukherji, “Appraising the Legacy of Bandung: A View from India,” in Bandung Revisited: The Legacy of the 1955 Asian-­African Conference for International Order, ed. Seng Tan and Amitav Acharya (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2008), 160–79. 87. Rajan, “Tashkent Declaration,” 25. 88. McGarr, Cold War in South Asia, chapter 10. 89. Saba Naqvi, “Tashkent Whodunnit: An Enduring Tale,” Outlook India, 16 July 2012; Soutik Biswas, “Was Mr. Shastri Murdered?,” BBC News, 27 August 2009. 90. On the heart attack, see Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi (London: Macmillan 2007), 403; and Katherine Frank, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi (London: Harper Collins, 2001), 283. 91. Jha, From Bandung to Tashkent, 292. 92. Malise Ruthven, Historical Atlas of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 145. 93. “PM Visits Shastri Monument in Tashkent,” Government of India Press Release, 26 April 2006, accessed 1 November 2018, https://​archivepmo​.nic​.in​/drmanmohansingh​/press​ -details​.php​?nodeid​=​429. 94. “Modi Pays Tribute to Lal Bahadur Shastri in Tashkent,” India Today, 7 July 2015. 95. For this point, see Levi, Indian Diaspora, 20.

CHAPTER 9

Cosmopolitan, Global, International? New York’s Material Sites of Memory and Forgetting Sarah C. Dunstan, David Goodman, and Glenda Sluga

Introduction While “international” cities are many—from Geneva to The Hague, Arusha, Nairobi, and Shanghai—only New York has for more than a century oozed a relatively global reputation as the quintessential cosmopolitan city. Just how these characteristics have intersected and informed each other in the material memory of New York—the historical compatibility of global or economic, culturally cosmopolitan, and more politically internationalist characterizations—is the subject of this essay. From early in its development, New York, like so many port cities, was global in a commercial sense and cosmopolitan culturally. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, connecting New York to the Great Lakes, made it the entrepôt for a vast hinterland, putting it well ahead of its East Coast rivals Boston and Philadelphia in attracting the trade that was to fuel its extraordinary expansion as a center of finance and a focus of a globalizing world.1 Then, from the turn of the twentieth century, New York, and Manhattan in particular, accrued a more specifically international reputation, reflecting the rising star of an institution-­and law-­focused internationalism that penetrated popular as well as political discourse. On this view, it is not surprising that by the mid-­twentieth century New York became the home of the United Nations (UN), the modern symbol of this political internationalism. Yet there was no inevitability to that development,



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Figure 9.1. UN Secretary-­ General Dag Hammarskjöld outside the new UN building, 1953. United Nations, photo no. 60982.

just as there was little memory at midcentury of New York’s earlier international role, or positive evocation of its established cosmopolitan and global propensities. In 1945 the UN Headquarters Committee—seeking a location for the new UN—held New York’s size and even its diversity against it, ruling the city out of contention, although it was prepared to consider smaller New York area towns at least twenty-­five miles away.2 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle felt obliged to defend a Flushing Meadows option against “those who propound that the cosmopolitan population of the city is a detriment to the establishment of the U.N. here.”3 For a brief moment, other cities in the world seemed more appealing and viable. In the United States itself, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Hyde Park, New York, and Stamford, Connecticut, all came under consideration.4 In December 1946, however, New York’s mayor persisted, boldly asserting his city’s diversity as central to its bid, and declaring that the UN could “find no better place to establish the tradition of international government.” New York was “the world’s most cosmopolitan city,” a place where “people of every origin live together happily and productively.”5 When the argument was won only days later, however, it was mainly because of a dramatic intervention by

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the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr., who gifted money to purchase land on Manhattan along the East River between 42nd and 48th Streets.6 Ultimately, the memory of New York’s cosmopolitan, global, or international history played little role in the choice of New York for the UN headquarters or the process of its transformation into the UN’s home.7 Indeed, as scholars have noted, New York’s cosmopolitan urban layers had to be removed to create the skyscraper that would become the modern iconic image of mid-­twentieth-­century internationalism. Samuel Zipp, drawing attention to the slum clearance vision informing the development of the East River site, argues that the modernist architecture of the new UN buildings “acquired a double symbolism as a blueprint for both a new, ordered international terrain and a new, ordered city.”8 Forgetting was intrinsic to the process of New York’s material reinvention as a new world capital, not least the further loss of memory of the entwined dimensions of the city’s cosmopolitan, global, and internationalist pasts already somewhat submerged in its crowded and built-­over spaces. The modern UN skyscraper, anchored in the modernity of New York, looked to the future by demolishing the traces of what had been. A fascinating 1948 documentary film, Clearing the Way for the United Nations, showed a montage of different activities on the site, including older Italian men playing bocce—poignantly evoking the cosmopolitanism of a neighborhood that now had to be removed to make way for the internationalist institution.9 Our aim in this essay is to map a history of how New York has functioned as a site of repeated forgetting, where the many layers of its international pasts have been compressed and redacted. These include a New York that was a haven for the dispossessed and a space for the mixing of peoples. Then there was the New York that stood for the global philanthropic and business interests material to the changing skyline of Midtown Manhattan with its constant throb of transnational communication and exchange. As we show, without Rockefeller funding, New York’s sites of international memory would look radically different. As significantly, there was an international New York represented by the neighborhood of Harlem, a crucial site of the memory of twentieth-­century internationalism that is a focus of this volume.10 In 1919, the Harlem-­based African American scholar-­activist W. E. B. Du Bois traveled by ship from New York to Paris, where the peace talks that ended the First World War and created the League of Nations were taking place.11 From Paris, Du Bois brought back to New York his own vision of internationalism in the form of his Pan-­African Association, an organization with



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antecedents in prewar Black internationalisms. Du Bois’s thinking, alongside the activism of other leaders such as Marcus and Amy Ashwood Garvey, met with enthusiasm in the interwar period, as peoples from throughout the African world emigrated to the United States and, in particular, to Harlem.12 Harlem became the emblem of new kinds of racial solidarity, and internationalism formed in resistance to experiences of segregation and racism.13 Through the first half of the twentieth century, just as the Upper West Side residences of the immigrant Jewish women Rosika Schwimmer and Edith Wynne headquartered the American movement for world government, Harlem shaped the political ambitiousness of international thought.14 Indeed, the relationship between intersecting and competing experiences and ideas of internationalism can be associated with specific physical locations in New York. After World War II, the tense realities of New York’s racialized landscape brought these competing sites of global, cosmopolitan, and internationalist ambitions into dissonant conflict with the uneven institutionalized visions of world government heralded by the United Nations’ Midtown Manhattan headquarters, with its reaching skyscraper and glass walls. In the literature on the history of twentieth-­century internationalisms, cosmopolitanism and globalism have confused lineages and linkages.15 In what follows, we pick up the diverse strands of cosmopolitan, global, and internationalist memory that constitute New York’s international past. Our focus is on the potential of spatial and material sites for remembering how, through the twentieth century, international New York was caught up in related, and layered, political, economic, and cultural, even racial characterizations—from inside and outside. We should not be surprised to find a 1935 French guidebook touting “two faces to New York.” The “city of business,” and the city of mingling “races”: “from the Negro quarter of Harlem to the Ghetto, from the Italian and Polish slums to Chinatown.”16 As we will see, in a distinct and continuing subplot, some internationalists found the mingling uncomfortable and at best irrelevant to their plans for international amity or world government. Our aim is to peel back these layers and to tease out the unpredictable ways in which the cosmopolitan diversity of New York City, and even its global reputation, sometimes assisted and sometimes hindered its profile as an international city. As we trace its international past through its built environment, we show that New York’s cultural cosmopolitanism seeded a spectrum of relevant internationalist ambitions at specific physical sites. Significantly, by the latter half of the twentieth century, the density and spread of New York’s self-­consciously internationalist past was often hidden

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from casual view and not well remembered even by UN delegates. Those memories rest in the material traces of the lived city and its landscape, if we look closely enough.

International Manhattan In New York, the entwined strands of the cultural and political history of twentieth-­century internationalism that led eventually to the establishment of the UN reach back into the last decades of the nineteenth century. No New York site inhabits the idea of an international lieu de mémoire more profoundly than the Statue of Liberty. Installed in 1881 on Bedloe’s Island (later renamed Liberty Island) at the entrance to New York’s port, the statue manifested the character of New York as a refuge transcending the boundaries of the sovereign state. At the same time, as its 1984 recognition as a UNESCO world heritage site details, the Statue of Liberty is a site of memory specifically of the cosmopolitan and global characteristics of the “new internationalism” of that period: transnational brotherhood; international capitalism; mobile populations.17 This was the ideational context in which the French-­ gifted statue was dedicated to “the friendship of nations and the peace of the world,” invoking its full name “Liberty Enlightening the World.” According to liberal internationalist ideology of the late nineteenth century, friendship across national borders was a particularly critical component of any future move from nationalism to internationalism, and internationalism represented, it was hoped, a path to permanent peace. Surprisingly, popular histories and memory of the statue elide this particular version of New York’s international past. Instead, the monument is commonly understood as a celebration of the cosmopolitan qualities of New York as a place of refuge for immigrants and refugees. As several scholarly histories have reminded us, that is a depiction that risks forgetting nineteenth-­century hailing of the statue as a guardian at the gates against immigrant hordes.18 Recuperating the history of the statue as a site of international memory is also to recuperate the protests generated in 1890, when it was proposed to use Bedloe’s Island as a depot for receiving immigrants. Indeed, the statue’s sculptor Auguste Bartholdi considered the plan for the mixing of liberty and immigrants “monstrous,” a desecration of what he thought should become “a pantheon for New York city, a shrine for the history and glories of America.”19 Hence the immigrant depot went to nearby Ellis Island. In other words, the Statue of Liberty



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began its life as a symbol of cultural international brotherhood, underlining a long history of universalized political ambitions shared by France and the United States. At that same moment, the statue stood for opposition to the indiscriminate cosmopolitanism of open borders. During and after World War II, it took on distinctly national and patriotic meaning, defining what it meant to be American with little mention of its international celebration of the friendship of nations. New York is full of such sites of subdued and conflicting international memories, often evocative of simultaneously cosmopolitan, global, and internationalist pasts, more often recuperated within celebratory national or metropolitan contexts. In the same late nineteenth-­century period that the Statue of Liberty symbolized cultural international brotherhood, major urban centers on the East Coast of the United States became home to burgeoning networks of associations and organizations that supported the idea that international legal and political institutions could be the instruments of permanent peace.20 By the end of World War I, these strands of internationalism grew in legitimacy as President Woodrow Wilson became associated with the invention of the League of Nations, the world’s first example of what was at the time known as “international government”—with all its limitations. US membership was of course stymied by Congress, and the League of Nations found its home in Europe, in Geneva. However, through the interwar decades, in the US context, New York remained a crucial center of internationalist activism. Columbia University, on the Upper West Side, was especially associated with the promotion of an “international mind” or way of thinking, thanks to its president Nicholas Murray Butler.21 Midtown Manhattan became home to clusters of internationalist organizations that in different ways supported the mission of the League of Nations. The Rockefeller Foundation’s Council on Foreign Relations—which stubbornly promoted the League of Nations, despite the government’s reluctance—opened its doors on West 43rd Street in 1921 and was active in the city thereafter.22 The Institute for Pacific Relations (also funded by the Rockefeller Foundation) began in a 1925 meeting at the Midtown Yale Club; under Secretary General Edward Carter from 1933, its center of gravity was moved from Honolulu to New York.23 Across the street from the New York Public Library, the building at 8 West 40th Street housed a suite of pacifist and internationalist organizations—including the League of Nations Association, the International Student Service, the National Peace Conference, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, the American Committee for Non-­participation in Japanese Aggression,  the

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Figure 9.2. Rockefeller Center, New York, August 1942. Office of War Information, 30-­N-­44-­1817, National Archives and Record Administration.

Committee for Concerted Peace Efforts, the American Committee on European Reconstruction, Student Defenders of Democracy, the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Library and Foundation. Members and supporters of these organizations visited the building for working bees and meetings and to hear speakers. Their core activity was letter writing—their letters and cards often mailed from the buildings. Significantly, little physical trace or memory of these organizations and their resonance through the interwar period remains, just as the significance of the United States as an agent of twentieth-­century internationalism is often forgotten. There are no plaques or statues although, at the time, the addresses of such sites were widely circulated and known. Buildings as much as memorials evoked a New York where cosmopolitanism and internationalism overlapped and intersected. Their construction, and functions, mingled with versions of a global New York rooted in communications, trade, and commerce. As the search for a UN headquarters city revealed, many other US cities had boosters proclaiming their world status, but New York’s claims to be the hub of a newly integrated world economy scarcely needed trumpeting or elaboration. In 1920, when a bomb exploded



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outside the offices of J. P. Morgan near the corner of Wall and Broad Streets, the New York Daily News quite matter-­of-­factly described the location as “the financial center of the world.”24 In 1922 the New York Herald explained, again without fanfare, that the “world radio center” was “the second floor of an unpretentious building at 64 Broad Street,” the heart of the telegraph traffic between the United States and Europe.25 The economic internationalism of global business and business-­derived philanthropy is a topic on its own— here, it is enough to observe that in New York business and communications hubs were adjacent to but spatially removed from the most cosmopolitan and diverse parts of the city. Midtown and Wall Street’s global ambitions effaced the cultural diversity of the city and replaced it with its own symbols of internationalism. Some of these sites, however, expressed internationalism on a material scale that meant they persisted physically and in memory. When the International Building at the Rockefeller Center in Midtown opened in 1935, a New York heritage report explains, it was presented as “a symbol of cooperation among nations.”26 John D. Rockefeller Jr., one of the wealthiest men in the world, thought of global commerce, trade, and the internationalism of cosmopolitan brotherhood and pacifism as fundamentally interconnected. The buildings in the complex were constructed as “symbols in stone and steel of the common interests, mutual understanding and good will,” representing “the spirit of cooperation and brotherhood among all nations . . . the only foundation [for] enduring world peace and prosperity.”27 At a time when the relative authority of the League of Nations was being diminished by the rise of authoritarianism across the world, the Rockefeller commercial complex in New York deliberately sought “international tenants,” and was adorned with artwork on internationalist themes with an implicit commercial bent. The “communications and international trade themes,” Dorothy Glancy notes, were “ingenious means to induce groups of businesses to lease space” at the height of the Depression.28 The adjacent smaller buildings took on other manifestations of an international identity—one became a British Empire building, another a French and then an Italian building, named the Palazzo d’Italia. That New York inspired a popular engagement with the League of Nations–focused internationalism of the interwar period is nowhere more apparent than in the local history and forgotten memory of the “World Government Campaign” run by the Hungarian-­born (and Jewish) Rosika Schwimmer and the wealthy Texan Lola Maverick Lloyd from a residence on West 70th Street.29 In the mid-­1930s, Schwimmer was living in New York

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as a stateless refugee, drawing endlessly on her two decades of knowledge and experience of Woodrow Wilson’s pro-­League internationalism—she had translated Wilson’s speeches and made singular attempts to promote peace through a feminist-­inspired support for world government. Until Schwimmer’s death in 1948, the World Government movement published pamphlets on the choice between Chaos, War or a New World Order. Schwimmer, Lloyd, and their assistant Edith Wynner typically argued that “the Federation of Nations must be a democratic league controlled by direct representation of the peoples and not by governments and bureaucracies.”30 They wanted “an all-­inclusive, democratic Federation of Nations on the model of the United States of America.”31 A more famous but more limited world federation movement was started by Clarence Streit, a journalist with the New York Times. In 1939 Streit discussed his “Union Now” plan at the Town Hall on 43rd Street, the talk broadcast nationally on NBC’s America’s Town Meeting of the Air. Streit’s book Union Now went through multiple editions—1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1943, 1949— as an eager public sought to orient themselves toward the rapidly changing world circumstances. Streit wanted a federation of existing democracies—the United States, the UK, Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa—that would “secure world peace peacefully.” But as George Orwell pointed out, such a federation would disqualify the participation of the subject populations of the European empires as anything other than imperial subjects.32 Feminists too were critical; the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom —an international and internationalist organization Schwimmer had midwifed into being in 1916—decried his plan as likely to exacerbate existing divisions between nations. They advocated a more inclusive internationalism, a “real world government” along Schwimmer’s lines.33 Much to Wynner’s chagrin, as the idea of a new intergovernmental body to replace the League of Nations was promoted by the US government, from 1943 it was Streit’s masculine voice that garnered attention amid the flurry of internationalist thinking. Forgetting was folded into the immediate experience of internationalism, especially when the agency was a woman’s. After World War II, New York was busy with debate between and work among well-­ensconced rival internationalist groups. Up on East 74th Street was the headquarters of World Federalists, U.S.A., Inc., founded in 1945. Within a few years, this organization became the United World Federalists, Inc., with headquarters on West 32nd Street. One of the leaders of the group was the Wall Street lawyer Grenville Clark. In September 1946, the



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organization held a convention in New York to begin selecting its World Government Man of the Year; nominees included Albert Einstein, Raymond Swing, E. B. White, and Emery Reves. Reves, like Schwimmer and Wynner, was a Hungarian Jew (formerly Imre Revesz) who advocated world government in the same period. He arrived in New York in 1933, after fleeing Berlin, and in 1941 leased space in the RCA building at the Rockefeller Center. Soon thereafter he published a best-­selling book, The Anatomy of Peace.34 Reves wanted to “create peace by a legal order between men beyond and above the existing nation-­state structure,” counterposed to the nation-­state-­based league and later UN institutions.35 Reader’s Digest contracted to print excerpts of his book in three consecutive instalments and organized discussions “in 15,000 American clubs and discussion groups, with three speakers in each place presenting the three parts of the book.”36 The lives of Reves, Streit and Schwimmer, offer evidence that in private homes and public fora, New York fostered many, often rivalrous, internationalisms, but these efforts were not well remembered in the city’s history or self-­presentation.

Harlem In the midst of New York’s material sites of international memory sits Harlem, a neighborhood spanning roughly from Frederick Douglass Boulevard to Fifth Avenue, from 96th Street up to 155th Street. From the late nineteenth century, as Black workers from the American South, Jamaica, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic came up to Harlem, the neighborhood housed a rich, if occasionally tense, panoply of Black cultures, prompting the African American Rhodes scholar and writer Alain Locke to dub it “the mecca of the New Negro.”37 Locke’s contemporary, the writer Wallace Thurman, also noted the cosmopolitan nature of the neighborhood, stating that the African American, already an “ethnic amalgam,” was in Harlem “associated and intermixing with Negroes from the Caribbean, from Africa, Asia, South America, and any other place dark-­skinned people hail from.”38 During the interwar period, Harlem developed an internationalist reputation as the headquarters of societies and individuals promoting similar intersecting ambitions of internationalism and Pan-­Africanism. It seemed almost inevitable, then, that it would become the site of the Fourth Pan-­ African Congress in 1927. The organizers—including Addie Waites Hunton, Lillian A. Alexander, and W. E. B. Du Bois—explained the congress on the

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basis that the “various problems of Africa at the present time make all of our national and local problems international and worldwide.”39 The idea for this fourth congress was to hold “a sort of chautauqua where definite information concerning Africa past and present will be given . . . elucidated and explained by representatives of different groups of African descent, by inhabitants of different areas and by representatives of groups and classes from other races and places.” By the congress’s end, it was hoped that “general conclusions” and “lines of action” might be decided that “shall guide the darker races toward eventual self-­realization and emancipation.”40 Delegates came from throughout the African diaspora to attend. We can map the international momentum of this New York congress through the streets and buildings of Harlem. The morning sessions of the Fourth Pan-­African Congress—held at the headquarters of the congress at Grace Congregational Church, 308 West 139th Street—were dedicated to discussions of the conditions in colonial territories in Africa. Inhabitants of various international mandate territories gave reports on the labor conditions and attendees proposed plans for progress that they intended to submit to the League of Nations, the overseer of these former colonies of the powers defeated in the First World War. The afternoon and evening sessions were held at other churches throughout Harlem, from the opening meeting at St. Mark’s Methodist Episcopal Church on 137th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue to the sessions at the St. James Presbyterian Church on the corner of 141st and St. Nicholas Avenue, the Salem M. E. Church on 7th Avenue, and the Abyssinian Baptist Church on 138th Street between 7th and Lenox avenues.41 Churches played an important role in Harlem community life in the 1920s; in many ways they were the perfect location for the Fourth Pan-­ African Congress, given its aim of bringing together an international Black community.42 The 1927 Pan-­African Congress was far from the last time that Harlem was linked to the ambitions of twentieth-­century internationalism. It also exposed the cosmopolitan race-­roots of New York’s international past. New York had many cosmopolitan neighborhoods of course, defined by their cultural and racial differences. Not far from Harlem was the East River public housing complex, between 93rd and 105th Streets. A 1941 newspaper report has residents calling it “a sort of league of nations.” Stanley Isaacs, president of the Manhattan Borough, stated that there, “all races and nationalities live together in complete harmony.” Mary Filardi, an Italian mother of four who lived in the East River projects, said she was on good terms with her African American neighbors: “I mean real neighborly, like visiting and



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exchanging little gifts and asking about each other’s children. Her boy and my boy are pals.” She said her building was the true “international house” of the projects.43 That comment contrasted the practical cosmopolitanism of the city’s poor immigrants with the high-­modernist internationalism of the business and philanthropic elites given form in the rather different International House funded by John D. Rockefeller—built on Riverside Drive for international students at Columbia University, and inscribed with his hope that “brotherhood may prevail.” The International House was conceived by Harry Edmonds—an official from one of the earliest Christian internationalist organizations, the YMCA—with considerable planning input from Rockefeller himself. At its opening in 1924, the Chinese ambassador presented a red emblem embroidered with the characters: “Within the Four Seas all are Brothers.” International House was dedicated to an American, modernist, and Protestant version of the idea that international community and understanding could be engineered through appropriate social practices and designed environments.44 Although, as we will see, not all New York internationalisms were the product of elites, or philanthropy at the hands of the ultrawealthy, New York’s sites of international memory would look radically different without the Rockefellers, the headquarters of the UN included. At the apogee of internationalist thinking, money mattered. Capital changed history. The Rockefeller interventions had a material size that meant their version of internationalism is still visible in the city.45 Less well-­funded interwar internationalisms, with their working from home and rented offices, faded from view and from memory much more rapidly. Indeed, this is evident in Harlem, where movements such as Du Bois’s Pan-­African Association operated on a shoestring budget and utilized spaces offered up by other institutions, such as the various churches that hosted the 1927 congress sessions. Once established, the UN’s New York location somewhat obscured the dense earlier social history of the city’s international past we have just sketched. In the post–World War II moment, even before the building of the UN’s iconic skyscraper, for many avowed internationalists living in or visiting the UN complex at its first home in the empty warehouses of the Sperry Gyroscope armaments factory on Long Island, at Lake Success, the choice of New York came to represent a break with the past. The French delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission, René Cassin, arrived in Manhattan in 1946 (before the UN opened at 405 East 42nd Street), while it was still quartered in temporary locations. The Secretariat was set up at Lake Success, but

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Figure 9.3. The Waldorf Astoria menu, 1937. New York Public Library.

council meeting rooms were in the Bronx, on the campus of Hunter College built in the 1930s. When the General Assembly was in session, there was the addition of another location, the former New York City exhibit building (now the Queens Museum) on the site of the 1939–40 World’s Fair pavilion at Flushing Meadows. From his vantage point in the Art Deco towers of the Waldorf Astoria, the Midtown hotel of choice for UN delegates, Cassin contemplated the modernity of New York—the height of the new-­fangled skyscrapers all around, the disorienting traffic below, and the novelty of traffic lights regulating the movement of people and cars. Daily, he ventured forth from Fifth Avenue to the dispersed sites of the UN. All in all, he concluded, having the UN in New York was not as bad as he had feared. Indeed, the city’s modernity augured the possibility of a new and better postwar world: “I have the impression,” he wrote to his wife, Simone, that “it is a world apart from our own. New York is very cosmopolitan.”46 That impression took form at the coiffeur’s in the Waldorf Astoria’s lobby. Here, among employees and clients, all the possible types of the descendants of Europeans were on display, he explained.



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For some of the delegates who arrived in New York to participate in the great experiment in internationalism, the city was cosmopolitan in a modern “gay and carefree” way, and the enormous Waldorf Astoria Hotel notably luxurious. The hotel itself still cultivates the memory of its connection to the UN project in lobby displays that feature menus, pictures, garments, and paraphernalia. Yet, not all the delegates or bureaucrats felt as Cassin did about the significance of the New York setting. Trips out to the Bronx could take an hour or more on the train. A young Brian Urquhart working in the UN bureaucracy complained, “The drive out there is uninspiring to say the least of it and if you go through Harlem it is positively alarming, and the Bronx, when you get there, is a very dreary strident sort of place and not at all the right atmosphere for successful work.”47 Harlem was indeed alarming in this postwar moment, not least because decades of segregated urbanization had left their mark on both the physical and social landscape of the neighborhood.48 The inescapable evidence of urban decay, police brutality, and Black poverty gave the lie to images of New York’s egalitarianism that the US State Department was contemporaneously trying to propagate. There was no single or singular narrative of the compatibility of internationalism and cosmopolitanism in these New York UN milieus. The mayor of Lake Success told reporters in 1946 that he viewed the UN move to his town with “alarm and concern.”49 The Australian delegate Paul Hasluck, who like other members of the Australian UN mission stayed in the Empire State Building, thought New York was a spiritual “hell-­hole.” It was partly the difficult living conditions—food and material goods were relatively plentiful, but rents were high, and delegation salaries did not go far enough, he thought. The challenges of daily transportation between the organization’s four different sites were tedious, as were the distractions of carpenters’ hammers, the flashing of camera bulbs, and the constant flow of sightseers. Hasluck could not imagine any city “less conducive to plain living and high thinking.”50 Some of his dislike manifested in a distaste for the hypermodern, “the American art of publicity and the American taint of ineffectual vulgarity at its worst.” Hasluck wrote back to Canberra warning potential employees of the UN that “the first fortnight’s experience of the United Nations in its temporary headquarters has been rather discouraging. . . . The place is in a whirl of hopes and frustrated ambitions and long arguments of the ‘will you stay or won’t you stay’ kind.”51 Late in 1947, nearly a year after his position became permanent and he was able to find a house, the African American diplomat Ralph Bunche stopped

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commuting from Washington, DC, and took up residence in a new UN housing development in Queens known as Parkway Village, built by a consortium of New York savings banks, with 685 garden apartments surrounding a road network that moved through expanses of lawn and mature trees on the Grand Central Parkway near Lake Success. With an “atmosphere free of discrimination and segregation,” the New York Age reported, “men, women and children of all nations, all colors,” were living side by side—a situation that was “highly profitable” for the banks that owned the property because “in exchange” it got tenants from the UN and guaranteed rents above those generally prevailing in the area.52 From Bunche’s perspective, New York promised relief from the segregation of Washington, DC, and of the State Department. Yet he knew that the two other UN housing projects, Freshmeadows and Peter Cooper Village, built by New York Life and Metropolitan Life Insurance, could deny occupancy to nonwhites.53 New York was somewhat less than the cosmopolitan capital its boosters often claimed it to be, particularly when it came to race. Bunche was ever ready to point out the challenges of the UN’s new home, and the organization’s own racialist complicity: “It is revealing no secret that many delegates from abroad, as well as members of the secretariat, have been genuinely surprised and not infrequently shocked at anti-­Negro and anti-­Semitic attitudes and racial discrimination practices observed in this country.” In the Secretariat of the United Nations, Bunche was one of the few Black employees in the upper echelons, a realm meant to be geographically representative of the world. The significance of his appointment was not lost on other self-­identified people of color. Angolans wrote thanking God “that so right and wise a choice has fallen upon a member of our race. . . . The problems of Africa would not be better solved by so keen a defender of the Negro race. . . . The decision is equivalent to placing the destiny of the Africans in their own hands.”54 Walter Crocker, a British Empire–trained Australian bureaucrat in Bunche’s trusteeship division, responsible for oversight of colonial territories, saw discrimination openly practiced in the hotels, restaurants, and houses in certain parts of New York that would not allow Bunche access. This was one of the many reasons that Crocker objected to New York as the “world capital.” In an alternative evocation of Cassin’s hairdresser story, he observed, “I had difficulty in finding a barber outside of the UN building who would cut the hair of one of my African officials.” Ironically, Crocker himself considered New York’s cosmopolitanism—with its mixing of races, teeming through subways and public spaces—as the core of its unsuitability as a site for an intergovernmental



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organization that represented orderly governance. Other reasons for his objections included New York’s concentration of Jews, which allowed, he alleged, a Jewish lobby to dominate the UN’s Middle East agenda; the American government’s McCarthyist anticommunist incursion in the UN’s work. Then there was the sheer impractical expense of New York.55 Crocker represents another turn of the kaleidoscope of New York as a site of entangled cosmopolitan/ global/internationalist memories. New York’s cosmopolitanism could still be regarded as fundamentally at odds with its internationalism, in ways that echoed the reception of the Statue of Liberty, more than half a century earlier, and the UN’s initial reluctance to base itself within New York City. By the late 1940s, New York, as the home of the UN, inspired popular representations of the separate and only sometimes mutually reinforcing global outlooks of the cosmopolitan city and the international organization. The city was regarded both as epitomizing the new internationalist order and as its greatest threat: The New York of refugees and immigrants battled the New York of race mixing, and only sometimes suited the New York of trade and commerce, or even the New York of a new political modernity. Some UN workers saw their New York base as almost dystopian, the existing cosmopolitanism of the city as merely race and class chaos. Then again, marveling at New York’s skyscrapers, Cassin saw in New York’s physical landscape the symbol of an American version of an international future, with its relative abundance of food, its freedom, and even its movies.

Sites of Celluloid Memory From 1952, when the UN moved to its purpose-­built modernist skyscraper, the building’s “glass walls” projected an image of a new modern era of internationalism. Ironically, by this period of the Cold War, public enthusiasm for internationalism was well in decline. In the United States, the anticommunist career purges of American McCarthyism reached into the corridors of the UN. The federalist political motifs of “One World” and “World Government”—so prominent in the mid-­1940s rationale for a new intergovernmental institution that could replace the failed League of Nations—had all but succumbed to accusations of “cosmopolitanism” thrown by both the United States and the USSR against the UN’s internationalism, despite the fact that both countries were among its founding members, with determining voices and veto powers in its Security Council.56

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Over this same period, as the new UN building assumed its place on the Manhattan skyline—a living memorial to the already dissipating ambitions of twentieth-­century internationalism—the figure of the refugee/immigrant returned as a guide to and test of New York’s status as an international lieu de mémoire in the award-­winning movie The Glass Wall (1953). Its director, Ivan Tors, was a Hungarian who had migrated to the United States just before World War II, served with American intelligence forces in the war, then took up scriptwriting in Hollywood. In the movie, Peter, a Hungarian refugee, played by an Italian actor, escapes war-­ravaged Europe and Communist Hungary by stowing away on a ship floated by a nondescript international refugee organization. As Peter runs from customs police through the streets of the city, he encounters a faded dream of liberty and refuge, against the backdrop of a jazz-­themed nightlife. The locals are an underclass, many of them women, struggling to survive in the land of opportunity. With their help, Peter decides his last chance rests with the UN.57 The climax of The Glass Wall takes place at dawn in the new UN building, where Peter, still on the run, goes to plead his case and that of all displaced persons. There, he finds only an empty auditorium, absent its appointed national delegates. The glass-­wall motif captures the UN as both the refugee’s hope for a new life and the continued obstacle to his freedom, the promise of internationalism and its institutional limitations. Tors’s message echoes that of the novelist John Dos Passos, who wrote of the UN building when it opened that it seemed marked by transience rather than monumentality: “You remember looking up at the gleaming blue glass flank of the Secretariat before you walked in and seeing the western sky and the incongruous buildings of midtown Manhattan mirrored in it. Could anything be more suitable? Here is an architecture that mirrors America’s greatest strength, America’s ability to change. Steel frameworks sheathed with glass are as removable as the tents of the Bedouin.”58 Within a few years, Alfred Hitchcock had incorporated Tors’s screen image of the glass wall into his own ambivalent accounting of the UN’s place in world politics.59 By then, even as the UN building stood as a material manifestation of the internationalist ambitions of the 1940s to end war, guarantee peace, and protect the vulnerable and stateless, the Cold War had literally displaced the memory of that internationalism. American McCarthyism undermined the confidence of the new institution by purging its corridors of “disloyal” Americans, and any record of internationalism was subject to disavowal—it



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was as if the United States was erasing the memory of the strength of internationalism and recasting it as a mainly Communist ideology. Around the same time, Edith Wynner was in her Upper West Side apartment reading a newspaper in disbelief: Harold Stassen, the former governor of Minnesota, who through the 1940s had committed to “the reality instead of merely the outline of world government,” was now denying in an American court of law ever having advocated a world police force or world government. This was particularly egregious for Wynner since she had worked for Rosika Schwimmer in the 1940s and for other world government organizations. Wynner, like Schwimmer, was herself an immigrant, a naturalized American whose parents had come to New York from Hungary. She had picked up the internationalist mantle in 1940, at the age of twenty-­five, writing that “the establishment of modern, practical Federalized World Government is the Unfinished Business of our Century.” Wynner had argued for an inclusive world government that would represent the whole world.60 She had refused to recognize the idea of “immature peoples” that had pervaded the thinking at the League of Nations and believed that a world government had as its special purpose the ending of colonialism. The printed record of her thinking and Schwimmer’s was available in their press clipping collection, archived in the New York Public Library. Wynner was aware that these same clippings documented Stassen’s 1943 speeches in support of world government “reprinted verbatim day after day in the Herald Tribune.” In New York, in December 1942, Stassen spoke at the Town Hall on West 43rd Street, strenuously advocating the United Nations alliance as a “world governmental agency.”61 Provoked by Stassen’s denial of the past, for the next forty years, Wynner drew attention to the resources of the New York Public Library in Midtown as a way of remembering the importance of world government and the role of women in its long, New York–based global history.62 At stake, from Wynner’s perspective, was the future, not just the past, of world-­oriented internationalism. New York libraries are among the material sites of memory that attest to this internationalist New York past, with its varieties of internationalism. This includes the Schomburg Library at Malcom X Boulevard. As we have seen, Harlem was a particularly significant site of international association, through patterns of migration, internationalist association, and the self-­ conscious memorialization embedded in projects such as the Schomburg Collection. Named for the Black Puerto Rican scholar and collector, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, the collection was—and remains—a repository for

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materials relating to the Black experience worldwide. It is in that collection that we find the memory of the ongoing importance of race politics and Harlem itself to the Cold War unfolding of twentieth-­century internationalisms. What began as the profound impact of McCarthyism on the UN personnel and agenda, extended through the 1950s and 1960s as a complex Cold War politics reflected in the tension between Midtown and Uptown New York elaborations of internationalism. These tensions were exemplified in Fidel Castro’s 1960 visit to the United Nations, which coincided with the breakdown of US-­Cuban relations. The Eisenhower administration had decided to cut diplomatic ties and place tighter trade embargoes on the island in response to the Cuban government’s seizure of tobacco production and US banks. The Cuban delegation had originally been booked into another of the hotels frequented by UN visitors, the Shelburne. Just blocks from the UN headquarters, on Lexington Avenue and 37th Street, the hotel owner, concerned by the fraying diplomatic ties between Cuba and the United States and the bad behavior of the delegation upon arrival, demanded a second security deposit of $10,000 from the group.63 The New York Times reported that this infuriated Castro who, in turn, complained angrily to the UN. The story goes that when news of this treatment reached the radical African American activist Malcolm X, up in Harlem, he contacted Castro, inviting him to stay at the Hotel Theresa on 124th Street. Built by the German lace manufacturer Gustavus Sidenberg in 1913, the Hotel Theresa had initially been intended for an upmarket white clientele. In a 1940 New York Age advertisement, the hotel management announced that it had “changed its policy . . . and will cater to both races, under Negro management with a Negro staff.”64 Very quickly the hotel became known as “the Waldorf of Harlem,” an African American counterpart to the Waldorf Astoria in Midtown. Indeed, by midcentury the Hotel Theresa had become a space for Black elites across politics, art, and business.65 Many African American performers barred from Midtown Manhattan hotels—such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker, and Lena Horne—frequented the establishment. The hotel was no stranger to politically controversial guests either, frequently hosting Malcolm X when he was in the city and leasing its rooms to the Communist Party of the USA, such as it was then, for its 1959 convention. By inviting Castro to stay at the Hotel Theresa, Malcolm X was offering to consolidate a vision of internationalism that was very different from the one that the city’s mayor Robert F. Wagner and the United Nations were trying to



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Figure 9.4. Hotel Theresa, 125th Street at 7th Avenue, New York City. Boston Public Library, CC By 2.0.

propagate. Bringing Castro to Harlem was, as the New York Amsterdam News reporter James Hicks wrote, “one big weapon in this fight with bigoted white Americans.” The decision of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to visit Castro there gave “the Negroes of Harlem one of the biggest ‘lifts’ they have had in the cold racial war with the white man.”66 More than that, however, it offered a rival brand of internationalism to that of the United Nations’ skyscraper. When Gamal Abdel Nasser, then president of the United Arab Republic, and the Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru made very public trips to Harlem to meet with Castro and Malcolm X, this image only sharpened. Castro referred to his stay in Harlem in his speech at the UN General Assembly, on 26 September 1960, citing it as a declaration of solidarity with the Afro-­Asian platform of neutrality and a challenge to the Soviet-­US binary that framed the way the US secretary of state John Foster Dulles and the State

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Department understood the international order.67 The Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah also emphasized his commitment to an African-­based internationalism in this moment. His speech at the new UN General Assembly Building in Midtown condemned US interventions in the Congo and apartheid in South Africa. He, too, went to Harlem, and the Amsterdam News reported a crowd of fifteen hundred gathered in front of the Hotel Theresa to hear him speak. There, he emphasized his solidarity with the Black American community, declaring: “I wanted you to know that my presence in Harlem would show the solid bond we feel between the people of Africa and the Afro-­ Americans in this country.”68 It was a bond that went both ways. Over the course of these visits, thousands of Harlem residents turned out with supportive placards showing that they had been closely following developments in Africa and Cuba. The messages on the placards ran the gamut from “Viva Nasser” through “Congo for the Congolese.”69 Moreover, the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem had, since 1924, hosted the Schomburg Collection. Nkrumah and other African leaders who came to New York—such as the Kenyan activist Tom Mboya—also made a point of stopping by the library to see the Schomburg Collection, a self-­ consciously constructed site, a kind of “counter-­archive” intended to commemorate the spirit of Black internationalism.70 (Decades earlier the 1927 Pan-­African Congress had also involved a visit to the collection.) Meanwhile, in midcentury New York, even the Waldorf Astoria—at 301 Park Avenue only a few blocks north of the Midtown branch of the New York Public Library—continued to act as an alternative site for remembering and for Black internationalism. We would not know it from its lobby-­sited memories, but it was the location of the second of four international conferences held by the American Society for African Culture (AMSAC) in the late 1950s and early 1960s, all dealing “with the economic, political and social problems of that continent.”71 The first AMSAC conference was held in June 1958 at the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York, but the second, June 26–29, 1959, at the Waldorf Astoria, was by far the largest.72 Over four days, ten different panels brought together the perspectives of African Americans and continental Africans. Highlights included a performance by the Nigerian percussionist Babatunde Olatunji and speeches from Kenya’s second minister, the nationalist activist Dr. Julius Gikonyo Kiano, as well as the young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Kennedy sought to counteract African suspicions of US interests in his talk: “Let us never convince the people of that continent [Africa] that we are interested in them only as pawns in the cold



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war.”73 To the contrary, he assured them, all Africans were a valued part of the international community. At the time, Kennedy was ramping up for his presidential campaign of 1960, and his comments foreshadowed his own approach to cultural diplomacy vis-­à-­vis Africa. During his presidential campaign, Kennedy made a point of stopping at the Hotel Theresa with a delegation that included Jacqueline Kennedy, the Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and Mayor Robert F. Wagner. On that occasion he specifically referenced the impromptu gathering of Third World leaders earlier that year, declaring: “Behind the fact of Castro coming to this hotel, Khrushchev coming to Castro, there is another great traveller in the world, and that is the travel of a world revolution, a world in turmoil. I am delighted to come to Harlem and I think the whole world should come here and the whole world should recognize that we all live right next to each other, whether here in Harlem or on the other side of the globe.”74 Kennedy’s efforts to repurpose the site and incident as an exemplar of New York’s particular brand of US-­led internationalism were not particularly successful on either the world stage or at home. Yet, read back into the history of the Hotel Theresa—an initially segregated space built by a German entrepreneur for white audiences—Kennedy’s vision is indicative of the layered intersections of cosmopolitan and international, cultural, racial, and political identification embedded in New York’s material sites of international memory.

Conclusion Pierre Nora has argued of national remembering that the concept lieu de mémoire signifies a community that has lost “an immense and intimate fund of memory” and survives “only as a reconstituted object beneath the gaze of critical history.” This seems as apt applied to the history of New York as a site of complex entanglement of global, cosmopolitan, and internationalist experiences and ambitions.75 From this entangled perspective, trade and immigration have made New York a global as well as a national city, while the figures of the immigrant, the refugee, and of race-­mixing, have been similarly integral to New York’s internationalism. This simultaneously financial, cultural, and political international orientation could be and was pilloried as a deficit of Americanism, most cynically conveyed in the anticosmopolitanism of the label “Jew York.” It was also celebrated and affirmed, as we have shown, in

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myriad ways. The many international pasts in New York, jostling side by side in different parts of Manhattan Island, and layered into its material landscape, were part of what made it not just another large American city but a site of significant international memory and forgetting. New York’s history of mass immigration, mostly of poor people seeking a better life, created mixing and an urban cosmopolitanism like nowhere else on earth. What we have shown however is that, in much of Manhattan, this cosmopolitanism had to be cast aside to create the monuments of internationalism (from the statue to the UN building) which expressed quite a different vision of international amity and business flourishing in a peaceful and managed world. Memory of internationalism in the city is still skewed toward the monumental legacies of wealthy individuals like Rockefeller, while the very significant history of more fleeting, rented-­room internationalist activism has not been well remembered—and could be better memorialized in a future internationalist New York heritage project. Any such project would need to take into account the fact that in Harlem things worked differently. The internationalisms Harlem produced and harbored nested in a closer alignment with the cosmopolitan history of the area, even as other submerged internationalisms might be excavated from important New York neighborhoods whose memory has instead been preserved in discrete national and/or ethnic neighborhoods—areas such as Chinatown, Little Italy, and Little Syria. These little explored histories are also integral to the history of New York as a site of intersecting scales and layered international pasts.

Notes 1. Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 431. 2. Charlene Mires, Capital of the World: The Race to Host the United Nations (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 138–41. 3. “An Ideal Spot for Home of UN,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 21 October 1946, 8. 4. Jess Stearn, “UNO Drawing Howls on N.Y.-­Conn. Choice,” New York Daily News, 3 February 1946, 2; Mires, Capital of the World, chapters 6–9. 5. “O’Dwyer’s Last Bid to U.N.,” New York Times, 1 December 1946, 1. 6. Mires, Capital of the World, 214–15. 7. For more on the history of the varieties of internationalism, see Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), chapters 1–3; and Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin, eds., Internationalisms: A Twentieth Century History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).



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8. Samuel Zipp, Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 33. 9. Clearing the Way for the United Nations, late 1940s–early 1950s, number 47374, Periscope Film LLC archive, accessed 9 March 2021, https://​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=​68lfjCORClA. 10. On Harlem, see Andrew M. Fearnley and Daniel Matlin, eds., Race Capital? Harlem as Setting and Symbol (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019); Minkah Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); and Irma Watkins-­Owens, Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900–1930 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 11. See Sarah C. Dunstan, “Conflicts of Interest: The 1919 Pan-­African Congress and the Wilsonian Moment,” Callaloo 39, no. 1 (2016): 133–50. 12. Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-­Century America (New York: Verso, 1998), 358. 13. Alain Locke, “Harlem,” Survey Graphic 6 (March 1925): 629–30, 629; James Weldon Johnson, “The Making of Harlem,” 6 (March 1925): 635–39, 635. See also David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Michael Henry Adams, Harlem Lost and Found: An Architectural and Social History, 1765–1915 (New York: Monacelli Press, 2002). 14. “New-­York, la ville merveilleuse: Voir New-­York en une semaine,” Revue de Voyages, July 1935 (Paris: Wagon-­Lits). 15. See, for example, Or Rosenboim, The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and the United States, 1939–1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017); Adom Getachew, Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-­Determination (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019); Duncan Bell, ed., Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-­Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Glenda Sluga and Julia Horne, eds., “Cosmopolitanism: Its Pasts and Practices,” special issue, Journal of World History 21, no. 3 (2010); and Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-­Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-­Islamic and Pan-­Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 16. “New-­York, la ville merveilleuse.” 17. See Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism, chapter 1. 18. See, for example, Bernard Berenson, The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 108–13; and Tyler Stovall, White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021), 82–92. 19. “Bartholdi Grieved,” San Francisco Chronicle, 20 March 1890, 1. 20. See Warren F. Kuehl, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Internationalists (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983). 21. See Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism, chapter 2. 22. The Foreign Policy Association (FPA) was founded in New York in 1918 on West 29th Street. Inderjeet Parmar, Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 86. The FPA and the American Institute for Pacific Relations, some of the earliest manifestations of NGOs actively promoting an internationalist political system, ran seminars for New York teachers and high school students during World War II. 23. Tokomo Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan, and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace (New York: Routledge, 2003), 46, 173–76.

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24. “Think That Morgan Was Object of Plot,” New York Daily News, 17 September 1920, 3. 25. “World Radio Center at 64 Broad Street,” New York Herald, 19 March 1922, 5. 26. Landmarks Preservation Commission, April 23, 1985, Designation List 179 LP-­1449, http://​s​-media​.nyc​.gov​/agencies​/lpc​/lp​/1449​.pdf. 27. Ibid. 28. Dorothy J. Glancy, “Preserving Rockefeller Center,” Urban Lawyer 24 (1992): 434. 29. Rosika Schwimmer (b. 1873) was a key figure in Europe-­based pacifist and feminist movements, particularly those linked across the Atlantic with American women. When the short-­lived liberal Hungarian government that had appointed her the world’s first female ambassador, to a posting in Switzerland, fell, Schwimmer was on the run from a Bolshevik successor and found herself “stateless” in the United States. In 1924 Schwimmer applied to become a US citizen but when she refused to swear to take up arms in defense of the country in case of war, her application was denied. 30. Lola Maverick Lloyd and Rosika Schwimmer, Chaos, War or a New World Order (1924; Chicago: Campaign for World Government, 1937), 4. The pamphlet was originally published in 1924, revised and published in 1937, and again midwar, in 1942. 31. “A World Constitutional Convention,” New York Herald Tribune, 22 February 1938, 18. 32. George Orwell, “Not Counting Niggers,” accessed 5 November 2022, https://​orwell​.ru​ /library​/articles​/niggers​/english​/e​_ncn. 33. “Democracies’ Unity Held Way to Peace,” New York Times, 10 March 1939, 13. 34. “Leonard Lyons,” Miami News, 29 September 1946, 26; “European Publisher Leases Offices Here,” New York Times, 26 August 1941, 34. 35. Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945), 188. 36. Emery Reves to Winston Churchill, 19 December 1945, The Churchill Papers (CHAR 8/721). Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, retrieved 5 Nov 2022, https://archivesearch.lib .cam.ac.uk/repositories/9/archival_objects/1359162. Reves wrote a series of long letters to the editor of the New York Times outlining his case about the futility of seeking enduring peace through nation-­state alliances or federations and the need for a world legal framework. The problem was national sovereignty, he explained in January: “Today sovereignty resides in nation-­states, so we have wars between nation-­states.” Five thousand years of history had shown, he wrote in February 1946, that peace could only be attained by “the integration of the conflicting units—today national units—into a higher system of law, and in no other way.” In November, he complained, “The basic and fatal fallacy of the United Nations Charter is that it deals with states and not with people.” “Over-­All Law Urged,” New York Times, 20 January 1946, 70; “Peace Up to Peoples,” New York Times, 17 February, 1946, 74; “World Law Needed,” New York Times, 3 November 1946, 104. 37. Alain Locke, “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro,” Survey Graphic, March 1923. 38. Wallace Henry Thurman, “Harlem Facets,” in World Tomorrow (New York: Fellowship Press, 1927), 35. 39. Circle for Peace and Foreign Relations, about Pan-­African Congresses, bulletin 2, 1927, 2, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312), Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. 40. Pan African Congress, the object of the Fourth Pan African Congress, June 9, 1927, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312), Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.



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41. Pan African Congress, Official Program of the Fourth Pan-­African Congress, ca. August 1927, 7, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312), Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. 42. On the significance of the church and religion to Black communities in America more generally, see Barbara Savage, Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008). 43. “Races Live Together in Harlem’s East River Projects,” Cleveland Call and Post, December 6, 1941, 2. 44. Azra Dawood, “Building ‘Brotherhood’: John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the Foundations of New York City’s International Student House,” Journal of Architecture 24 (2019): 898–924. 45. On internationalism as an elite project, see Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 46. Letter “vendredi matin 16 mai 1946” (Cassin to his wife, Simone), Fonds Cassin, AP382, cote 158, CARAN, Paris. 47. Documents, typed extracts from letter to Mr. Jebb from Brian Urquhart, n.d., Papers of First Lord Gladwyn, GLAD 1/4/1 1943–45, Churchill College, Cambridge, UK. 48. Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 223. 49. “United Nations Has Trouble Finding Home,” Rapid City (SD) Daily Journal, April 10, 1946, 2. 50. Hasluck to A. S. Watt, June 12,1946, Australian Department of External Affairs, NAA Misc. Corr. M1943. 51. Hasluck to A. S. Watt, April 5, 1946, Australian Department of External Affairs, NAA Misc. Corr. M1943. 52. “Interracial Village Hits Proposed Rental Boost,” New York Age, 5 July 1952, 4. 53. On segregation in the adjoining Metropolitan Life development of Stuyvesant Town, see Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 117–29; six hundred apartments in Peter Cooper Village were made available for UN employees. 54. Souad Halila, née El Agrebi, “The Intellectual Development and Diplomatic Career of Ralph J. Bunche: The Afro-­American, Africanist, and Internationalist” (PhD thesis, University of Southern California), 128. 55. Walter Crocker, Australian Ambassador: International Relations at First Hand (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1971), 90. 56. Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism, chapter 3. 57. Tor was later famous for TV shows such as Daktari and Flipper. 58. John Dos Passos, “Interview: Architect of the UN,” New York Herald Tribune, 19 October 1952, 39. 59. See Glenda Sluga, “Hollywood, the United Nations and the Long History of Film Communicating Internationalisms,” in International Organizations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Jonas Brendebach, Martin Herzer, and Heidi Tworek (London: Routledge, 2018), 138–57. 60. Edith Wynner and Georgia Lloyd, Searchlight on Peace Plans (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1949). 61. “Stassen Urges United Nations Continue as World Government,” New York Herald Tribune, 5 December 1942, 6. See Glenda Sluga, “History Workshop Journal Roundtable:

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Governing the World by Mark Mazower,” 8 October 2013, accessed 16 March 2022 https://​www​ .historyworkshop​.org​.uk​/ideas​/roundtable​-glenda​-sluga/. 62. Lola Maverick Lloyd Papers, 1856–1949; Campaign for World Government, Records of the New York Office; Leopold and Berta Katscher Papers, 1866–1939; Schwimmer Family Papers; Schwimmer-­Lloyd Photographs. All in Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library. 63. Max Frankel, “Fidel Complains to U.N.: Angry Castro Quits Hotel in Row over Bill; Moves to Harlem,” New York Times, 20 September 1960. 64. “Harlem Hotel Seeks Negro Trade; Picks Manager,” New York Age, 1940. For more on the social history of the hotel, see Sondra K. Wilson, Meet Me at the Theresa: The Story of Harlem’s Most Famous Hotel (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). 65. Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (London: Penguin, 2011), 38. 66. James Hicks, “Our Achilles Heel,” Amsterdam News, 24 September 1960. 67. Fidel Castro, “Speech at the United Nations, General Assembly Session,” September 26, 1960, accessed 10 March 2022, Castro Speech Database, http://​lanic​.utexas​.edu​/project​/castro​ /db​/1960​/19600926​.html. 68. Sara Slack, “Nasser, Nehru Visit Harlem,” Amsterdam News, 1 October 1960. 69. Support for Castro was not universal; many in Harlem were suspicious of Castro’s Communist platforming. Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 289–93. Many in the crowd were there to witness “the comings and goings” of these international dignitaries in their corner of New York. Marable, Malcolm X, 112–13. 70. On the collection as “counter-­archive,” see Adalaine Holton, “Decolonizing History: Arthur Schomburg’s Afrodiasporic Archive,” Journal of African American History 92, no. 2 (2007): 218–38. 71. John A. Davis, “Fourth AMSAC Conference,” Crisis 70, no. 3 (March 1963): 148. 72. For more on the origins of AMSAC, see Sarah C. Dunstan, Race, Rights and Revolution: Black Activism Across the French Empire and the United States from World War to Decolonization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021). 73. John F. Kennedy, “The United States and Africa: A New Policy for a New Era,” box 9, AMSAC Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. 74. John F. Kennedy, Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy, Public Rally, Hotel Theresa, New York, NY, 12 October 1960, Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-­Presidential Papers. Senate Files. 75. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” trans. Marc Roudebush, in “Memory and Counter-­Memory,” special issue, Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7–24, 12.

CHAPTER 10

Rediscovering the Total Liberation of Africa: Recalling Addis Ababa as a Site of African Internationalism Beatrice Wayne

A

frica Hall, located in the center of Addis Ababa, near Meskel Square, is a site of historic significance for African internationalism. This edifice, inaugurated as the home of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in 1961, served as the site of the first summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), postcolonial Africa’s first continent-­ wide association of independent states, in late May 1963.1 At this summit, thirty-­two African governments signed on as members of this international association and a charter was adopted. Within the 75,000-­square-­meter structure of Africa Hall—amid the conference rooms, reception areas, and offices— lies a two-­story foyer boasting an enormous, 150-­square-­meter stained-­glass window. This window forms a triptych and is set in a white marble floor that reflects the rich colors of the glass when the sun floods the room through the skylight. Titled The Total Liberation of Africa, this remarkable piece of art by Maître Afewerk Tekle is an incredible representation of a particular moment of hope for both Pan-­Africanism and African liberation that flourished in Addis Ababa and across the continent in the early 1960s. Yet, for many years, visiting this historically significant piece of art has been possible only through private appointment, with a group, and only available to people holding passports. It is not a commonly visited tourist destination (primarily because of the difficulty in arranging an appointment to enter the building); moreover, it is not open for public viewing to Addis Ababa residents.2 Consequently,

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many longtime residents of the city have no idea that this remarkable artwork exists, let alone have seen it for themselves. The Total Liberation of Africa has become, effectively, a forgotten site of 1960s internationalism, which reflects, I argue, a broader lacuna in the collective memory of Addis Ababa as a significant site of specifically African Black internationalism in the 1960s, for both the global public and local residents. Despite the ongoing reality of Addis Ababa as a key hub of travel to and within Africa and a continuing site of internationalist organization for the UNECA and African Union, its significance as a site of internationalism has been underappreciated in both academic scholarship and public imaginaries. The contested visions of anticolonial worldmaking that arose as decolonization movements swept the continent have been compellingly explored by Adom Getachew, Gary Wilder, and others, who have pointed to the importance of understanding the different dreams of African political organizations debated in this period. Getachew particularly has demonstrated the importance of understanding the different “relationship[s] between nationalism and internationalism [that] anticolonial worldmakers pursued.”3 Prior to the first OAU conference, there was little consensus regarding what an organization of independent African states should look like, and what exactly should be its goals. Before the establishment of the headquarters in Addis Ababa, African nations had been deeply divided on the question of the federation of African countries. Kwame Nkrumah, prime minister of Ghana and the most famous Pan-­Africanist leader, led the Casablanca bloc, which supported federation immediately, envisioning a continent where sovereignty was delegated through an international African institution such as the OAU. While Nkrumah was the most committed advocate of this position, the group also included Algeria, Guinea, Morocco, Egypt, Mali, and Libya. Meanwhile, the Monrovia bloc argued that unity should be achieved gradually, partially through economic cooperation. The Monrovia bloc was much less interested in political federation, and this group included Ethiopia as well as Nigeria, Liberia, and the majority of the former French colonies.4 In Freedom Time, Gary Wilder illuminates how President Leopold Senghor of Senegal (alongside the Martinican author and politician Aimé Césaire) supported alternative international projects for the former French colonies, including advocating for former colonies to become self-­governing and equal federal partners within the French nation-­state rather than politically independent nation-­states. Meanwhile, in Worldmaking After Empire, Getachew compellingly unpacks Nkrumah’s approach to federalism as a model for African



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unity, in opposition to the Nigerian president Nnamdi Azikiwe’s preference for a “miniature United Nations” that reinforced state sovereignty.5 That some form of unity was desirable was widely embraced by the attendees of the first OAU conference, who nevertheless contested the specific form of unification. While in much of the scholarship, Kwame Nkrumah and Leopold Senghor dominate our historical understanding of Pan-­Africanist organizing, this essay turns to the figure of Emperor Haile Selassie in the early 1960s in order to, as Gary Wilder encouraged, “inquire into the range of political forms that were imagined and fashioned during what was a process of economic restructuring and political realignment on a global scale.”6 Haile Selassie was Head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and a member of the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopian leaders who traced their lineage back to King Solomon—claiming the title of “Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, His Imperial Majesty, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Elect of God.” He also oversaw the Imperial Ethiopian Government (IEG), wielding ultimate control of its parliament and executive cabinet as emperor. Despite the seeming exceptionalism of Ethiopia as a country, and Haile Selassie as a leader, incorporating the emperor, and Africa Hall, into our understanding of Pan-­ Africanist organizing in the 1960s is crucial for clarifying just how ambitious plans for African worldmaking were, and how they came to be replaced by a far less radical vision of African internationalism as cooperation across sovereign national units, cooperation that prioritized the nation-­state as an inviolable base. In his speech on 6 March 1957, Kwame Nkrumah famously proclaimed that Ghanaian independence would be “meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa.” In the following years, many African liberationist figures would be inspired by this statement, even as their understanding of the parameters of the “total liberation” of the continent clashed with Nkrumah’s own vision. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, as various African leaders began to meet and organize in different factions to explore and push for the creation of an organization based around the idea of African unity, Haile Selassie invested heavily in the building of Africa Hall to serve as a key site for such an organization. While Africa Hall was being constructed, as Afewerk Tekle took inspiration from Nkrumah’s speech to produce the massive work of stained-­glass art that illuminated the inside of the building, Haile Selassie worked to convince other African leaders, most notably the influential Guinean president Sékou Touré, that a meeting to establish the formation of an organization of independent African states should take place

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in Addis Ababa. Haile Selassie’s role in this history returns us to the memory of the city and Africa Hall as important sites of specifically African Black internationalism. The lack of attention to Addis Ababa as a site of international significance embodies the historian Teshale Tibebu’s assertion that scholarship has approached Ethiopia from “a geographical paradigm that takes isolation from the outside world, Africa or otherwise, as its main theme of analysis.”7 Moreover, if we refuse to accept Ethiopia as a paradox or anomaly within the broader African historiography, and instead accept Teshale Tibebu’s challenge to write Ethiopian history as a part of African history, the choice of Addis Ababa as the site of the first OAU conference brings into sharp relief how nationalist agendas shaped and delimited the transformative potential of Pan-­Africanist organizing. Exploring the inspiration behind the creation of Africa Hall and the artwork within demonstrates both the potential of this decolonizing/worldmaking moment, and the ways in which that potential was circumscribed. Recentering and remembering Addis Ababa is crucial for understanding the complex interplay of nationalist, even imperialist agendas and international dreams when the OAU came into being. Haile Selassie’s 25 May 1963 acceptance speech as the first president of the OAU described the contemporary challenges to African unity. He pointed to the case of the Congo and described the misery that resulted from tribal strife, although he did not mention the impact of Belgian or US interference. This may have been because of his close relationship with the United States–despite formal membership in the Non-­Aligned Movement, the emperor had offered the United States access to Kagnew, a critical Cold War listening station in Asmara, in exchange for significant military aid. In the same speech, Selassie touted Pan-­African solidarity and support for decolonization, while careful not to mention self-­determination movements within OAU member countries themselves; these movements threatened Haile Selassie’s control over his Ethiopian Empire, which extended across Eritrea, home to its own liberation activists, and the Ogaden, where an irredentist Somalian population was advocating for separation. In his final remarks during the conference, Haile Selassie invoked Kwame Nkrumah’s Independence Day speech: “our liberty is meaningless unless all Africans are free.”8 But Haile Selassie’s vision of a liberated Africa differed greatly from Nkrumah’s dreams of a “Union of African States” that was politically and economically integrated through federation. Analyzing the significance of Africa Hall as the site of the first summit of the OAU underscores the importance to this political history of the trajectory of



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Pan-­Africanist organizing, the development of Addis Ababa as an international city, and the surprising intersections between internationalist, imperialist and nationalist projects during the height of African decolonization.

Ethiopia as a Site of Internationalism Prior to 1963 The most iconic image of Emperor Haile Selassie as an international figure is undoubtedly his speech at the League of Nations, when he appealed to that body to help protect Ethiopian sovereignty against the Italian invasion, insisted that Ethiopia was a critical test case for the idea of collective security, and proclaimed that history would remember the league’s judgment. If we shift the view from Geneva in 1936 to Addis Ababa in 1963, we see a very different side of Haile Selassie’s internationalism. Up until the mid-­1950s, the Ethiopian government’s international interests had skewed toward the Middle East. Its unique position as an independent nation in Africa meant that, because UN agencies functioned through colonial powers administering various African territories, Ethiopia served as a member at the regional level in the so-­called Middle East. Dr. Seyoum Haregot, who served as a legal adviser in the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1950s, noted that during the 1940s and 1950s, “Ethiopian authorities presented Ethiopia as geographically located in Africa, but racially, ethnically and culturally part of the Middle East.”9 While there was a great proliferation of interest and support for Ethiopia by Black internationalists during and in the wake of the Italian invasion of the country, the Ethiopian government itself did little to challenge the assertion that Ethiopia was “in rather than of Africa” in the years immediately following the Second World War.10 The 1950s also saw an increasing number of Ethiopian students studying at foreign universities, where they came into contact with African nationalists who provided new perspectives, particularly on the decolonization movements sweeping the continent. Alongside African students who came to Addis Ababa to study under Haile Selassie’s African Scholarship Program in 1958, these young men and women encouraged governmental officials to reconsider Ethiopia’s relationship to anticolonial movements across Africa. Bereket Habte Selassie, then serving as attorney general for the Ethiopian Government, recalls: “An example of the growing awareness among Ethiopian students of their African identity was found in the anthem, which the students composed, entitled “Africa Ahgurachen” (Africa our continent). This shift marked a break

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with the past of insularity and exceptionalism.”11 Together with Ethiopia’s increasing concern about the support coming from the Arab world for the irredentist stance of Somalia toward the Ogaden and the growing liberation movement in Eritrea, this helped push the emperor to “re-­orient his foreign policy goals towards Africa.”12 To accomplish this shift, Haile Selassie deliberately invoked 1936 to justify his ascension as a leader in African international organizing. This repositioning was made possible because, as Susan Pedersen argues, while Mussolini “won the shooting war, Selassie unquestionably won the propaganda one.”13 In addition to the anticolonial and solidarity associations that proliferated in Black communities in the Americas during the Italo-­Ethiopian War, young African anticolonialist leaders were deeply affected by the resistance of Ethiopian fighters and the public example of Haile Selassie as African head of state, advocating for his people’s freedom. Jomo Kenyatta, for example, saw Ethiopia as the “sole remaining pride of Africans and Negroes in all parts of the world.”14 This was in spite of the fact that Haile Selassie himself was explicitly not a radical figure in the fight against colonialism after the war. Following his return to Ethiopia, the emperor often fondly recalled his exile in England, which according to Dr. Seyoum “contributed to Ethiopia’s refusal to openly support the Mau Mau movement in Kenya.”15 While Kwame Nkrumah had openly supported the Kenyan resistance, the Ethiopian government insisted that they would only support “peaceful solutions” to all disputes.16 By the late 1950s, Haile Selassie had felt the winds of decolonizing change ahead of the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and began investing in urban infrastructure in Addis Ababa, specifically in building sites for international organizations in order to position Ethiopia firmly at the center of African international activity. He invested heavily in architectural projects in the late 1950s and early 1960s, commissioning Africa Hall as well as a new City Hall and the National and Commercial Bank. In his address to UNECA in 1961, from the dais of the newly opened Africa Hall, the emperor extolled the historical importance of Ethiopia as an ancient trading center, heralded the significance of the Italian defeat by Ethiopian forces at the 1896 Battle of Adwa, and then recounted how he “set out for Geneva to demand aid from the League of Nations but the League betrayed Ethiopia in her hour of travail.” Nevertheless, “once again Ethiopia . . . proved to the rest of the world and to the rest of Africa in particular that a determined and united people could never be subdued.” This unique history, the emperor claimed, meant that Ethiopia “has long realized her special responsibility toward those



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peoples less fortunate than her in the matter of territorial independence. As the oldest independent African state, Ethiopia is aware that she must make the cause of any African nation her own.”17 Here, Haile Selassie elided the more complicated history of Ethiopia’s diplomatic relationship to anticolonial movements across the 1950s, and firmly, publicly positioned the country as an African rather than a Middle Eastern or Mediterranean center. Through the 1960s, the emperor Haile Selassie deployed a long history of Ethiopian support for African independence to justify Ethiopia’s federation with Eritrea; he positioned this decision by the UN as a triumph over Italian colonialism. In his 1961 Africa Hall speech, Selassie described the moment when the assembly “voted in favour of federating Eritrea with the motherland” as a triumph.18 The incorporation of Eritrea into the Ethiopian Empire was presented as a natural progression of the independence Ethiopia had long sought for the African continent, and a particular accomplishment achieved by the emperor himself as an international figure who wrested Eritrea from Italian hands and returned it to the “motherland.” This same speech completely obfuscated the contested nature of Ethiopia’s political relationship to Eritrea. Eritrea, a part of Italy’s colonial holdings prior to World War II, was under British/UN trusteeship until 1951, when the UN awarded Eritrea to the IEG with the stipulation that it be treated as an autonomous federal province, giving Eritreans the power to elect their own government and create their own distinct constitution.19 Instead, throughout the 1950s, Haile Selassie rolled back Eritrean autonomy in a variety of ways: banning trade unions, renaming the Eritrean government, and replacing local language instruction with Amharic. Meanwhile, a movement for Eritrean independence grew in size and strength. Initially only the Muslim League in Eritrea disputed the federation of Eritrea, however, by the late 1950s the Eritrean movement for independence from Ethiopia was growing across diverse religious and ethnic lines, and by 1961 the ELF (Eritrean Liberation Front) formally came into existence. In response, Selassie represented himself as a long-­standing figure of African liberation, and used the platform of his UNECA address to justify Ethiopia’s claim to Eritrea as itself part of a larger anticolonial movement. The longer history of Haile Selassie’s shifting foreign policy attitudes toward African decolonization and his determination to reposition himself as a specifically African leader in the early 1960s, is important for understanding the public memory of Africa Hall. Teshale Tibebu has argued that Ethiopia has consistently been treated as exceptional rather than as indicative of trends in African history. In the case of the early 1960s, Haile Selassie pursued an

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internationalist politics in order to consolidate control over various regions of the Ethiopian Empire. His approach was not anomalous; rather, it was representative of the ways in which African internationalism and African unity would be challenged by nationalist interests over the course of the 1960s.

The Construction of Africa Hall Haile Selassie’s ambition to position himself as a historic figure of both African liberation and African internationalism is nowhere more apparent than in the construction of Africa Hall itself. Building started in July 1959, and, as we have seen, its formal opening took place on February 1961 to coincide with the Third Session of the Conference for the UN Economic Commission for Africa.20 The offices, committee rooms, library, exhibition rooms, foyer with a bar for the public, and assembly hall with eight hundred seats were all designed by the chief architect, Arturo Mezzedimi. The Ethiopian nation in 1961 encompassed a great deal of land that had at one point been under European colonial control, and the messy realities of these colonial connections and ties is exemplified by the story of Africa Hall’s design. All the contractors for Africa Hall aside from Afewerk Tekle himself were Italian.21 Mezzedimi was an Italian architect who had moved to Asmara as a young man. Major artistic works found within the hall consist of a mural inspired by a wide variety of Africa flora, painted by Nenne Sanguineti Poggi, another Italian emigrant to the Horn of Africa, and additional stained glass and sculpture in the hall created by the Italian artist Brunetto Buracchini. It is not clear why the emperor chose to feature Italian contractors. In her study of Italy’s cultural encounters with Africa during the era of decolonization, Helena Cantone speculates that Haile Selassie may have “intentionally inverted the power relations between Europe and Africa through the patronage of European artists in a building that represented the new political independence of African nations.”22 Regardless of the emperor’s intention in hiring Mezzedimi and other Italian transplants, Mezzedimi based his symmetrical axial plan for Africa Hall on his study of the buildings of international organizations, including UNESCO in Paris, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome (originally designed in 1937 to house the Ministry of Italian Africa following the capture of Addis Ababa), and the Palace of Nations in Geneva.23 The plan consisted of two interconnected structures, an assembly hall and a secretariat, which Mezzedimi worked to



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design throughout 1958 while visiting New York, Paris, Rome, and Strasburg, studying the headquarters of the major international organizations for inspiration.24 However, his final design was most deeply influenced by Addis Ababa itself. The dome of the assembly hall was constructed so as to be “in constant visual dialogue with the eucalyptus forest that surrounds and envelops Addis Ababa.” The facade of the secretariat building was ornamented with two vertical strips meant to represent the liturgical vestment of priests of the Ethiopian Church, and patterned so as to evoke the embroidery on traditional Ethiopian textiles.25 While Mezzedimi took the time to both travel to and study Addis Ababa, he understood that the emperor had a very strict timeline for the building. He recalled a day when the emperor paid a visit to the site during the final stage of construction: They climbed to the top floor, where the emperor saw the amount of work left to be completed and earnestly told the architect “Je suis dans vos mains.” By this time, thirty-­two African heads of state had already been summoned for a conference to discuss creating an organization of African states. According to Mezzedimi, the emperor “was anxious that the work might not be finished in time for the event. He added that this would have been disastrous for Ethiopia’s image on the world scene.” He wanted to make Addis Ababa “a true great capital,” and he sought to accomplish this through investment in the erection of Africa Hall.26

Ethiopia at the Center of the OAU Africa Hall was constructed with multiple purposes in mind. It was envisioned as a conference center for large international, political, and economic meetings; for permanent and temporary exhibitions; as the permanent headquarters of the UNECA; and as the department for the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The extent to which Haile Selassie was already planning for a united organization of African states to be formalized through a conference held within Africa Hall is uncertain; Mezzedimi’s recollection of the emperor’s anxiety regarding the construction timeline coincides with the recollection of Dr. Seyoum and others that Haile Selassie was working behind the scenes in the early 1960s to push for a conference of independent African states to be held in Addis Ababa. In late 1962, Sékou Touré visited the emperor in Asmara, where they discussed the possibility of a conference that could help merge the Monrovia

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and Casablanca blocs. By January 1963, the combined efforts of Ethiopia and Guinea had led to thirty-­one states accepting Ethiopia’s invitation to Addis Ababa. As the host for this conference, Ethiopia was able to take the reins; Ethiopian delegates were sent to every independent African nation to advocate for African unity and emphasize the importance of attending the conference. At the same time, Haile Selassie’s government began to direct the shape of unity, as Ethiopian officials insisted on the need for a draft charter modeled on the UN charter and the charter of the Organization of American States (OAS). Dr. Seyoum recalls that the emperor was particularly interested in the structure of the OAS, and “employed a Latin American to draft the charter, which was submitted to a group of Ethiopian experts consisting of lawyers, economists and political scientists.”27 Willard Thompson has argued that by the time of the Addis Ababa conference, Haile Selassie’s government had taken the lead in setting the direction of the OAU. Their “proposals were of the greatest interest, for the preparatory machinery was in their hands, and they had firm ideas indeed. Their agenda proposals, distributed on 12 May, called for the establishment of an ‘Organisation of African States’, a charter, and a permanent secretariat.”28 After thirty-­one states had accepted Ethiopia’s invitation to Addis Ababa, the significance of the venue for the future of the OAU seemed apparent. Kwame Nkrumah became concerned that Haile Selassie’s particular vision for the OAU would damage his dream of a supranational Union of African States that would require the delimiting of state sovereignty and the formation of a “permanent, collective political institution” with “independent authority and power.”29 In the circumstances, the emperor’s interest in the OAS was a particular concern. An African organization modeled on the OAS, an institution that reinforced the sovereignty of American nation-­states while offering what Kojo Botsio, Ghana’s foreign minister, described as “only paper co-­ ordination,” was precisely what Kwame Nkrumah did not want.30 Nkrumah sent emissaries across Africa, attempting to limit support for the creation of the OAU charter in Addis Ababa. Envoys were “instructed to avoid use of the word ‘charter,’ and to plead that Addis Ababa [only] be used to create the atmosphere, to serve as the take-­off point, for the preparation of union government itself.”31 Nkrumah explicitly accused Ethiopia of being beholden to American interests; he flew in a special issue of Spark (an Accra newspaper) to litter the streets of Addis Ababa after the summit had begun. This categorized African states according to their neocolonial attachments, and



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alleged that Ethiopia (along with Nigeria, Liberia, and Congo-­Léopoldville) was controlled by “Anglo-­American Imperialism.”32 Nkrumah feared that the creation of a charter in Addis Ababa would be a death knell for true African unity, and any international organization created there would be under the control of US interests.33 Yet this move had little effect on the proceedings, as Willard Thompson notes; the emperor was highly successful in drumming up “a significant amount of interest in their proposal, based on the amount of preparation [Ethiopia] had leading up to the conference.”34 Hosting the first meeting in Africa Hall allowed time for the Ethiopian delegation to prepare material and it gave symbolic weight to the centrality of Ethiopia in the proceedings. It was also significant that this conference— so deeply concerned with questions of federation, self-­determination, and sovereignty—was held in the city at the heart of the Ethiopian Empire in 1963. As Adom Getachew has so compellingly demonstrated, Nkrumah was committed to pursuing Pan-­African ideals specifically through federation because he saw it as the most effective governmental form that would allow Africa to throw off the economic coercion from former imperial powers. He specifically argued that federation allowed for autonomy and union, as each polity would possess “legal equality under a constitution to which all have laid their hand.”35 In Addis Ababa in 1963, skepticism about the equality, both legal and de facto, that Nkrumah promised with federation was hard to avoid, as Ethiopia and Eritrea’s own experiment with federation had collapsed after the slow incursion on Eritrean rights had recently culminated with the full annexation of Eritrea as a province of the Ethiopian Empire the previous year. Indeed, it is clear why the emperor was so eager to direct the shape and vision of the new form of African internationalism at the conference. The idea of loosening state sovereignty, as promoted by Nkrumah’s vision of African federation, had the potential to threaten the stability of Haile Selassie’s Ethiopian Empire. The conference, and the question of unity, provoked reflection on both regional and religious underrepresentation in the Ethiopian Empire. Bereket Selassie recalls that when President Nasser flew into Addis Ababa for the conference, the airport was “filled with hundreds of thousands of ­people. Most of them were turbaned country folks; it was obvious that they were Ethiopian Muslims who had come from the countryside—from Harar, Jimma, Arsi, Sidamo and elsewhere in distant provinces of the country. It was an emphatic demonstration of solidarity to Gamal Abdel Nasser, a hero of the

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Muslim world at a time when Muslims felt excluded from government affairs in a country ruled by a Christian king.”36 Adom Getachew has pointed to the ways in which Nkrumah’s anticolonial worldmaking represented a shift from a “project of dispersing and delegating sovereignty through international institutions to one in which regional organizations bolstered the nation-­state.”37 But this conference in Addis Ababa revealed how, instead, regional affiliations and solidarities could challenge the Ethiopian nation-­state. The OAU, depending on its charter, had the potential to challenge the power of the emperor, or alternatively to solidify Ethiopia’s imperial claims to Eritrea. The power the emperor held as both the event’s host, and as a “father” of African liberation was clear when, during the conference, the Somali delegation raised the question of their claim to Ogaden land and were subsequently “rebuked by the chairman for bringing this into the open conference.”38 Choosing Africa Hall, and Addis Ababa more generally, as the site of this conference in fact foreclosed engagement with the question of what Elizabeth Giorgis has termed “coloniality of [Ethiopia’s] noncolonized land.”39 Ultimately, it is significant that this conference took place at Africa Hall, in Addis Ababa, rather than in Ghana or Egypt—the latter both countries that had aggressively supported liberation movements across the continent. By contrast too in Senegal, Leopold Senghor and other leaders of former French colonies promoted the importance of regional organizations with continued economic ties to France (and claims-­making on France). Deciding on Addis Ababa as the site for the inaugural meeting was seen as a compromise, one that allowed questions of regionalism, federation, and union to be deferred until the organization became more established. This compromise also meant that the fissures in the OAU’s internationalist vision were built into the organization from its inaugural meeting. The Guyanese Pan-­African advocate Ras Makonnen, who served in Ghana as an adviser on African Affairs in the early 1960s, remembered that there was this “euphoria in Addis,” but upon reflection this euphoria belied the many battles yet to come in the cause of Pan-­Africanism.40 Dr. Seyoum Haregot underlined the key significance of the name—the Organization of African Unity, rather than the Organization of African Union. Union was Nkrumah’s dream, the potentiality of which was seriously damaged by the charter and the formation of the OAU. The Organization of African Unity implied joint efforts, rather than joint governance.41 Remembering Africa Hall and the significance of Addis Ababa exposes the centrality of sovereignty and the power of nationalist agendas at a point of internationalist fervor and possibility.



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The Total Liberation of Africa, Reimagined Ultimately, the first conference of the OAU presented diverse visions of a liberated African continent, with the emperor’s version in ascendancy. Meanwhile, Afewerk Tekle took up Nkrumah’s rallying cry for a Pan-­Africanist liberation, reinterpreted with Ethiopia at its center. The significance of The Total Liberation of Africa as a piece of art representing the broader project of African internationalism was emphasized at the UNECA meeting on 6 February 1961, when an Ethiopian representative was chosen “in appreciation of . . . this masterpiece which symbolizes the elegance and the unity of our endeavours.”42 The enormous stained-­glass triptych takes up the entire wall of Africa Hall’s two-­story foyer.43 A skylight allows the sun to shine down onto the brightly colored glass and illuminate the dramatic scene. The first panel, entitled “Africa Then,” is darkly stained with red. Afewerk described choosing this color to represent “Africa in its bitter struggle against the heavy shadow of ignorance on one side, and on the other, the pressure and storm caused by the impact of colonialism.”44 This panel depicts a family that has been separated, with a lost child in the foreground. In the middle of the panel strides a group of African men carrying a shared burden overhead that, on closer inspection, reveals itself to be shaped like the African continent itself. On top of this, and taking up a significant amount of space within the panel, is an enormous dragon, depicted in rich, deep-­green hues. In conjunction with the red-­clad skeleton on the left side of the panel, these malevolent forces represent, according to Afewerk Tekle, “an evil dragging the continent into backwardness.”45 In this panel, Africa is unified through suffering and “backwardness,” which incorporates Ethiopia into the history of the evilness of colonialism. A large black chain winds its way across the panel, which Tekle chose to depict the history of slavery. These images draw on the vernacular of modernizing ideologies of the 1960s that portrayed the entire continent of Africa as temporally “behind” in the race for development. Afewerk Tekle’s panel features a dragon as the central antagonist, a figure that reappears on the other side of the central panel. That panel, labeled “Africa Then and Now,” predominantly green, has the dragon lying at the bottom of the pane, vanquished by an African man clad in a simple white waist covering, brandishing a sword. At the center is the shape of the African continent (no longer carried as a burden), instead, rising above the dragon of colonialism. Within the continent, we find African figures with various kinds of richly colored robes and headwear—from dashiki, to kanzu, to chechia,

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to kufi caps and turbans. Representing the multiplicity of African cultures, the combined force of the peoples within have banished the red-­robed skeleton depicted in the first panel, now seen at the top of the panel, fleeing in desperation. This panel depicts the evils of colonialism in the form of the dragon (Then), defeated by the peoples of Africa (Now), as represented by both the figures in the continent and the single African man vanquishing the dragon. This is a seemingly egalitarian vision, where the lack of distinctive dress for the dragon slayer allows the figure to stand in for the entire continent, and the continent itself contains multitudes, represented by the wide variety of clothing. The continent is surrounded by a stylized border, very reminiscent of the intricately woven colored borders (tibébé) found at the edges of netela, the handmade cotton scarves commonly worn by both men and women in Ethiopia. Here, then, the continent is literally surrounded and bounded by Ethiopian culture. The significance of Ethiopia becomes more apparent in the central panel, entitled “Africa Now and the Future,” the largest panel in the triptych. This panel features yellow, with a rising sun at its top, illuminating the figures below. At the center and forefront stand two figures wearing shamma, traditional Ethiopian clothing of layered white textile, bordered by tibébé. The background is filled with what Afewerk Tekle described as a “galaxy of Africans standing in their national costume symbolic of their full participation in this great struggle for freedom.”46 Nonetheless, it is the Ethiopian figure at the center who is holding the burning torch that symbolizes knowledge and reawakening and is leading the other figures toward the Africa of the future. This symbolic centering of Ethiopian leadership is buttressed by the figure of the armored knight at the left of the panel, tying this central panel with the first in the triptych. Holding a sword, and wearing a United Nations emblem, this figure could initially be read as a straightforward icon of internationalist ideals, and the OAU’s commitment to cooperating and supporting the UN. Yet this knight’s spatial proximity to the dragon in the previous panel also clearly invokes the figure of St. George (Kidus Giorgis), slayer of dragons and patron saint of Ethiopia. Indeed, St. George slaying the dragon is one of the most common motifs found in the art that decorates Ethiopian Orthodox churches across the country. This image, then, performs a number of rhetorical functions in the larger reading of The Total Liberation of Africa. By depicting this figure as the connection between the two panels, the centrality of Ethiopia as the key African nation is reaffirmed, its place in leading the continent into the future is emphasized, and its rightful place as internationalist



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leader and power behind UN and OAU actions across the African landscape is asserted. Both Haile Selassie and Afewerk Tekle essentially co-­opted Nkrumah’s phrase to create an image of African unity with Ethiopia at the center, in a way that muted conversations about the challenges ethnic and religious diversity and self-­determination raised for the functional reality of a united Africa. Much as national memorials often foster and present a linear, uncontested narrative of a nation-­state’s history, so The Total Liberation of Africa constructs a narrative about African internationalism that is unidirectional, rather than plural, rejecting the palimpsest of memory layers.

Addis Ababa as a City of Internationalism At the Cairo conference, which followed the conference in Addis Ababa, African leaders again rejected Nkrumah’s attempt to cultivate any meaningful commitment to moving forward on union, while at the same time they agreed to make Addis Ababa the seat of the permanent headquarters of the OAU.47 Africa Hall, and the establishment of both the UNECA and the OAU as institutions in the city, deeply shaped the urban development of Addis Ababa itself. As the historian Bahru Zewde has noted, the creation of Africa Hall (alongside the Foreign Ministry and the Hilton Hotel) served to underscore the importance of Meskel Square to the city and encouraged “the construction of upper-­class residential buildings in the vicinity of both airports, old and new.”48 Indeed, the demand for housing increased exponentially in the early 1960s, partially in response to the “needs of the veritable army of officials of international organisations . . . which established their headquarters in the city during those years.”49 Dr. Seyoum witnessed the IEG investing deeply in urban infrastructure specifically in order to “receive delegates and make their stay in Addis Ababa as comfortable as possible. New hotels were built and old ones renovated, new roads opened, telecommunications facilities organized for the press. Unprecedented preparations were undertaken in the capital city.”50 These bases for political tourism also fostered other forms of international tourism, encouraged by the IEG’s investment in advertising that promised foreigners “thirteen months of sun” (a reference to the Ethiopian calendar).51 Addis Ababa was every inch an international city, shaped by the influx of diplomats, officials, and staff attached to the UNECA, OAU, and US Foreign Service, including a large Peace Corps program and substantial USAID presence.

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This shaped life for resident Addis Ababans in various ways. Some benefited from the new infrastructure; some were able to embrace job opportunities that opened up within these development and international organizations and in the tourist industry that ran alongside them. One particular industry that expanded rapidly with the establishment of Addis Ababa as an international city was sex work. The early 1960s saw a vast growth in the number of sex workers operating in the city—a sociological study in 1974 estimated the number ranged somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000. Sex workers, called setana adari, began to establish themselves in the nightclubs that emerged after the OAU and UNECA set up in the city, which opened to cater to the new population. These clubs had distinctive foreign names such as “Munich,” “El Afro,” and “Hot Pants.” These women’s accounts note that their average income was especially healthy when international conferences took place in the city.52 According to Bereket Selassie, when the Ugandan prime minister Milton Obote, in his closing address to the OAU, thanked the IEG for looking after them “day and night,” he was referencing the setana adari. Bereket elaborated: “The Ethiopian government did indeed look after the guests day and night. The female denizens of the ‘Red Light District’ in Addis Ababa had been mobilized to serve their country and Emperor. . . . The government had coached and admonished the women to behave like proud Africans and devotees of African unity and to be ready to perform their services in pursuit of that noble ideal. Nocturnal arrangements were made so that African leaders and their entourage did not feel lonely and cold at night.”53 Alongside the creation of new tourist sites—whether clubs, hotels, or brothels—came the expansion of police power in Addis Ababa. Police operations to clean up the city became common before any international meeting, as indigent and peasant visitors to the city were rounded up and imprisoned out of view of delegates. The atmosphere in Addis Ababa was “euphoric” and “even a little unreal” during the first meeting of the OAU as “the destitute, beggars and other unwanted persons who normally inhabited [the city had been] removed.”54 According to an Eritrean student activist detained in Alem Bekagn (the central prison of Ethiopia until 2004), dozens of peasant farmers had been detained in 1963, rounded up in advance of the OAU conference despite the fact that they had only come to the city to sell their produce in the market.55 Indeed, while Africa Hall was the birthplace of the OAU, and served as the conference center for OAU meetings, technically the OAU was housed in a “partly refurbished imperial police college” in a separate part of the city.56



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While the IEG justified this proliferation of police power as a necessary step to improve security for foreign diplomats, Dr. Seyoum also identified a countervailing influence on the government that emerged from Addis Ababa’s new identity as an international city. He believed that the international infusion of liberation movements as well as international organizations “led the [IEG] to adopt more progressive policies . . . and could not but affect Ethiopia’s government and society more broadly.”57 While Dr. Seyoum does not specify the progressive policies that he saw as influenced by this new internationalism, he may have been referencing the rapid expansion of the public education system during the 1960s and the creation of the Bureau for Land Reform (despite the fact that no meaningful land reform would be pursued prior to the deposition of Haile Selassie and the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974). African liberationist figures visiting the city, as well as African scholarship students, did tangibly influence Ethiopian artists and culture makers: “Efforts were made to promote Ethiopia’s pan-­African image in the social sphere, and introducing things African into social life became fashionable in Addis Ababa. Names of bars and nightclubs reflected the pan-­African cadence of the period, in designations such as Uhuru Bar, Kilimanjaro Bar, and Jomo Kenyatta Bar. Other popular pubs were named after African heroes, such as the Patrice Lumumba Bar.”58 Despite the dramatic political shifts that have shaped the city since 1963, its international character has continued to be a critical factor in its development, making Addis Ababa a “hybrid of national, continental, and international influences.”59

Conclusion Africa Hall and Addis Ababa shaped the formation and discourse around African unity in the early 1960s. In turn, the international institutions that settled in Addis Ababa shaped the development of the city. While the significance of Addis Ababa as a key site of 1960s African internationalism has not as yet been prioritized in scholarship or centered in the public memory of the city, in the 1960s the two were synonymous. Indeed, “Addis Ababa” was often used as a metonym for a unified continent. The Ghanaian newspaper Spark called for a “fuller realisation of Addis Ababa” when advocating for the OAU to take a more radical stance against imperialism.60 And the “spirit of Addis Ababa,” like the “spirit of Geneva” before it, was invoked to communicate both the thrilling potential of Pan-­African organizing as well as the subsequent frustration at

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the limited scope and ambitions of the organization itself. A Soviet journalist who witnessed the conference breathlessly proclaimed: “The spirit of the new Africa triumphed at Addis Ababa, it is triumphing beyond the walls of Africa Hall.”61 Two years later, Lagos Radio again referred to the “spirit of Addis Ababa,” noting that it was not as strong as it was in 1963.62 Haile Selassie and Afewerk Tekle, both of whom had a role in creating the “spirit of Addis Ababa” for those attending the first OAU conference, also understood the significance memory would play in shaping this moment of African internationalism. In his opening address to the conference, the emperor drew on the same rhetoric he had deployed in his speech to the League of Nations three decades earlier, declaring: “If we succeed in the tasks which lie before us, our names will be remembered and our deeds recalled by those who follow us. If we fail, history will puzzle at our failure and mourn what was lost.”63 Afewerk Tekle expressed his “joy for having created a work of this magnitude, which not only is an important decoration for the building,” but also has significance “in terms of history, and the eternal aspirations for the common build-­up of the great African Continent.”64 These days, the artistic expression ofthe eternal aspirations for African unity is unavailable for the public to view. Africa Hall is under an extensive, UN-­funded renovation, meant to turn this modernist building into a museum and tourist attraction in addition to a conference venue. While Africa Hall remains the permanent headquarters of the UNECA, it does not host summits of the African Union (the continental union that replaced the OAU in 2002); it is now dominated by the African Union Conference Center (AUCC), a towering addition to the Addis Ababa skyline. If any edifice in contemporary Addis Ababa represents the ways in which the ambitious dreams of the “spirit of Addis Ababa” have been circumscribed, it is the AUCC, a complex entirely funded by China. Since the headquarters were inaugurated in 2012, there have been sustained allegations that Chinese hackers use servers in the complex to electronically monitor key communications by African Union officials (which China has continually denied). The ambitions for African economic sovereignty articulated by many leaders in the early 1960s have not materialized, a fact embodied by the AUCC, the headquarters of the main continental union of Africa, entirely funded by a nation outside of the continent. At the same time, Ethiopia is experiencing renewed liberation movements from within, in Oromia as well as Tigray. It is worth acknowledging that the Oromia protests emanate partially from Oromia’s claim to land in and around Addis Ababa. Recovering and remembering the contested history of the “spirit of Addis Ababa,” as embodied by Africa Hall, helps us challenge



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what Maaza Mengiste has described as “the relentless narrative of national progress and uncolonised independence” that has characterized much of the public memory of Ethiopia’s relationship to African internationalism.65 In the introduction to their article on Ethiopia’s literary and cultural traditions, Dagmawi Woubshet, Salamishah Tillet, and Elizabeth Wolde Giorgis gorgeously invoke the image of modern Ethiopians looking at the world through “multi-­ colored stained glass,” due to their position as citizens of a nation that was one of the “richest and most powerful in the world” as well as “one of the poorest and least understood.” This viewpoint is one of “both pride and struggle, conquest and famine, nationalism and intense division, loss and longing.”66 In rediscovering and looking through the multicolored stained glass of The Total Liberation of Africa, we can see with greater clarity the complex constellation of forces that made Addis Ababa such a compelling yet troubled site of African internationalism in 1963.

Notes 1. The UNECA was established in 1958 but moved to Africa Hall as soon as the building was completed in 1961. 2. For an account of the challenges even the most dedicated traveler faced when attempting to view The Total Liberation of Africa, see “Away in Addis Ababa,” New Faces, New Places, accessed 13 July 2020, https://​new​-faces​-new​-places​.com​/2016​/03​/12​/away​-in​-addis​-ababa/. 3. Adom Getachew, Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-­Determination (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 136. 4. Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015). 5. Getachew, Worldmaking After Empire, 135. 6. Wilder, Freedom Time, 4. 7. Teshale Tibebu, “Ethiopia: The ‘Anomaly’ and ‘Paradox’ of Africa,” Journal of Black Studies 26, no. 4 (1 March 1996): 415, https://​doi​.org​/10​.1177​/002193479602600403. 8. Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, “The Addis Ababa African Summit Conference: Full Text of Speeches,” Ethiopia Observer 7, no. 2 (1963): 2. 9. Dr. Seyoum Haregot served different roles in the Ethiopian government up until the 1974 revolution, including minister, head of the Prime Minister’s Office ,and member of the Council of Ministers. Seyoum A. Haregot, The Bureaucratic Empire: Serving Emperor Haile Selassie (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2013), 137. 10. Czesław Jeśman, The Ethiopian Paradox (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 10. There is a wide array of scholarship on Black internationalism and the Italo-­Ethiopian War. See, for example, Neelam Srivastava, “‘Ethiopia’s Cause Is Our Cause’: Black Internationalism and the Italian Invasion of Ethiopia,” in Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire, 1930–1970 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 65–99, https://​doi​.org​/10​.1057​/978​-1​-137​-46584​-9​_3.

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11. Bereket Selassie, “The Bumpy Road from Accra to Addis Ababa: Recollections of an Observer/Participant,” Societies Without Borders 2 (1 January 2007): 53, https://​doi​.org​/10​.1163​ /187188607X163257. 12. Ibid., 137. 13. Susan Pedersen, “Empires, States and the League of Nations,” in Internationalisms: A Twentieth-­Century History, ed. Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 133, https://​doi​.org​/10​.1017​/9781107477568​.007. 14. S. K. B. Asante, Pan-­African Protest: West Africa and the Italo-­Ethiopian Crisis, 1934– 1941 (London: Longman, 1977), 16. 15. Haregot, Bureaucratic Empire, 133. 16. Ibid., 129. 17. YaMāstāwaquiyā Ministér, Africa Hall (Addis Ababa: Ministry of Information of the Imperial Ethiopian Government, 1968). 18. Ministér, Africa Hall, 13. 19. For a description of the UN Commission for Eritrea, and their implementation of Resolution 390 A (V)—that Eritrea should become an “autonomous unit federated with Ethiopia under the sovereignty of the Ethiopian Crown,” see Michael Wrong, I Didn’t Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005), 151–76. 20. Ibid. Recognizing the significance of Africa Hall, as both the headquarters of the UNECA and the historic first meeting of the OAU, also opens up an exploration of the relationship between these two organizations. Because Africa Hall functioned as a shared site at times, the relationship between the two institutions could be confusing for delegates. At the 45th Ordinary Session of the OAU in 1987, while doing fieldwork for his PhD on the UNECA, Ekei Umo Ekpenyong was told by a member of the Liberian Delegation that he had not heard of the ECA before he arrived in Addis Ababa and, moreover, he thought that Africa Hall was the conference complex of the OAU. In general, he found that “OAU officials were on friendly terms with their counterparts at the ECA. The former usually made use of the Conference Complex of Commission, which is popularly known as Africa Hall. The translators for both organizations were also free to use the Complex.” Ekpenyong saw this as evidence that both organizations understood that neither institution had a monopoly on fighting for political and economic independence and development—he argued that both “have to collaborate in the interest of the continent and their roles have to be complementary.” See Ekei Umo Ekpenyong, “The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and Development in Africa” (PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1990), 41, http://​etheses​.lse​.ac​.uk​/1210​/1​/U050306​.pdf. 21. Arturo Mezzedimi, “Testimonies: Hailé Selassié; A Testimony for Reappraisal,” April 1992, http://www.arturomezzedimi.it/en/3/publications.html . 22. Helena Cantone, “Italy–Africa: A Contradictory Inventory of Modernity,” Critical Interventions 10, no. 1 (2026), 15: http://​dx​.doi​.org​/10​.1080​/19301944​.2016​.1180921. 23. Ayala Levin, “Haile Selassie’s Imperial Modernity: Expatriate Architects and the Shaping of Addis Ababa,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 75, no. 4 (December 1, 2016): 447–68, https://​doi​.org​/10​.1525​/jsah​.2016​.75​.4​.447. 24. Jacopo Galli, “Aspirations and Contradictions in Shaping a Cosmopolitan Africa: Arturo Mezzedimi in Imperial Ethiopia,” ABE Journal: Architecture Beyond Europe, nos. 9–10 (July 12, 2016), https://​doi​.org​/10​.4000​/abe​.3159. 25. Galli, “Aspirations and Contradictions,” 11; Levin, “Haile Selassie’s Imperial Modernity,” 459.



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26. Mezzedimi, “Testimonies.” 27. Haregot, Bureaucratic Empire, 150–51. 28. Willard Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 1957–1966: Diplomacy Ideology, and the New State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 319. 29. Getachew, Worldmaking After Empire, 122. 30. Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 1957–1966, 350. 31. Ibid., 318. 32. Ibid., 317. 33. Ultimately, the conference agreed upon favoring “the liquidation of foreign military bases in Africa, and the cancelling of military pacts binding African countries to alien Powers.” This is particularly interesting because Ethiopia would use its provision of the US military base Kagnew, located in Asmara, to negotiate continued provision of arms from the United States, making it far and away the greatest receiver of US military assistance across the continent, which facilitated its crushing of Eritrean and Somali liberation movements within the empire. 34. Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 324. 35. Getachew, Worldmaking After Empire, 121–22. Getachew cites Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (New York: International, 1963), 148. 36. Selassie, Bumpy Road, 57. 37. Getachew, Worldmaking After Empire, 110. 38. K. M. Beauchamp, “Addis Ababa: Landmark in Struggle for African Unity,” New Africa 5 (July 1963): 11. 39. Elizabeth W. Giorgis, Modernist Art in Ethiopia, New African Histories Series (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019), 26. 40. Ras Makonnen and Kenneth King, Pan-­Africanism from Within (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 273. 41. Haregot, Bureaucratic Empire, 152. 42. Ministér, Africa Hall, 18. 43. Ibid. Afewerk Tekle came up with all the necessary plans to be presented to the manufacturers of the glass in the South of France in less than two weeks. Ultimately, he claims that “95% of the work was executed by myself, and I might add here that to be an Artist and an Artisan at the same time is by no means an easy task.” 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 20. 47. For extensive coverage of the diplomatic negotiations at the Cairo conference, particularly regarding the increasing marginalization of Nkrumah’s position, see Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 350–56. 48. Bahru Zewde, “The City Center: A Shifting Concept in the History of Addis Ababa,” in Urban Africa: Changing Contours of Survival in the City, ed. Simone Abdou Maliq and Abouhani Abdelghani (Dakar: Codesria Books, 2005), 132. 49. Mezzedimi, “Testimonies.” 50. Haregot, Bureaucratic Empire, 151. 51. Mezzedimi, “Testimonies.” 52. Laketch Dirasse, “The Socio-­Economic Position of Women in Addis Ababa: The Case of Prostitution” (PhD, Boston University, 1978), 61. 53. Selassie, “Bumpy Road,” 59.

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54. Ian Duffield, “Pan-­Africanism Since 1940,” in The Cambridge History of Africa: From c.1940 to c.1975, ed. Michael Crowder, vol. 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 115. 55. Alex de Waal and Rachel Ibreck, “Alem Bekagn: The African Union’s Accidental Human Rights Memorial,” African Affairs 112, no. 447 (2013): 197. 56. Ibid., 201. Interestingly, the new edifice in Addis Ababa made for the African Union’s offices was built on the site of Alem Bekagn (the former central prison of Addis Ababa). For a consideration of the efforts to create a memorial at the site, see de Waal and Ibreck, “Alem Bekagn,” 192–94. 57. Haregot, Bureaucratic Empire, 155. 58. Giorgis, Modernist Art in Ethiopia, 93. 59. Dirk van Gameren and Anteneh Tesfaye Tola, “A City Shaped by Diplomacy: The Case of Ethiopia’s Capital Addis Ababa,” ABE Journal: Architecture Beyond Europe, no. 12 (December 26, 2017): 42. 60. Spark, “Whose Secret Have We Leaked,” no. 51 (29 November 1963), in Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 329. 61. Vladimir Kudryavtsev, “The Spirit of the New Africa,” International Affairs 9, no. 8 (August 1963): 84–90. 62. Daily Report, Foreign Radio Broadcasts, Issues 201–205, US Central Intelligence Agency, 21 October 1965. 63. Beauchamp, “Addis Ababa,” 9. 64. Ministér, Africa Hall, 22. 65. Maaza Mengiste, “Ethiopia’s Long War,” London Review of Books 43, no. 4 (February 2021). 66. Dagmawi Woubshet, Salamishah Tillet, and Elizabeth Wolde Giorgis, “The Romance of Ethiopia: A Critical Introduction,” Callaloo 33, no. 1 (2010): 14.

CHAPTER 11

Greening Our Common Fate: Stockholm as a Node of Global Environmental Memory Eric Paglia and Sverker Sörlin

A

stone’s throw from the Stockholm Opera House, where Prime Minister Olof Palme delivered the opening address of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) on 5 June 1972, the sixteen-­year-­old student Greta Thunberg began her “school strike for climate” in August 2018 outside the Riksdag, the Swedish Parliament building. Her solo protest soon catalyzed a global Fridays for Future youth movement. A distant relative of the Stockholm University physical chemist Svante Arrhenius, who in 1896 first calculated the greenhouse effect, Thunberg was invited to speak in December 2018 before the COP 24 meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, an institution that represents perhaps the most prominent political legacy of the 1972 Stockholm Conference.1 By September the following year, after sailing to New York on a carbon neutral voyage that attracted widespread media coverage, Thunberg—now “Greta” for the whole world—addressed the UN Climate Action Summit, admonishing world leaders for having failed to manage the climate crisis. Stockholm’s status as an international site of memory for climate and environment thus spans well over a century and encompasses a lasting tradition of scientific research, political initiative, and institution building. With the UNCHE representing a pivotal event in the narrative that follows, this chapter explores the foundations, legacies, and multiple carriers of memory that have made Stockholm closely connected to the emergence and evolution of global environmental governance, and hence on the emergence of a new narrative of the world we live in and the fate of humans in it. Centered on

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the scientific successors of Arrhenius at Stockholm University—Carl-­Gustaf Rossby and his disciple Bert Bolin—it explores and maps the, in some cases, decades-­long intersections of ideas, individuals, institutions, and international networks in which Stockholm has served as a primary node. Manifestations of these interactions, including several seminal reports that helped structure international networks and steered the trajectory of scientific fields while influencing political thinking on emerging environmental imperatives, are also part of this analysis. Bolin, as a prolific science organizer who, from the 1950s, was actively engaged internationally at the interface of science and policy while leading the Meteorological Institute at Stockholm University for almost forty years, embodies the evolution of Stockholm as a leading center of global environmental governance and is thus a central figure throughout this chapter.2 Located adjacent to Stockholm University, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences represents another key actor, which beyond its own initiatives played host to several new environmental institutes established in the wake of the UNCHE and, in conjunction with the Stockholm Conference, launched a scholarly journal on the human environment, Ambio, that still exists to this day. In line with these activities, the academy, as an internationally renowned arbiter of scientific excellence based on its close association with the Nobel Prizes since 1901, was well positioned to play a prominent role in Stockholm’s rise as a place of political and scientific leadership on environmental issues. The Nobel brand and the aura of scientific authority of Nobel laureates have, moreover, been leveraged by leading institutions in Sweden and beyond to promote global sustainability.3 In this chapter, Stockholm is conceptualized as both a physical space where institutions are clustered geographically and research is conducted and as a point of reference and locus of memory within a story of the environment’s ascent on the international agenda over the past half century. Unlike locations associated with environmental catastrophe like Chernobyl, Love Canal, and Minamata Bay that underpin declensionist narratives of humankind’s degradation on the natural world—arguably the predominant paradigm of the past half-­ century’s environmental historiography—Stockholm by contrast represents a parallel but very different history; namely, one of incremental progress in the long-­term pursuit of sustainable development, which started in the late 1960s with the initiation of Stockholm Conference preparations. A node in numerous networks, Stockholm has become, very literally, a noeud de mémoire in the ascendant global story of a transforming



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human-­earth relationship.4 We thus also reflect on the problem of remembering on the global scale. What does it mean to remember a city and its environmental legacy inscribed in the context of a global story? Those who share in the remembering are not just those who live there. To become a site of international memory the processes of remembering must be shared in wider circles, spread via media. It must also last and be passed on over years, decades, generations, perhaps centuries. That requires fame, or at least significance. In the case of Stockholm as a place of environmental memory, it is possibly more the latter than the former; although as the environment and climate change gain significance as keywords of the emerging Weltanschauung, remembering is more expected. After all, as the world is increasingly understood also qua environment, qua climate, and qua vulnerable planet— where did this all come from? The narrative of environment, which is in an ongoing state of development, requires its anchoring points, its obligatory passage points, or its “truth spots.”5 Multilevel repercussions—local, national, global—are required for large-­scale memories to form and last. To last means they also become part of history. To remember is a “use of the past.” As Maurice Halbwachs suggested a century ago, remembering is to form community.6 A community is a social unity that remembers together and thus mourns and rejoices together. As the planetary human-­earth relationship has been taking shape as an overarching narrative of the human species, Stockholm stands as one of the candidates to become a significant site of the collective memory of this truly global process. Not yet another site of environmental disaster, of the kind that have their own worthy acts of commemoration, but as a site of the discovery of the narrative itself and of the effort to turn the course of human progress right again.

Multiple Points of Departure The memory of Stockholm looks very different from the ground up than it does from outside of Sweden. From a national perspective, many would consider the most significant site of green memory connected to early 1970s Stockholm to be a patch of thirteen Scots elm trees outside of the opera house in the public garden Kungsträdgården.7 After over a decade of sweeping redevelopment of central Stockholm, including the demolition of hundreds of centuries-­old structures, plans to build a subway entrance where the trees stood sparked, in May 1971, a massive protest and clash with authorities. The

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“Elm Conflict” represented a turning point in modern Swedish politics since it was framed as an issue of democracy and remains a point of reference for subsequent environmental and city planning conflicts in Sweden.8 In terms of establishing Stockholm’s status as an international site of green memory, less dramatic but far-reaching processes in preparation for the UNCHE were at that time underway in Sweden’s capital and elsewhere, the products of which would have significant influence on scientific, social, and political engagement with environmental issues at the global level. An array of textual artifacts surrounding the UNCHE represents objects of international memory associated with Stockholm and the origin of global environmental governance. In May 1971, while protesters were chaining themselves to the elm trees in Stockholm, the UNCHE Secretariat in New York was commissioning what would become the unofficial report and “conceptual framework” for the conference. The volume, a scientific and philosophical work considered to be the “conference bible,” was written for lay readers but based on expertise from diverse realms of knowledge and all global regions.9 The prominent environmental and internationalist thinkers Barbara Ward and René Dubos were enlisted to coordinate input from 152 experts from 58 countries—carefully chosen to represent first, second, and third world perspectives and provide “a view from everywhere.”10 Ultimately, Ward and Dubos coauthored the report carrying the Stockholm Conference motto, Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet.11 Representing the first global state-­of-­the-­ environment report, and an early articulation of the concept of sustainable development, Only One Earth had substantial impact on public opinion and the thinking of political leaders in the industrial world as well as, to a lesser extent, in developing countries.12 Half a century ago it was among the first official documents at the international scale that laid out the emerging understanding of the earth as fragile and in need of human care.13 The seeds of sustainable development were planted in the principles of the Declaration on the Human Environment, a major conference outcome. Several months before Ward and Dubos were commissioned to prepare Only One Earth, the second session of the UNCHE preparatory committee created, in February 1971, an intergovernmental working group to begin drafting a declaration for the conference. Hans Blix, a legal adviser to the Swedish foreign ministry, played a decisive role in negotiating and writing the declaration over the course of several meetings in 1971 and 1972, with the final text—consisting of a preamble and twenty-­six principles—being adopted on the last day of the conference, 16 June 1972.14 Although not a legally binding instrument,



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the Stockholm Declaration is considered a landmark in the establishment and evolution of international environmental law, with its normative contributions in the realm of environment and development reaffirmed twenty years later by the similarly structured 1992 Rio Declaration.15 The legacy of Stockholm included the environment and sustainable development summits in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and 2012, and Johannesburg in 2002, shaping an arc of international diplomatic mega-­events that can be directly traced back to the Stockholm Conference. Swedish diplomats in New York, and Stockholm-­ based scientists such as Hans Palmstierna and Bert Bolin (later cofounder and first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC), had generated a comprehensive body of scientific knowledge that convinced other countries of the need to convene a major international gathering.16 Part of the Stockholm narrative is tied to properties that had for a long time been connected to Sweden as a democratic template: Sweden, “the M ­ iddle Way” as Marquis Childs had called it in his 1936 portrait of the model modern nation, working according to consensus norms and in a spirit of diplomatic give and take.17 In this small northern country, the environmental issue loomed large from the 1960s and 1970s, and Sweden established the world’s first environmental protection agency in 1967. Compared to other countries, Sweden was early and comprehensive in its attempts to deal legally with issues such as vehicle pollution, work environments, acidification, and many other issues around environment and public health.18 The most significant characteristic of Sweden in this respect was perhaps the relatively peaceful coexistence of the state with a growing environmental movement, parts of which had strong public support and even caught the attention of the sitting Social Democratic government. Furthermore, Sweden was one of the earliest European countries to establish a green party, in 1982. The party entered Parliament in 1988 and has remained there during five decades.19 The Declaration on the Human Environment, along with the Action Plan and its 109 recommendations, was adopted on 15 December 1972 by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) as part of a series of resolutions on UNCHE matters. The adoption of the Stockholm Declaration provided a bookend for the process officially launched on 3 December 1968 with UNGA resolution 2398. Largely drafted by the Swedish diplomat Lars-­Göran Engfeldt, UNGA 2398 endorsed “the Swedish initiative”—in the works for a year at that point—to convene the first ever global environmental conference under the auspices of the United Nations. The speech by Sweden’s UN ambassador Sverker Åström before the vote in the General Assembly moreover

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marked the first instance where concern over climate change was raised in an official UN context.20 In 1988, twenty years after the adoption of UNGA 2398, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)—a direct result and lasting legacy of the Stockholm Conference—together with the World Meteorological Organization established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with Bert Bolin as its founding chairman.21 The creation of the IPCC was the culmination of Bolin’s institution building efforts that had begun in earnest with major conferences he convened in Stockholm in 1967 and 1974, under the auspices of the Global Atmospheric Research Program, which were foundational events in the organization of international climate science.22

Three Milestone Reports Stockholm played a central role in the genesis of three pioneering scientific reports directly tied to the UNCHE that were produced the year before the conference. Each can be considered a milestone in terms of its respective contribution to comprehending emerging environmental problems, institutionalizing scientific knowledge, and connecting science to global environmental politics and governance processes. These reports—Inadvertent Climate Modification: Report of the Study of Man’s Impact on Climate (SMIC) (SMIC 1971); Air Pollution Across National Boundaries: The Impact on the Environment of Sulfur in Air and Precipitation: Sweden’s Case Study for the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment; and SCOPE 1: Global Environmental Monitoring: A Report Submitted to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm 1972 (SCOPE 1971)—represent early examples of the interface of science and politics in the emergence of global environmental governance and can be considered lasting legacies of the preparation period of the Stockholm Conference.23 Sweden’s case study for the conference, Air Pollution Across National Boundaries, was a significant scientific contribution to the understanding of acid rain, an issue that had been brought to public attention several years earlier by one of the case study’s authors, the soil scientist Svante Odén.24 The acid rain study was one of the pillars of a Swedish science offensive in advance of the UNCHE. It also included thematic studies on workplace environments and the effects of noise and stress from urban environments as well as a comprehensive national report on the state of the human environment in Sweden.25 Beyond their scientific value, the reports also served as instruments of



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science diplomacy that contributed to realizing some of Sweden’s overarching objectives during the preparation phase of the conference. A primary purpose of the UNCHE, as imagined by its Swedish initiators, was to enhance public awareness and catalyze government engagement with environmental issues, particularly through mobilizing scientific research at the national level.26 For this purpose, Swedish diplomats used their substantial influence in the UN Secretariat during the conference preparation period to motivate governments to draft reports on their national environmental problems. These preparatory reports—eventually submitted by eighty countries— would collectively provide a global inventory of knowledge on environmental issues while stimulating and organizing scientific research in countries with otherwise weak links between government authorities and research institutions. Sweden’s scientific reports were intended to serve as examples that could provide guidance for other countries in drafting reports of their own. To this end, the Swedish Foreign Ministry distributed the reports throughout its network of embassies to be used as teaching tools, engaging and mobilizing the entire foreign service in the substantive preparation process for the conference.27 In some cases, the Foreign Ministry dispatched scientific experts such as Lars Ingelstam, a coauthor of Sweden’s acid rain case study, to advise governments—in that case Brazil—on report preparation and even to allay concerns about the conference itself.28 The acid rain report’s lead author was Bert Bolin, best known for his work with climate change. A member of the expert group advising Sweden’s national conference organizing committee, Bolin backed the lobbying efforts of Svante Odén to select acidification as the topic for the Swedish case study, which integrated expertise from atmospheric science, systems theory, and ecology.29 Acid rain had been an issue of societal debate in Sweden since October 1967 when Odén first published his groundbreaking findings in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Although acidification itself was not a major point of deliberation at the UNCHE, the problem of transboundary pollution was addressed several times in the Stockholm Declaration and the conference’s Action Plan. Acid rain grew to become a defining environmental issue later in the 1970s and 1980s, addressed in institutions such as the Organization for Economic Co-­operation and Development and the UN Economic Commission for Europe, eventually resulting in the Long Range Convention on Transboundary Air Pollution.30 The SMIC report Inadvertent Climate Modification (SMIC 1971) was the result of a three-­week workshop held at the Skogshem & Wijk conference

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center in Lidingö, outside of Stockholm, in July 1971. It followed the Study of Critical Environmental Problems (SCEP) meeting in western Massachusetts a year earlier, in which mostly American scientists deliberated on diverse issues related to the environment, including climate. Both SCEP and SMIC were organized by the MIT professor and UNCHE adviser Carroll Wilson with the explicit intention of contributing to the Stockholm Conference.31 Cohosted by the Royal Swedish Academies of Science and of Engineering Sciences, SMIC— unlike SCEP—was a highly internationalized gathering specifically focused on climate change.32 It brought together many of the world’s most prominent climate experts including William Kellogg, Syukuro Manabe, Mikhail Budyko, and Hermann Flohn, with Stephen Schneider, who later became a leading voice on climate change, as rapporteur.33 In addition to its importance as a forum for exchanging knowledge, and for social bonding among the growing international network of experts in attendance,34 SMIC represented a key event and turning point in the promotion of climate change as an issue of global political importance.35 In addition to the MIT-­published report—considered “required reading” for Stockholm Conference delegates—SMIC objectives were made manifest in Recommendation 79 of the UNCHE Action Plan, which called for the creation of a global climate-­monitoring network.36 The establishment of a global environmental monitoring system was also the aim of another scientific network that, during the summer of 1971 in Stockholm, prepared a report explicitly intended to inform and influence the UNCHE participants. Global Environmental Monitoring: A Report Submitted to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm 1972 (SCOPE 1971) became the first in a long series of influential reports (seventy-­ two in total, four of which were edited by Bolin) produced by the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), founded by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) in 1969. Together with the Swedish biologist Sören Svensson and the Welsh ecologist Gordon Goodman—who later became the founding director of the Stockholm-­based Beijer Institute and its successor, the Stockholm Environment Institute—preparation of the first SCOPE report was led by Bengt Lundholm. He was the secretary of the Ecological Research Committee at Sweden’s Natural Research Council (ERC– NRC) and served as chairman of SCOPE’s Commission on Monitoring. The latter body had been effectively transferred to SCOPE from the International Biological Program, where Lundholm, from 1968, had been actively promoting the idea of a Global Network of Environmental Monitoring (GNEM). The ERC-­NRC hosted a series of GNEM planning meetings in Sweden, with



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Lundholm chairing a team of Swedish biologists that proposed a monitoring network of “Global Baseline Stations.”37 Lundholm, who sat on the same scientific advisory committee for the conference as Bolin, took the opportunity of the UNCHE to advance such a system, the essence of which was endorsed in the conference’s Action Plan and became institutionalized within UNEP as Earthwatch and the Global Environmental Monitoring System.38

North-­South Divide Another influential and historically significant UNCHE preparatory report was the result of a June 1971 meeting in Founex, Switzerland, attended primarily by development experts. Maurice Strong, secretary-­general of the Stockholm Conference, together with the conference advisers Barbara Ward, Mahbub ul Haq, and Gamani Corea, convened the meeting to address the growing concerns of developing countries that international efforts to protect the environment would curtail economic growth and endanger the development agenda.39 The Founex Report has been seen as “a foundational text of sustainable development,” and, by recognizing developing countries’ right to economic growth, the meeting in a village on the outskirts of Geneva reduced the risk that conference preparations would be derailed over environment vs. development tensions. Nonetheless, developing countries—led by Brazil, which had called the conference “a rich man’s show”—continued up to and through the conference to criticize the industrialized world for its predominant role in environmental degradation and to voice their suspicion that the Stockholm Conference would lead to reductions in development aid.40 The most prominent intervention differentiating the perspectives of the North and the South on environment and development was the speech towards the end of the conference by the Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi—the only foreign head of state to attend the Stockholm Conference. Gandhi famously identified poverty and need as “the greatest polluters,” attributing environmental problems in developing countries to “the inadequacy of development” rather than “excessive industrialization” as in the Global North. Stephen Macekura has described global environmental politics as it emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s as “the world’s most dangerous political issue.”41 This was the formulation used by the ecologist-­activist Barry Commoner in his article “Motherhood in Stockholm,” which lamented the

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North-­South tensions over environment and development brought to the fore in the run-­up to the conference. The UNCHE organizers and associated experts made great efforts to bridge such divides with texts like the Founex Report and the Stockholm Declaration.42 Nevertheless, this legacy of mistrust in matters where environmental protection is seen as coming at the expense of economic development, alas, was also born in Stockholm and has remained a structural component of international negotiations on climate and other issues.

Stockholm as an International Hub The institutional landscape that has evolved in Stockholm over the past fifty years represents a manifestation of green memory that, to some extent, can be connected to the UNCHE. At the time of the Stockholm Conference, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was in the process of reorienting its activities toward a more modern understanding of the environment and its interaction with society.43 Eager to engage itself with problems of the environment, the academy paid tribute to the conference’s title and theme by launching a new publication called Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment in 1972. Its first issue was published in conjunction with the Stockholm Conference.44 Reflecting the academy’s new orientation under Carl Gustaf Bernhard, who became the permanent secretary in 1972, Ambio solicited contributions on human-­ environment interactions from political and social actors, such as Sverker Åström and Maurice Strong as well as from scientific and other experts. Drawing on prestige from its association with the Nobel Prizes, the academy moreover became a platform for events and new institutions involved with problems of the human environment. The 1973 Energy in Society symposium attracted top international experts, such as the American ecologist Howard Odum and the Swedish food and population scientist Georg Borgström.45 The 1982 Rättvik Conference on Environmental Research and Management Priorities for the 1980s contributed to shaping international scientific and management agendas well beyond the thirty-­five handpicked experts in attendance. It influenced, for example, Gustave Speth at the time of his founding of the World Resources Institute the same year, as well as Jim MacNeill, secretary-­general of the World Commission on Environment and Development, who was the lead author of the Brundtland Commission’s report Our Common Future.46



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Soon after the UNCHE, plans for an international environmental institute based in Stockholm began to take shape. The Swedish industrialist Kjell Beijer expressed his interest in making a significant donation to the academy to establish an environmental Nobel Prize of sorts.47 After discussions with Bernhard and others, Beijer was convinced that the funds should instead be used for environmental research and, after several years of preparation, the Beijer Institute—the International Institute for Energy and Human Ecology—was inaugurated on 24 March 1977 in a newly built wing of the academy.48 Gordon Goodman was named director, and the physicist Lars Kristoferson, who had helped organize the Energy in Society symposium, was hired as vice director. The two remained in those roles for the duration of the Beijer Institute’s existence as a stand-­alone institute and even into the first years of its de facto transformation into the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), established in 1989 on the initiative of Sweden’s minister of environment Birgitta Dahl. In addition to taking on its personnel in Stockholm, the SEI inherited the Beijer Institute’s international network, including centers in York, England, and in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. In 1992 Kristoferson took the opportunity of the Cold War’s end to establish a center in Tallinn, Estonia,49 and additional SEI centers have since opened in Oxford, Bangkok, Nairobi, and Bogotá. Attesting to its international recognition, and possibly favorable memory associations with Stockholm and environmental governance, the SEI consistently ranks among the top environmental think tanks in the world.50 While the Beijer Institute and the SEI were Swedish initiatives, another influential center for environmental research that came to be based at the academy originated at the international level of scientific cooperation. In 1986 Bert Bolin was appointed by the ICSU to chair a planning group charged with investigating the possibility of establishing an international research program that would conceptualize and study the earth as an integrated system. As scientific adviser to the Swedish prime minister Ingvar Carlsson, Bolin was able to facilitate that the secretariat of the new organization, the International Geosphere-­Biosphere Programme (IGBP), be situated in Stockholm at the academy,51 with the Swedish microbiologist Thomas Rosswall as its first director. The IGBP became the key coordinator and catalyzer of the cutting-­ edge field of earth system science.52 In addition to radically altering scientific understanding of how the planet functions,53 including the interactions of human and environmental systems, the research taking place all over the world—which the IGPB was at the center of—later became the conceptual

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foundation for the work of social scientists within the growing field of earth system governance.54 The IGBP secretariat remained at the academy for the duration of its existence from 1987 to 2015, by which time one of the five global hubs of Future Earth—a successor to the IGBP in global change research—had been established in Stockholm, also located at the academy.55 The IGBP and earth system science also provided the seedbed for the idea of the Anthropocene, which has had a substantial impact on how the contemporary human-­environment relationship is conceptualized by scholars and the wider public. The concept, with various predecessors back to previous centuries, was initially voiced at a February 2000 meeting of the IGBP Scientific Committee in Cuernavaca, Mexico, by Paul Crutzen, vice-­chair of the program at the time.56 It first appeared in print in an article, authored by Crutzen and the limnologist Eugene Stoermer, published in Stockholm in the May 2000 issue of the IGPB Global Change Newsletter.57 It was followed up by Crutzen’s “Geology of Mankind” article in Nature, after which the Anthropocene concept started to spread like wildfire in the following decade.58 Earth system thinking and the Anthropocene were foundational components of one of the most successful scientific conceptualizations of the place of humans in the global-­scale environment: the planetary boundaries framework. This conceptual innovation was first articulated by a diverse ensemble of twenty-­nine scholars, including Crutzen and other high-­profile scientists, in a massively cited 2009 article in Nature.59 Under the lead authorship of Johan Rockström—a Swedish water and sustainability scientist who evolved into a “meta-­specialist” on all things environmental—the framework identified nine biophysical limits that should not be transgressed if the planet is to remain within a “safe operating space for humanity” equivalent to (relatively) stable Holocene conditions.60 Often compared to, although very different from, the Club of Rome’s resource-­focused Limits to Growth report in 1972, the planetary boundaries framework was updated in a 2015 article in Science. In this project, Will Steffen—an American/Australian earth system scientist, former executive director of the IGBP, and a prominent spokesman of the Anthropocene concept—led a group of seventeen coauthors in further developing the framework.61 Many of the coauthors of one or both planetary boundaries articles were either Swedish or closely connected to scientific networks associated with Stockholm. The primary node for the planetary boundaries concept—a safe operating space for earth system thinking if you will—has been the



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Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC). It was established in 2007 as a collaborative venture between Stockholm University, the Beijer Institute, and the Stockholm Environment Institute based on a ten-­year grant from Mistra, a Swedish funding agency for strategic environmental research. With the late Canadian ecologist C. S. Holling as an intellectual godfather for much of its research agenda, the SRC has been at the forefront of popularizing and applying the concept of resilience to an array of environmental governance issues. In the Resilience Centre’s own foundation narrative, published in the review of its first decade,62 a fateful 2003 phone call placed by Bert Bolin to Johan Rockström, who was conducting fieldwork in Africa at the time, led to the latter becoming executive director of the SEI in 2004 and founding director of the SRC in 2007.

Integrating Climate What is remarkable about the account given above is how its components lend themselves to a narrative about Stockholm in accordance with the wider story of the global environment. If remembering is a matter of selecting and transforming facts into a narrative that is useful, directional, and reasonably true to reality (drawing little opposition), then Green Stockholm is a case in point. One particularly striking aspect is its integrative character. Institutions, events, and reports over a long period of time align with the direction of the narrative and take on evolutionary traits that facilitate remembrance and the turning of it into a kind of common currency. Some concepts take on breakthrough properties, such as moments when Stockholm attracted worldwide attention through its formative association. This was the case with the idea of the Anthropocene and the planetary boundaries framework, and the establishment of a prominent international center based on the idea of resilience, all during this century—and before that, in 1972, with environmental diplomacy and the launching of what was essentially the first of a long string of major United Nations environmental conferences.63 The year 1972 may be seen as a breakthrough year in its own right, a green annus mirabilis with the launch of the first issue of The Ecologist in London and Ambio in Stockholm, and the publication of The Limits to Growth, initiated by the Club of Rome and based on a computerized prediction of the global future of the environment, the economy, and natural resources. Before

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then, it was hard to fathom that the world was entering an environmental era, including an ongoing negotiation over the human-­earth relationship. Now, when it actually did occur, what had happened before could be recast as a pre-­history of sorts. To that, Stockholm science and institutions also lend themselves well, illustrating the German historian Reinhart Koselleck’s ­dictum that reorienting future directions of society, finding paths through “multiple times” at the same time reshuffles memory as well, producing new pasts that gain their meaning from the “new beginnings” of future times.64 Climate change fits the narrative ideally—now one of the super tropes of global discourse and gradually becoming rehistoricized and memorialized— from the ongoing melting of ice in the Arctic back to Margaret Thatcher’s United Nations speech in 1989, only days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, or to historical temperature records and the legacies of the Little Ice Age or the Roman Climate Optimum.65 Bert Bolin, the tireless broker of climate science and politics both in Sweden and globally,66 was also an important disseminator of the modern climate understanding in Sweden, advising prime ministers and other officials on scientific issues and research policy. He was moreover a public spokesperson for climate science, and an arduous but diplomatic defender of the emerging orthodoxy of the anthropogenic origins of the mounting global problem. His career started in close proximity to Carl-­Gustaf Rossby—arguably the most important Swedish scientist of the twentieth century—and he would assume his mentor’s position as director of the Department of Meteorology at Stockholm University (MISU) after Rossby’s sudden passing in 1957. Rossby had in the late 1910s been a student at Stockholm Högskola where he met the Bergen meteorologist Vilhelm Bjerknes, a former professor at the school, when the latter returned to give a lecture. Rossby was mesmerized and began his meandering international career at Bjerknes’ institute, continuing on to Halle, Germany and, after a short sojourn back in Stockholm, eventually the US Weather Bureau in Washington, DC. He left Sweden for the United States in 1925 with a letter of recommendation signed by no less than Svante Arrhenius, the 1903 Nobel laureate in chemistry who by the 1920s was being hailed as an outstandingly broad-­minded scientist with genius qualities. Importantly, Arrhenius had been interested in climate change himself. In a famous article in 1896, he suggested that historic changes in climate may have caused the ice ages that had been so consequential for the Nordic countries. Climate change could also explain the geographical features of Sweden, not least its fertile soils derived from postglacial seas that covered land



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that would eventually rise (and continues to do so to this day) as the several thousand-­meter-­thick ice receded. Rossby thus connects Bert Bolin, the IPCC and the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore and the international climate panel Bolin helped create, with Arrhenius and the formation of the Nobel Prize institution itself. This history also links climate science with the building of Stockholm as a modern academic capital. Arrhenius was the president of Stockholm Högskola and passionate about Sweden’s capital becoming the center of a new kind of useful knowledge that he thought could only be forged in a major modern city.67 Rossby, the prodigal son that went west, became the golden boy of American meteorology, heading the US war effort in his field and serving as an influential aid to the War Office. He founded institutes at MIT and the University of Chicago, and was wooed to lead the Cold War-­era Princeton Computer Project housed at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.68 At the height of his American career, and with top security clearance in the Pentagon where he continued to serve into the 1950s, Rossby suddenly returned to Sweden and Stockholm where a new, remarkable chapter in his legacy as an institution builder was launched. His return to Stockholm would link him directly to the catapulting career of the city itself as a site of global environmental governance. The move was blessed by no less than Sweden’s prime minister, the Social Democrat Tage Erlander, a signal that Swedish Cold War meteorology, with Rossby leading the effort, was considered a national priority at the top political level.69 Rossby gathered members of his large international network in the Swedish capital and MISU, which he had founded in 1947 upon his return to Sweden. As the institution builder he was, in 1955 Rossby established within MISU the International Meteorological Institute (IMI), which with consistent government funding has for over six decades helped solidify Stockholm’s standing as a hub for climate science by facilitating the visits of top scientists for seminars, sabbaticals, and the exchange of ideas. Rossby also launched a new journal, Tellus, published by MISU/IMI. He had already founded the Journal of Meteorology (later renamed the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences) which had quickly become a leading forum. Tellus was equally successful. In its very first year, it published articles by some of the biggest names in meteorology from all over the world. Also, during the first few years, it was in Tellus that groundbreaking studies were published by the likes of the computer mathematician John von Neumann, Rossby’s Chicago protégé Jule Charney, the Canadian Gilbert Plass—who was the first person to scientifically

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reestablish the theory of the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming in his famous articles in 1955—and, of course, a growing cohort of Rossby’s own students and colleagues in Stockholm.

“A Unique Experiment of Planetary Dimensions” The meteorological world that was taking shape in the 1950s was not just focused on civil aviation and military strategy needs. A world with a growing population and the dramatically increasing consumption of natural resources and energy was also a world in which the composition of the atmosphere was changing. In an article on “Current Problems in Meteorology,” Rossby applied new perspectives from a field of science that he had shaped in a fundamental way.70 The composition of air, not least “pollution” as some were then starting to say, impacted both humans and their environment. Understanding this interaction, even interdependence, is also how Rossby’s somewhat novel approach to science was presented in a 1956 story in Time magazine entitled “Man’s Milieu,” which featured a full-­page cover image of the Swedish scientist. There was also the related issue of the climate. Could this also change as a result of human impact on the composition of the atmosphere? The idea was not a new one; theoretically, the greenhouse effect had been known about since the 1800s, but after Arrhenius’s article in 1896 ideas about the impact of carbon dioxide were largely forgotten. The general conception for more than half a century had been that humans did not have the power to impact anything as large as the planet or its climate. Only a very few voices expressed a different view. One belonged to the British engineer Guy Stewart Callendar, who in 1938 made detailed calculations of the earth’s increasing average temperature since the 1800s and related them to human use of fossil fuels. Few people agreed with Callendar’s ideas, and Rossby did not seem to have paid any attention to them, either. Signals, however, came from Rossby’s network from time to time. One of his first PhD students, Chaim Pekeris, had been interested in the CO2 problem as early as the 1930s. At the same time, Rossby made his first contact with the Finnish chemist Kurt Buch, who had been gathering data for many years on CO2 uptake in the ocean and had found that the amounts were constantly increasing. At the beginning of the 1950s, Buch got in touch with Rossby again and explained that he was thinking along the same lines as Callendar. Receptive and curious as always, Rossby picked up on the idea. He



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did not launch a comprehensive research program, but he gradually allowed more space at MISU for the study of atmospheric chemistry, including carbon dioxide. His department at Stockholm University took the initiative to build a Scandinavian network tasked, among other things, with measuring CO2 levels in the air.71 As chairman of the Swedish National Committee for the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year (IGY), and with Bert Bolin as his secretary and right-­hand man, Rossby made sure that CO2 measurements were included in the Swedish program. He was also directly involved in the discussions about where and how Charles David Keeling’s measurements of greenhouse gases, an IGY project, should be pursued. In the Swedish IGY program, CO2 measurements were made from a base on Spitsbergen. Several articles were published in Tellus presenting the ideas about climate change when these were brand new and perceived by most people as wild guesswork. He also refuted the more common idea of a new ice age. Hence, in the mid-­1950s, which in this context was very early, Rossby was on the side of those who kept an open mind about whether humans were responsible for large-­scale climate change: “It has been pointed out frequently that mankind is now performing a unique experiment of impressive planetary dimensions by now consuming during a few hundred years all the fossil fuel deposited during millions of years. The meteorological consequences of this experiment are as yet by no means clarified, but there is no doubt that an increase of carbon-­dioxide content in the atmosphere would lead to an . . . increase of the mean temperature of the atmosphere.”72 Thus spoke Rossby. His voice in Time magazine, just like that of Greta Thunberg on the cover of the same magazine sixty-­three years later, came from Stockholm, a global truth spot where people had started to believe in the new human-­earth relationship.73

Arriving at the Right Time Rossby was in the middle of a workshop at his alma mater when he died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack on 19 August 1957, restlessly active to the very end. As a visionary he was also focused on the future and on opportunities, rather than what he had already achieved. As a research director he had the qualities that sociological research has identified as fundamental for successful research environments. He was charismatic, had a strategic focus and good relationships with funding sources, and as a leader

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was able to incentivize and generate enthusiasm for the projects he wanted to implement. Those around him felt as if they were taking part in something big and important. Which, in retrospect, they were. He nurtured talent in research students, including Horace Byers from Berkeley who came to MIT; Jule Charney who received his PhD from the less enticing meteorology environment at UCLA but was soon brought into Rossby’s magic circle; and Bert Bolin, the wise and multitalented meteorologist in Stockholm whom he could entrust with anything in the knowledge that he would always deliver. Their careers all followed the same pattern. They met Rossby as a teacher or mentor, then, through dialogue or mutual understanding, adopted his research agenda and worked faithfully on it within the network. Rossby retained his leadership role through all turns in the road and regardless of the subsequent successes of the individual members of his network. In many ways they outshone him in individual achievements, not least in mathematics and research methods. But there was never any doubt about which roles the various researchers had. Few of them seemed to complain about this arrangement. Similarly, Rossby was never envious; the more successful his acolytes, the better it was for him. But his personal qualities can only explain part of Rossby’s significance. Another key explanation was that he was from Stockholm—one of the research environments in the world where geophysical issues had long had a certain status and where links to Bergen and Bjerknes were already established. He was catapulted from the Nordic region out into the world, and like a boomerang, he came back. The ties between the Nordic research environments had been established in the end of the 1800s. Bjerknes’s chair at Stockholm University was the most important one. They were strengthened after the First World War by the geographer and glaciologist Hans Ahlmann’s work in Western Norway with Bergen as the base, and Tor Bergeron, who became the Bergen School’s important missionary in Sweden. He was also the first to suggest that the Rossby family should be allowed to take over Ahlmann’s apartment on top of the Stockholm Observatory when Ahlmann, who had since 1930 been professor of geography at Stockholm University, became Sweden’s ambassador to Norway in 1950. The cupola atop the observatory overlooking the Swedish capital remained Rossby’s home until 1954.74 Remembering is also a matter of timing. Rossby returned to Stockholm just as the very first phases in the conceptualization of “the environment” were taking place during the post–World War II years. Rossby’s first full year back in Sweden, 1948, was in fact the breakthrough moment for the new



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understanding of the concept.75 He was a top US researcher with unique institutional resources and was recruited to return to Stockholm to work in a field and during a period when Sweden and the United States had extensive security policy collaboration. Swedish research was also greatly motivated by military needs, especially when the technically advanced Swedish air force—in need of regularly updated and accurate weather forecasts—was expanding rapidly. Rossby translated and transferred his American visions to Stockholm and started a tradition of building proto-­“earth system science” institutions on a grand scale. A starting point of the process could be seen as the founding of the Arrhenius Nobel Institute, with a subsequent orientation towards nuclear physics with the Stockholm accelerator, located just across the yard on Stockholm University’s satellite campus north of the city (today the main university campus). Massive growth in environmental and geosciences would follow. Nearby, the Academy of Sciences would transform itself in response to new conceptions of the human environment and by the work of, among others, Bert Bolin and his student, the young Paul Crutzen, the 1995 Nobel laureate in chemistry who in 2000 coined the term “Anthropocene.” Decades after Rossby’s initiated his institution building efforts, the Stockholm Environment Institute and, subsequently, the Stockholm Resilience Center were established. In retrospect, these and other Stockholm institutions are part of a legacy ultimately derived from Rossby. His passion and curiosity for the unknown encompassed the entire earth, and he concluded his Time magazine cover story by stating: “We should have a great deal of respect for the planet on which we live.”

To Remember the Very Large and Abstract To tell this story of Stockholm as a major northern hub for an emerging new narrative of the human-­earth relationship is a project in its own right. It offers the concrete historical detail and the materiality (people, institutions, meetings, declarations) without which there would not be much to remember. Nonetheless, compared to battlefields, mass graves, or even sports stadiums where records were broken or matches were won, the global trope of a new Weltanschauung taking shape over the course of many decades is, at the same time, large and abstract. Although it is perhaps more important than any single monument or patriotic deed, this gradually emerging narrative is possibly also somewhat hard to fathom as a site of memory.

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So, why memory, and why the past? The usual urban sustainability narrative is about the present and the future, and Stockholm has indeed had a lot to offer in that regard. In 2013 the OECD recognized Stockholm as a world-­ leading city when it comes to water quality, waste handling, and reducing carbon emissions. Stockholm was ranked number one in ICT development and urban sustainability in 2014 and again in 2016, and came in at number four in Monocle’s Quality of Life survey the following year.76 So, even though the European Commission chose Stockholm as the first “Green Capital of Europe” when they launched that award in 2010, there is no single location in the entire urban fabric of Stockholm where the green memory that we so forcefully suggest in this chapter has of yet become a physical monument of any kind, in the way that memories are often acknowledged and memorialized elsewhere.77 This is not because sites of memory are lacking. Stockholm’s Olympic stadium from 1912, along with the one in Helsinki, can for example be “seen by many on a daily basis and are recognizable by many more as significant urban landmarks.”78 An inventory of Stockholm’s monuments shows a repertoire much like those of most cities, with statues or memorials of kings, politicians, artists, actors, and film stars (such as Thunberg’s namesake Greta Garbo) mixed with monuments devoted to tragedies and triumphs, military regiments and trade unions. Stockholm has three UNESCO world heritage sites: Birka, an old Viking outpost and an archaeological site; Drottningholm Palace, home to the royal family since 1662 with an eighteenth-­century theater and a Chinese pavilion; and the Woodland Cemetery, designed by the world-­renowned twentieth-­century architects Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz.79 None are related to Stockholm as a site of global environment. A transnational narrative of something large and abstract like the global environment or environmental governance probably can’t be remembered in the same way. Perhaps the monument that comes closest to the essence of a site of green memory is the Stockholm Urban National Park, a reserve of peri-­urban landscape uniquely set aside in 1994 to protect green space and biodiversity, which also encompasses many of the environmental science institutions mentioned above.80 Still, its properties are local and provide little in terms of the global narrative. As part of global environmental memory, Stockholm is remembered much more at a distance. In fact, it fits very well with Michael Rothberg’s conceptualization of memory as entangled strands of international connections, noeuds de mémoire, or “knots of memory” much better than the lieux de mémoire that Pierre Nora originally conceived.81 It is not as a site as much as in its function as a node of thought, insight, and



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organizational and political networks that Stockholm can be regarded as a focal point of human-­earth remembering.

The Greening of the World as Mémoire Collective The name, more than the site itself, is also a collective memory in the sense that Halbwachs conceived it. The difference being that the collective, here, is a transnational community of all those who share in the narrative of a deeply entangled human-­earth relationship that will shape the fate of humanity.82 This is a collective that depends on the success of the content and direction of the narrative itself. Since 1972, the pivotal year of the UN Stockholm Conference; since the IGBP established its first and only office in Stockholm in 1987; and since Bert Bolin assumed the chairmanship of the IPCC in 1988, this global collective has grown fantastically. Stockholm is a node of memory that brings the minds of men and women, and not least youth, together in a sense of shared history, a chosen path that has already taken us a long way and leads on into the future. This story is based to a large extent on scientific knowledge, concepts and ideas, yet it has a quality of historical metaphysics: it is also a path that holds a promise that it may lead to fulfillment, to a better human-­earth relationship. That is a property shared with many other sites and nodes of memory, often national ones: something significant is at stake that can be connected with the name or the place. So, if the site is not the essential element, why Stockholm? Why not the San Francisco Bay Area, which arguably has an equally strong green history and legacy?83 Or Berlin, whose post–World War II urban regeneration provided seminal knowledge on urban green space?84 Or Rio de Janeiro, where the UN Earth Summit in 1992 became the largest ever gathering of heads of state, and agreed-­on seminal principles for sustainable development that have guided environmental work around the world? Processes of remembering are typically not decided according to formal protocol. Sites of memory may be canonized, anointed with official status like UNESCO sites or commemorate with memorial plaques adorned with names and dates. Even so, they acquire their status through informal processes. Nodes of memory are even more informal. They tend to become established through the circulation of references—visual, oral, and written representation—and by repetition. Stockholm has no monopoly on environmental memory; any city or institution could conceivably assume that status.

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Our purpose with this chapter has been to demonstrate the existence of a strong narrative with multiple dimensions, including institutional density, that ties Stockholm to central features of international environmental history, crucially, to do so on the local and national levels. This narrative that underpins Stockholm’s status as a site of green memory is an acknowledgment of the fact that environmental progress on the international level is very much tied to conferences and meetings—a caravan of collective fate—that also entails a strong element of negotiation and incremental agenda setting.85 We can also observe that the narrative encompasses a high degree of what we might call “layered institutional density.” The story connects individual scientific and diplomatic achievements with organizational innovation, political ingenuity, and a broader popular consensus, which has made it possible to receive public consent in Stockholm and Sweden as a whole for the measures taken. The Stockholm urban environment has in a distinct way improved, and the EU “First Green Capital” stamp is a source of pride. A very recent example has been the Swedish government’s proclamation after the Paris Agreement that Sweden is the “first fossil free welfare society.” This case of a would-­be environmental “green” state86 has been most tangibly manifested in Sweden’s Climate Policy Framework, operational from 2018, with far-­reaching targets for zero climate emissions by 2045 and an elaborate set of institutional arrangements to make sure that politics will not obstruct that goal.87 This chapter has explored institutional changes and historical events using the city of Stockholm as the lens. The greening-­of-­the-­world story that we have revealed is an international history. Nothing that happened in Stockholm, or was related to its institutions and politics, would have been possible without profound changes taking place internationally. The greening of the world, at this conjuncture, was a confluence of integrating memories. These converging forces were national—encompassing the welfare state and small state internationalism, as well as the leadership of Olof Palme and the charisma of the enormously popular environment minister Anna Lindh, both of whom were assassinated—and at the same time international and globalist, pointing toward the future as well as retrospectively to the past.88 Stockholm’s function as a node of memory ultimately spans the emergence of François Hartog’s “crisis of time” around 1989.89 From a consciousness of time preoccupied with the future, temporality loses direction, according to Hartog, and historical energy dies in an era of lost meaning and lack of vision. Our story about the formation of a global environmental memory tied to nodes of memory may serve as a counternarrative. It is as



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if the rationale of environmental memory is to provide a meaningful continuation of the achievements won so far, be they scientific, diplomatic, or concrete manifestations of city planning or combating the climate crisis. Environmental memory may be a memory of hope, to some extent similar to the sustainability aspirations signaled by Palme in his 1972 opening address at the Stockholm Conference and those embodied by Greta Thunberg and her interventions on behalf of the climate today.

Notes 1. Damian Carrington, “‘Our Leaders Are Like Children,’ School Strike Founder Tells Climate Summit,” Guardian, 4 December 2018, accessed 9 March 2022, https://​www​.theguardian​ .com​/environment​/2018​/dec​/04​/leaders​-like​-children​-school​-strike​-founder​-greta​-thunberg​ -tells​-un​-climate​-summit; Svante Arrhenius, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground,” London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science 41 (April 1896): 237–75. 2. Henning Rodhe, “Bert Bolin (1925–2007)—a World Leading Climate Scientist and Science Organizer,” Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology 65, no. 1 (2013): 1–7. 3. For example, a series of events under the banner of “Nobel Laureates Symposium on Global Sustainability” was organized and resulted in consensus statements on the need for political action on sustainability issues and, in April 2021, the Nobel Foundation convened the first Nobel Prize Summit, “Our Planet, Our Future,” featuring 126 Nobel laureates who signed a statement, “Our Planet, Our Future: An Urgent Call for Action,” that was delivered to political leaders of the G–7. 4. Michael Rothberg, “Introduction: Between Memory and Memory; From Lieux de mémoire to Noeuds de mémoire,” in Noeuds de mémoire: Multidirectional Memory in Postwar French and Francophone Culture, Yale French Studies 118/19, ed. Michael Rothberg, Debarati Sanyal, and Maxim Silverman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 3–12. 5. Thomas F. Gieryn, Truth-­Spots: How Places Make People Believe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 6. Maurice Halbwachs and Lewis Coser, On Collective Memory (1925; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 7. Literally, “the King’s garden” that produced herbs and vegetables for the royal household in the early modern period. 8. Anders Gullberg, City: Drömmen om ett nytt hjärta (Stockholm: Stockholmiana förlag, 2001). 9. John McCormick, Reclaiming Paradise: The Global Environmental Movement (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); Perrin Selcer, The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment: How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); Simone Schleper, Planning for the Planet: Environmental Expertise and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 1960–1980 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2019). 10. Selcer, Postwar Origins.

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11. Barbara Ward and René Dubos, Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972). 12.  Lars-­Göran Engfeldt, From Stockholm to Johannesburg and Beyond: The Evolution of the International System for Sustainable Development Governance and Its Implications (Stockholm: Government Offices of Sweden, 2009). 13. Schleper, Planning for the Planet. 14. Hans Blix, “Keynote Address,” in The Stockholm Declaration and the Law of the Marine Environment, ed. Myron Nordquist, John Norton Moore, and Said Mahmoudi (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2003), 15–24; Engfeldt, From Stockholm to Johannesburg. 15. Sheila Jasanoff and Marybeth Long Martello, eds., Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004); Frank Biermann, “Global Environmental Governance: Conceptualization and Examples,” Global Governance Working Paper No. 12 (Amsterdam: Global Governance Project, 2004); Kate O’Neill et al., “Methods and Global Environmental Governance,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 38 (2013): 441–71. 16. Eric Paglia, “Not a Proper Crisis,” Anthropocene Review 2, no. 3 (2015): 247–61; Eric Paglia, The Northward Course of the Anthropocene: Transformation, Temporality and Telecoupling in a Time of Environmental Crisis (Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2016); Eric Paglia, “The Swedish Initiative and the 1972 Stockholm Conference: The Decisive Role of Science Diplomacy in the Emergence of Global Environmental Governance,” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8 (2021): accessed 1 March 2022, https://​www​.nature​ .com​/articles​/s41599​-020​-00681​-x. In the few broader histories of global environmental governance and sustainability politics that exist, there are usually chapters or sections devoted to the Stockholm Conference and its crucial preparatory phase: Iris Borowy, Defining Sustainable Development for Our Common Future: A History of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) (London: Routledge, 2013); Ken Conca, An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Stephen Macekura, Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and McCormick, Reclaiming Paradise. 17. Marquis Childs, Sweden: The Middle Way (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1936). 18. Svante Odén, “Nederbördens Försurning” (The acidification of precipitation), Dagens Nyheter, 24 October 1967; Hans Palmstierna, Plundring, Svält, Förgiftning (Stockholm: Rabén and Sjögren, 1967); Michael Egan, “Toxic Knowledge: A Mercurial Fugue in Three Parts,” Environmental History 14, no. 4 (2008): 636–42; Michael Egan, “Communicating Knowledge: The Swedish Mercury Group and Vernacular Science, 1965–1972,” in New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies, ed. D. Jørgensen, F. A. Jørgensen, and S. Pritchard (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), 103–17; Ellen Griffith Spears, Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-­American Town (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). 19. Except for a three-­year period in the 1990s when they failed to receive the required 4 percent of the national vote. 20. Engfeldt, From Stockholm to Johannesburg. 21. Eric Paglia and Charles Parker, “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Guardian of Climate Science,” in Guardians of Public Value, ed. A. Boin, L. A. Fahy, and P. ‘t Hart, 295–321 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).



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22. Eric Paglia and Sverker Sörlin, The Human Environment: Stockholm and the Rise of Global Environmental Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023). 23. Study of Man’s Impact on Climate (SMIC), Inadvertent Climate Modification: Report of the Study of Man’s Impact on Climate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971); Bert Bolin et al., Air Pollution Across National Boundaries: The Impact on the Environment of Sulfur in Air and Precipitation; Sweden’s Case Study for the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm: Royal Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Royal Ministry of Agriculture, 1971); Commission on Monitoring of the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), Global Environmental Monitoring: A Report Submitted to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm 1972 (Stockholm: ICSU and SCOPE, 1971). 24. Peringe Grennfelt et al., “Acid Rain and Air Pollution: 50 Years of Progress in Environmental Science and Policy,” Ambio 49 (2020): 849–64. 25. Gösta Carlestam and Lennart Levi, Urban Conglomerates as Psycho-­Social Human Stressors: General Aspects, Swedish Trends, and Psychological and Medical Implications; A Contribution to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm: Royal Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Royal Ministry of Agriculture, 1971); Sweden’s National Report to the United Nations on the Human Environment (Stockholm: Royal Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Royal Ministry of Agriculture, 1971); The Human Work Environment: Swedish Experiences, Trends, and Future Problems; A Contribution to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm: Royal Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Royal Ministry of Agriculture, 1971). 26. Engfeldt, From Stockholm to Johannesburg. 27. Ibid.; Paglia, “Swedish Initiative.” 28. Lars-­Göran Engfeldt, Lars Ingelstam, and Göran Bäckstrand, personal communication with Eric Paglia, 2014. 29. Rodhe, “Bert Bolin (1925–2007),” 1–7; Rachel Emma Rothschild, Poisonous Skies: Acid Rain and the Globalization of Pollution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). 30. Branislav Gosovic, The Quest for World Environmental Cooperation: The Case of the UN Global Environment Monitoring System (London: Routledge, 1992). See also Lars Björkbom, “Resolution of Environmental Problems: The Use of Diplomacy,” in International Environmental Diplomacy, ed. John Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 123–40. 31. David Hart and David Victor, “Scientific Elites and the Making of US Policy for Climate Change Research, 1957–74,” Social Studies of Science 23, no. 4 (1993): 643–80. 32. Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin, The Environment: A History of the Idea (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), chapter 5. 33. Stephen Schneider, Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth’s Climate (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2009). 34. Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010). 35. Paul N. Edwards and Myanna Lahsen, “Climate Science and Politics in the United States,” unpublished manuscript, 1999, accessed 1 March 2022, http://​pne​.people​.si​.umich​.edu​ /PDF​/PMNPC​/USA​.pdf. 36. Spencer Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Edwards, Vast Machine.

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37. Elena Aronova, “Environmental Monitoring in the Making: From Surveying Nature’s Resources to Monitoring Nature’s Change,” Historical Social Research 40, no. 2 (2015): 222–45. 38. Ibid. 39. Engfeldt, From Stockholm to Johannesburg, 57–60. 40. Miguel Ozorio de Almeida, Environment and Development: The Founex Report on Development and Environment (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1972); Selcer, Postwar Origins; Engfeldt, From Stockholm to Johannesburg; Macekura, Of Limits and Growth. 41. Stephen Macekura, “The World’s Most Dangerous Political Issue,” Solutions, 22 February 2016, accessed 1 March 2022, https://​thesolutionsjournal​.com​/2016​/02​/22​/the​-worlds​-most​ -dangerous​-political​-issue/. 42. Barry Commoner, “Motherhood in Stockholm,” Harper’s Magazine 244 (June 1972): 49–54. 43. Sverker Sörlin, “The Heart of the Planet,” trans. Clare Barnes, in Knowledge in Motion: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Making of Modern Society, ed. Karl Grandin, Johan Kärnfelt, and Solveig Jülich (Stockholm: Makadam, 2018), 411–16. 44. Carl Gustaf Bernhard, The Beijer Institute 1977–1989 (Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1991); Sverker Sörlin, “The Environment as Seen Through the Life of a Journal: Ambio 1972–2022,” Ambio 50, no. 1 (2021): 10–30. 45. See “Energy in Society,” special issue, Ambio 2, no. 6 (1973). 46. Robert Munro, personal communication, 2019. See also Rättvik Conference special issue of Ambio, “Environmental Research and Management Priorities for the 1980s,” Ambio 12, no. 2 (1983), including articles by the zoologist Alf Johnels, the legal expert Robert Munro, and Maurice Strong, accessed 1 March 2022, https://​www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/i398505. 47. Bernhard, Beijer Institute; Mike Chadwick, “The Stockholm Environment Institute: The First Ten Years and Beyond,” unpublished manuscript, 1999 (with the authors; also Lars Kristoferson, personal communication, 2019. 48. Bernhard, Beijer Institute. 49. Lars Kristoferson, personal communication, 2019. 50. James McGann, “2018 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report,” TTCSP Global Go To Think Tank Index Reports 16 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2019), 126, accessed 1 March 2022, https://​repository​.upenn​.edu​/think​_tanks​/16. 51. Bert Bolin, A History of the Science and Politics of Climate Change: The Role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 52. Sybil Seitzinger et al., “International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme and Earth System Science: Three Decades of Co-­Evolution,” Anthropocene Review 2, no. 1 (2015): 3–16. 53. Johan Rockström, “Future Earth,” Science 351, no. 6271 (2016): 319; Frank Biermann, Earth System Governance: World Politics in the Anthropocene (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014). 54. Biermann, Earth System Governance. 55. Rockström, “Future Earth.” 56. Will Steffen, “Commentary,” on Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer, “The ‘Anthropocene,’” IGBP Newsletter 41 (2000), in The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change, ed. Libby Robin, Sverker Sörlin, and Paul Warde (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 483–85 (article) and 486–90 (commentary). For earlier versions of the idea, see Clarence Glacken, “Changing Ideas of the Habitable World,” in Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, ed. William L. Thomas Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 70–92, contextualized in



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Ravi S. Rajan, “Clarence Glacken: Pioneer Environmental Historian,” Environment and History 25, no. 2 (2019): 245–67, 255; and Clive Hamilton and Jacques Grinevald, “Was the Anthropocene Anticipated?,” Anthropocene Review 2, no. 1 (2015): 59–72. 57. Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer, “The ‘Anthropocene,’” Global Change Newsletter 41 (2000), 17–18. 58. Paul Crutzen, “Geology of Mankind,” Nature 415 (2002): 23. 59. In 2009 the same group of scholars also published a more detailed planetary boundaries article in the journal Ecology and Society: Johan Rockström et al., “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” Ecology and Society 14, no. 2 (2009): 32. https://​www​.ecologyandsociety​.org​/vol14​/iss2​/art32/. 60. Warde, Robin, and Sörlin, Environment; Johan Rockström et al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” Nature 461 (2009): 472–75. 61. Will Steffen et al., “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration,” Anthropocene Review 2 (2015): 81–98. 62. Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), SRC Decennial Report 2007–2017 (Stockholm: Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2017). 63. Conca, Unfinished Foundation. 64. Reinhart Koselleck, “‘Erfahrungsraum’ und ‘Erwartungshorizont’—zwei historische Kategorien,” in Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1979), 349–75; Sverker Sörlin, “Environmental Times: Historical and Scientific Temporalities from Annales to Anthropocene, ca. 1920–2020,” in Times of History, Times of Nature: Temporalization and the Limits of Modern Knowledge, ed. Anders Ekström and Staffan Bergwik (New York: Berghahn Books, 2022), 64–101. 65. Nina Wormbs, ed., Competing Artic Futures: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Sverker Sörlin and Melissa Lane, “Historicizing Climate Change—Engaging New Approaches to Climate and History,” Climatic Change 151, no. 1 (2018): 1–13; Sverker Sörlin and Klaus Dodds, eds., Ice Humanities: Living, Thinking and Working in a Melting World (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022); Eric Paglia and Erik Isberg, “On Record: Political Temperature and the Temporalities of Climate Change,” in Ekström and Bergwik, Times of History, Times of Nature, 259–83; Madeleine Herren, “The Arctic: Memory Beyond Territoriality?,” this volume. 66. Bolin, History. 67. Elisabeth Crawford, Arrhenius: From Ionic Theory to the Greenhouse Effect (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1995). 68. Douglas R. Allen, “The Genesis of Meteorology at the University of Chicago,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 82, no. 9 (2001): 1905–10; Ronald Doel, “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA After 1945,” Social Studies of Science 33 (2003): 635–66; James Roger Fleming, Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016). 69. Tage Erlander, Dagböcker 1949–1951 (Diaries vol. 1) (Stockholm: Gidlunds, 2001); Bert Bolin, “Carl-­Gustaf Rossby: The Stockholm Period 1947–1957,” Tellus A 51 (1999): 4–12; Sverker Sörlin, “Narratives and Counter Narratives of Climate Change: North Atlantic Glaciology and Meteorology, ca. 1930–1955,” Journal of Historical Geography 35, no. 2 (2009): 237–55. 70. Carl-­Gustaf Rossby, “Current Problems in Meteorology” (Swedish orig. 1956), in The Atmosphere and the Sea in Motion: Scientific Contributions to the Rossby Memorial Volume, ed.

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Bert Bolin (New York: Rockefeller Institute Press, 1959), 9–50. An abbreviated version is available in Robin, Sörlin, and Warde, Future of Nature, 445–50. 71. Maria Bohn, “Concentrating on CO2: The Scandinavian and Arctic Measurements,” in Osiris 26: Klima, ed. James Roger Fleming and Vladimir Jankovich (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 165–79. 72. Rossby, “Current Problems,” 446. 73. Thomas F. Gieryn, Truth-­Spots: How Places Make People Believe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 74. Sörlin, “Narratives.” 75. Warde, Robin, and Sörlin, Environment, chapter 1. 76. “Quality of Life Survey 2014.” Monocle, 15 June (2014), https://​monocle​.com​/film​ /affairs​/quality​-of​-life​-survey​-2014/, accessed 22 January 2022; Ericsson, Networked Society City Index, 14, accessed 22 January 2022, http://​mb​.cision​.com​/Public​/15448​/2245037​ /93894148bfbf1118​.pdf. 77.  European Commission, https://​ec​.europa​.eu​/environment​/europeangreencapital​ /winning​-cities​/2010​-stockholm/, accessed 1 March 2022,. Five years later, the City of Stockholm put together a report on the Green Capital award: Stockholm–The first European Green Capital (City of Stockholm, Executive Office: June 2015), accessed 1 March 2022, https://​ international​.stockholm​.se​/globalassets​/stockholm​-first​-european​-green​-capital​-​-2​.pdf​. 78. Alan Bairner, “The Legacy of Memory: The Stockholm and Helsinki Olympic Stadia as Living Memorials,” in Routledge Handbook of Sport and Legacy: Meeting the Challenge of Major Sports Events, ed. Richard Holt and Dino Ruta (New York: Routledge, 2015), 120–30. 79. For a brief introduction, see “World Heritage Sites in Stockholm,” in Stockholm: The Capital of Scandinavia, accessed 1 March 2022, https://​www​.visitstockholm​.com​/guides​/three​ -world​-heritage​-sites/. 80. Henrik Ernstson and Sverker Sörlin, “Weaving Protective Stories: Connective Practices to Articulate Holistic Values in Stockholm National Urban Park,” Environment and Planning A 41, no. 6 (2009): 1460–79; Henrik Ernstson and Sverker Sörlin, eds., Grounding Urban Natures: Histories and Futures of Urban Ecologies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019); Sverker Sörlin, “Preservation in the Age of Entanglement: The History of Future Urban Nature,” in New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies, ed. Dolly Jørgensen, Finn Arne Jørgensen, and Sara B. Pritchard (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), 212–23, notes on 270–75. 81. Rothberg, “Between Memory and Memory”; Pierre Nora, Les Lieux de mémoire, Tome 1: La République (Paris: Gallimard, 1984); Tome 2: La Nation: La gloire, les mots (Paris: Gallimard, 1986); Tome 3: Les France: Traditions (Paris: Gallimard, 1993); Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” trans. Marc Roudebush, in “Memory and Counter-­Memory,” special issue, Representations 26 (1989): 7–24. 82. Maurice Halbwachs, Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 1925); Maurice Halbwachs and Lewis Coser, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 [French orig. by Halbwachs, 1925]). 83. Richard Walker, The Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007); Richard Walker, “Nature’s Popular Metropolis: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area,” in Grounding Urban Natures: Histories and Futures of Urban Ecologies, ed. Henrik Ernstson and Sverker Sörlin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019), 169–200.



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84. Jens Lachmund, Greening Berlin: The Co-­Production of Science, Politics, and Urban Nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013). 85. Warde, Robin, and Sörlin, Environment, chapter 1. 86. Robyn Eckersley, The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004); Andreas Duit, Peter Feindt, and James Meadowcroft, “Greening Leviathan: The Rise of the Environmental State?,” Environmental Politics 25, no. 1 (2016): 1–23. 87. “Sweden’s Climate Act and Climate Policy Framework,” Swedish EPA, accessed 22 November 2022, https://​www​.naturvardsverket​.se​/en​/topics​/climate​-transition​/sveriges​-klima tarbete​/swedens​-climate​-act​-and​-climate​-policy​-framework/. 88. Sverker Sörlin, “Carolyn Merchant and the Environmental Humanities in Scandinavia,” in After the Death of Nature: Carolyn Merchant and the Future of Human-­Nature Relations, ed. Kenneth Worthy, Elizabeth Allison, and Whitney A. Bauman (New York: Routledge, 2019), 178–97. 89. François Hartog, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time, trans. Saskia Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

PA R T I V Memory-­Making and Multilateral Institutions

CHAPTER 12

Absent Memory and Abundant Present of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Roland Burke

I

n the seven decades since its adoption on 10 December 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has become a metonymy for human rights. Celebrated annually on Human Rights Day, it operates as a breviary of the human rights concept and a touchstone for activism.1 As a philosophical and quasi-­juridical entity, the UDHR is abundantly remembered both inside and outside of specialist circles. The intellectual and ideological provenance found in each of its articles is exhaustively documented.2 As a textual monument, it is overprovisioned with memory of amendments, subamendments, and genealogical referents to other human rights–oriented documents. However, the affective quality of the immediate postwar human rights moment, so definitive of its transformational vision for humanity, is less appreciated, ablated away by the imperative to deploy the content of the UDHR for an institutionalized, global, human rights movement. Human Rights Day’s commemorative dimension instead became an energetic program to remember in prospect, to plan, to forecast, and to hope. As early as 1953, Secretary-­General Dag Hammarskjöld was lauding Human Rights Day but with no mention of any of the authors or the quotation of any discrete provision of the text.3 Decades of legal accretions to 1948 found the significance of the text in its powerful statement of norms, not in the deeply personal and particular milieu that lent it power. A delegate who participated aided by whiskey, to dull the corporeal suffering, is set aside. His ideas are recorded in the cerebral and the abstract.4 No recognition has yet been afforded to the scenes where Eleanor

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Roosevelt opened a human rights educational exhibition at Lake Success, New York, to an audience of disfigured returned soldiers visiting from Valley Forge Hospital in April 1950.5 These orthodox substrates of memory, images of trauma, and gestures to destruction and loss have been eclipsed by the celebration of the UDHR’s seemingly endless extensibility and professions on the durability of the ideals that informed it. The exaltation of the UDHR’s currency as a perpetual aspiration and daily challenge have far eclipsed its memorialization as an event and historically placed expression. This was broadly aligned with UNESCO’s secretary-­general Jaime Torres-­Bodet’s 1950 articulation of what Human Rights Day should mean. Torres-­Bodet cautioned that the UDHR’s principles could not be “taught mechanically” or as an episodic lesson. While welcoming the formal adoption of 10 December as a calendar item, he proclaimed that it was “not enough to set aside a day in commemoration of the principles that we are now celebrating,” they were an expression to be lived at every moment.6 Six decades before the term, Torres-­Bodet appeared to be approaching Astrid Erll’s concept of “memory as movement” and a less-­constrained disposition toward the mnemonic process, its location, and its purposes.7 This chapter charts the tension between promotion and commemoration that was embedded in Human Rights Day. It first aims to partially restore the sentimental and affective understanding of rights that prevailed in the early years following the UDHR’s adoption when the less formalized, and the more personalistic, defined promotion and commemoration of a vision of “A World Made New.”8 With the growth in the UN machinery and the stunning pace of decolonization, the UDHR quickly lost its original postwar context. Less than a decade after the UDHR was unveiled, the UN Public Relations Office (OPI), which was responsible for communicating the UDHR’s message, complained about the expense of printing Human Rights Day materials beyond the unadorned text itself.9 The very universality of the UDHR, which endeavored to promulgate ideas that transcended time and place, invited the excision of the specific mood, mentality, and material ecosystem in which it had been generated. Notionally, the commemoration of 10 December 1948, and the moment at which the UDHR won adoption, Human Rights Day would operate as a focal point for lauding human rights ideals and the perpetual effort for their realization. Over time, the UDHR of international memory registered a human rights that was insistently situated in the present. This was a rational triage of austere memorialization resources, and it held fidelity to the UDHR’s



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purpose. It sought to purchase the present at the expense of the past. Nevertheless, it did involve a real loss in an important element of the UDHR’s significance. The sentiments and spirit that generated the celebrated text, across worn spaces inscribed with war by so many figures who had lost their intimates, were bound to the meaning of human rights. These became marginal to a presentist tradition of the UDHR’s memorialization. While assessing the rapid departure of the personal and particular in the evolution of Human Rights Day and the logic, often appealing, that drove it, this chapter also aims to restore some of those elements and demonstrate how their reinfusion might revivify a human rights edifice that has become increasingly bureaucratized and ritualistic. Paradoxically, for the UDHR to having an effective promotional present, it may well require a more substantial incorporation of its undermemorialized past. The personal and the affective, the particularism of place, artifact, and sacralized text, are the mainstays of orthodox memory studies. For the UDHR, the personalities are known primarily through the avatar of Eleanor Roosevelt, the most prominent participant in the drafting process, and the most prolific figure recorded in UN promotional materials. Her personal qualities—shorthanded to decency, compassion, and liberal international beneficence—were the shepherding sentiments for the UDHR in much of the early UN literature.10 The place of the UDHR is ambiguous and plural—historically concluded in Paris, later marked by a modest commemorative stone, but generally positioned as marginal or outright unspecified. Its philosophical geography is the world itself without distinction.11 Its materiality is similarly imprecise; it was created and born in the age of mass mechanical reproduction—each accurate copy is authentic and original as another. The most prominent image of the text is a single large-­format metal type print, held for inspection by Roosevelt; descendant copies, issued as an anodyne staple-­bound booklet, circulated across the 1940s and 1950s.12 In comparative terms, the UDHR presents a threadbare tapestry for affective connection. By contrast, at regional and national scales, and within diasporic communities, such materials of memory are rich. Their configuration and interdependence have been well parsed and investigated by at least two generations of scholarship.13 Recent work from Alicia Marchant, Divya Tolia-­Kelly, Emma Waterton, and Steve Watson has explicitly drawn out the web of interdependencies and coproduction between the material and the memorial.14 Tangibility and materiality, as vectors for both emotion and memory, have been assessed in numerous contexts—from the peerless representational challenge

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posed by the Holocaust to more intimate examples of affect and memory.15 While these sites of memory have become a discrete and sparkling interdisciplinary subspecies of history, art history, museum studies, ethnography, and historical geography, the international dimension has been less readily grasped. Internationalism has a present and a history, but it has much less of a readily accessible memory or an attached affect.16 In the phrase of Chiara De Cesari and Ann Rigney, the scholarship has only recently commenced a shift “beyond methodological nationalism.” In the process, the pursuit of new transnational relationships and subjects has emerged as “a matter of urgency for scholars in the field of memory studies.”17 Although a handful of works have begun to examine emotion and memory in an international frame, their focal points typically orbit conflict, dispossession, and postconflict reconciliations and traumas. Inasmuch as it is the subject of an official annual event, the UDHR is among the few international institutional products that possesses a prominent alluvial layer of memory. Yet the formally codified commemorative apparatus tends to reenforce the impersonal in service to the universal and the timeless. Commemoration of the UDHR has held a tripartite quality, drawing— briefly—on the past for its authority, the present for its salience, and the future for its promise.

Remembering the Particular, the Places, and the Personal of the Universal Declaration While voluminous work on the UDHR has proliferated in the decades since its passage, the substance of memory, place, people, and symbols began to drift into obscurity as early as 1951.18 Unlike the national revolutionary charters of 1776 and 1789, Human Rights Day has come to celebrate a document without a context of production.19 Yet it is precisely the context that gave it such resonance in the fledgling years after its promulgation. In the first speech of the first meeting, which opened the inaugural session of UN activity on human rights on the afternoon of 29 April 1946, Assistant Secretary-­General Henry Laugier spoke to a partial selection of delegates, as many were still en route from liberated Europe. While much of this early era involved administrative verbiage, Laugier devoted his time to evocation of those killed in the struggle for Allied victory: “If we close our eyes, we can also imagine a welcome, grave and serious, from the other side, where the shadows of all the soldiers, sailors



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and aviators, all the fighters for the civilian resistance who died on all the battlefields of the world, hoping that right and liberty be re-­established.”20 The assistant secretary-­general then set out his conception of the project before the UN; the ongoing misery would be “the seed out of which great and beautiful harvests” would be delivered.21 Together, they would produce a kind of caesura to war and fascism, bind up the past, and write the future. After a brief preparatory phase in the cramped tutorial rooms of Hunter College, drafting began in a space of exquisite symbolic density. The UN’s interim site, in Great Neck, at 111 Marcus Avenue, Lake Success, New York, had not yet transitioned from its prior tasking as a cavernous high technology node in “the arsenal of democracy.”22 In August 1946, Sperry Gyroscope, which manufactured the avionics for Allied warplanes, found itself a housemate—the UN.23 A slower cadence of production had consolidated some assembly lines, allowing a frenzied effort to convert machine space to offices and conference chambers, with the UN negotiating arrangements with the US War Assets Corporation.24 Despite the best efforts of the fledgling UN Secretariat, it was not an easy transition to Lake Success at Great Neck.25 With countless long corridors, serendipitous meetings and accidental intimacies were unavoidable.26 In between their exertions traversing the site, legations could hear the relentless output of war materiel as they deliberated.27 When outside of their improvised UN headquarters or the sibling assembly sites in London, Geneva, and Paris, the core group socialized extensively. The French jurist René Cassin excavated wine from Roosevelt’s Hyde Park cellar on a weekend visit—retrieving a forgotten bottle from Teddy Roosevelt.28 With housing facilities sparse in New York, requisitioned hotels were filled with UN personnel in a kind of traveling community. Soviet legations drank colleagues into both oblivion and absentia for at least one meeting.29 Peng-­ Chung Chang, the Mencius expert, discovered his first nightclub in Montmartre, accompanied by the Human Rights Division chief John Humphrey.30 Even the most innocuous of ceremonies was potentially fraught, including the surprisingly overwrought nature of the celebratory cake prepared for the representatives of the Human Rights Commission.31 The unique intimacy of the late 1940s milieu was anything but universal and ahistorical. Given the remarkable composition of the early UN, which contained delegates who had fought and suffered, this is a lacuna of consequence for understanding the historical milieu in which the UDHR was crafted. For the figures involved across 1946–48, war and loss were the texture of their recent lives. New Zealand’s Ann Newlands had lost her father when she was barely

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out of kindergarten, and was raised by her mother, a house cleaner, in austere circumstances. She had lost her son in the war; he was captured and killed by the Japanese military—a conflict in which Newlands had served in the auxiliary army.32 Sitting beside Newlands at the 1948 session in Paris, was Marga Klompé of the Netherlands. She held a PhD in physics, was a veteran of the struggle against fascism, and was now the newly elected minister of the Christian Democrat government.33 She had fought the Gestapo while serving in the Dutch Resistance and was deeply committed to the European integration project.34 With acute memory of her own childhood and impoverishment after the incapacitation of her father by illness, Klompé would eventually shepherd through the foundation stone of modern Dutch welfare law in 1956. Marie-­Hélène Lefaucheux, a French Resistance hero, arrived at the UN with both the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’honneur.35 The French delegate and future Nobel laureate René Cassin had lost much of his family to Nazi genocide. He kept the remnants of a Gestapo death warrant affixed to his door on the Boulevard St. Michel when the UN held its session in a Paris still scarred by the occupation.36 Even those with less direct engagement in the recent war knew deep grief. Australia’s William Hodgson, a sponsor of a radically ambitious world human rights court, was disabled by a hip destroyed at Gallipoli in World War II.37 He endured the sessions aided by whisky, arriving on crutches.38 He was rarely absent.39 Hansa Mehta, a pioneering women’s rights advocate, and member of the Indian Parliament, had been imprisoned multiple times by the British while engaged in the struggle for independence in the years before she arrived in New York. In all her interventions, she retained her sense of the reality that constrained the ambitions of her government and the desperate poverty of so many of her citizens. The administrative leader of the nascent UN Human Rights Division, John Humphrey, took care to ensure that he was carefully positioned for greetings and set-­piece ceremonies and portraits.40 Humphrey had lost his left arm in a fire when he was barely of school age, and he had experienced a miserable childhood, becoming an orphan at the age of eleven. Eleanor Roosevelt, the most iconic of all the early UN personalities, was propelled into the spotlight while grieving for her late husband, whom she had buried scarcely a year earlier.41 Shortly before the commencement of work on the human rights program, she had traveled to the first General Assembly meeting in London, encountering the residual damage of the Blitz. She had witnessed the devastation in person several years earlier while touring with



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the royal legation across the city in 1942.42 More harrowing still was her expedition to Germany. From the air, Roosevelt was shocked at the utter ruin of the cities.43 On the ground, she encountered a shattered and starving community of displaced persons, Holocaust survivors, and gravely unwell nursing mothers. Pathetic efforts to restore family life under canvas amid freezing mud marked some of the rarer glimpses of real darkness in Roosevelt’s otherwise carefully composed accounts of the war.44 Her prayer for “a world made new,” spoken as an endorsement of the UDHR, was heard by a group who had an experiential sense of the capriciousness of human existence and society and the fragility of freedoms, families, and bodies.

All, Everyone, Everywhere: The Self-­Effacing Memory of the UDHR None of this wartime and biographical context was past; it was present and inescapable, in between, after, and sometimes within the meetings. Roosevelt remembered freezing cold excursions to a housing reconstruction in Amiens during the final phases of the declaration’s drafting in Paris in the spring of 1948.45 She remembered an emotionally glacial reception among an assembly of women doctors in Stuttgart.46 Humphrey arrived in France for a major UNESCO meeting via Dunkirk, with the site still littered with the artifacts of war. In the closing weeks of serious drafting, the remnants and legacy of war literally walked into proceedings—with deliberations paused while young French children made their way into the chamber and were promptly seized upon—a cheering accident that punctuated the otherwise grinding schedule of meetings. Left unrecorded in the official transcript, the unofficial meeting was captured in a handful of images taken by the UN photo officers sometime between September and November.47 For the authors, who encountered the sequelae of total war and damaged humanity daily, it surely seemed that the risk was in preparing a text that was too insistently bound to its moment and to its authors. The majority of the early promotional efforts were designed to preempt their own historicity. The anniversary of the UDHR’s adoption—codified as Human Rights Day by the General Assembly in 1950—held commemoration as an appendix to its prime purpose, promotion and outreach.48 While there was obvious resonance in pinning a special outreach program to 10 December, the memorialization aspect was always in a subsidiary relationship to the

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promotional. The content of the UDHR was historically significant, but the UDHR was not historical.49 From the outset, there were efforts to avoid any national or historically specific visual symbology; the articles were embedded in a context but were intended to transcend it. Across the 1949 UNESCO short film on the UDHR, this elegant minimalism was put into practice.50 Soldiers manning checkpoints are rendered as simplified shapes—unmistakably soldiers or paramilitary police of some kind but not of any one kind, or from any one time.51 Representations of interiority, relevant to articles on freedoms of expression, press, thought, and conscience, were the forms by which belief was communicated, not the symbolic substance of any nominated belief.52 The bearer of rights was certainly an individual human but so denuded of distinguishing elements as to operate as any and all individual humans. As in the text itself, the UDHR’s promotion partitioned its communication into fidelity to the philosophy. If universalism required the ablation of origins, process, and the personal, it was doubtlessly a desirable exchange. Rights bound to circumstances had failed, a lesson that many in the UN had taken from the League of Nations Minorities regime. A new concept of inherent rights, applied equally and universally to individual humans, was the UN’s vision of the future.53 Even these careful visual transliterations were soon regarded as ill-­suited to global outreach—and contrary to the fact of a universalism that had begun to encompass a growing raft of new states. An official review of the Human Rights Day material prepared across 1957 developed a pointed critique of the attempt, or even the possibility, of communicating the specifics of the UDHR as the product of specific human hands. With the process of decolonization and the widening umbrella of UN outreach, human rights had to be reset in terms that escaped any residual sense of place. By the late 1950s, the OPI candidly disclosed its loss of faith in communicating universalism in anything but the most generic abstraction. Centralized Human Rights Day poster and print production as an initiative was dismissed since it generated material “unsuitable in many countries,” and assessors argued such products could “even arouse resentment.”54 Universality required more than dissemination from a single node in New York: “It is practically impossible to design posters at United Nations Headquarters which have a universal appeal. When the same visual presentation is exposed to the view of peoples of different states of development, culture, and artistic tradition, its meaning and intent often becomes incomprehensible to those to whom it is intended to bring a message. Symbols, images, and figures do not convey the same meaning to the various peoples of the earth.”55



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In response to a budget audit, human rights promotional materials were nominated for a massive spending cut of 26,000 USD (FY 1957). As part of its justification, the OPI’s reviewers complained that they saw “little value in the Office of Public Information at Headquarters producing” items such as “Human Rights Day posters” and “the leaflets for these anniversaries.” Among their recommendations was the blunt statement that preparation of “Human Rights Day material by Headquarters should be discontinued.”56 Stripping back vestigial contextual and historical material and devolving more design work to local and regional sites was the road to universal communication of the UDHR’s philosophy. By 1958 the original community of the UDHR was already dispersing— precisely as a new one, drawn from South and East Asia, the Arab world, and Africa, was assembling. The first of the grand anniversaries, convened in the recently completed UN headquarters, was mostly dispirited. Apparent efforts to annex authorship for one single national—Cassin—met with irritation from at least one co-­architect.57 Large displays of Cassin’s handwritten text, a late-­stage intermediate in the drafting process, risked misstating what had been achieved.58 This was a kind of textual fetishism, the cursive of the famous French jurist enlarged to superhuman size. The UDHR emerged as a kind of divinely revealed epistle, with the preservation of human rights delivered to humanity through the authorial hand of an inspired, and singular, Eleanor Roosevelt.59 It would be the last major anniversary before her death in 1963.

Promotion or Preservation? Human Rights Day and the Cultivation of Universalism In the first decade of Human Rights Day commemorations, some slender tranche of the conventionally commemorative was preserved alongside the promotional, principally in the Human Rights Day concert, an event that began in 1949, even before the formalization of the commemorative calendar.60 Rich in emotion, with full orchestral performance, dance, and a catalog of eminent actors, it added a ceremonial dimension—less constrained by educational heavy lifting. Proceedings followed a predetermined scheme, with a liturgical quality, with classical hymns interspersed with readings from the UDHR. A reading of the preamble was the centerpiece of the event.61 Assembling leading actors, singers, musicians, and dancers, notably the contralto

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icon Marian Anderson, it was a highly elaborate occasion—and one of the few that was quite formal.62 There was, at least from some in the UN, an aversion to pursuing this highly ceremonial event, as opposed to pouring effort into the vernacular promotional dimension. The assistant secretary-­general for social affairs Henry Laugier rebuked Humphrey’s formality in the invitation process for the 1950 concert. Laugier wanted a mass public event in Madison Square Garden.63 Even this modest ceremony, which was hardly an extravagance in terms of cost, was ordered to cease by the UN leadership in 1958, until it was revived and refigured in the early 1960s, with a much more global cohort of music and dance, including Asia and Africa.64 To Humphrey’s chagrin, the reborn concert was mostly ignored until Jackie Kennedy’s participation in the 1964 iteration.65 Mass outreach events were meant to build a genuine universalism—in essence, to make the process of celebration an advancement of the spirit of the text at the ground level. Some of these involved an almost textual carpet bombing—notably, in the case of the new Indonesian Republic, which rained copies of the UDHR from converted airplanes.66 The 1950 Human Rights Exhibition, prepared by UNESCO, was a less kinetic mechanism. Large-­ scale displays traversed the globe, from West Berlin to Manila and from Paris to Port-­au-­Prince.67 Composed of a supremely ecumenical and diverse set of images, drawing on almost every religious, historical, and national context, the exhibition sought to create a wide surface for its audiences to connect their own traditions with the concepts of the UDHR.68 Crucially, the ­UNESCO Exhibition was also rendered suitable for community-­level curation, with the full set of plates, explanatory notes, and captions arranged in an easily assembled kit. Labels were thoughtfully precut, plates numbered and matched, and placed in a durable box that was comfortably transported by a single person on foot.69 Quite literally, a human could bring a set of cross-­ cultural expressions of human rights with them, and establish an improvised and transient museum on the history of struggles for freedom and the diverse creeds of compassion. UNESCO’s vision of the UDHR involved a wider and longer provenance— one sufficiently panreligious and global to irritate at least some observers.70 Pierre D’Aleth, writing for the Catholic traditionalist periodical, the Tablet, was highly critical of UNESCO’s genealogical universalism. D’Aleth lamented that the curation was “designed to persuade the crowds who pour through the rooms that the course of history” was, for all of its local and



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particular tributaries, fundamentally universal and unilinear and “crowned,” after 1945, “with the triumph of man.” UNESCO’s human rights vision purportedly deferred too much to the heritage of the world and replaced divine redemption with a new, syncretic moralism. Through the pejoration, their description of the exhibition’s metanarrative was perceptive. “The thesis of the exhibition,” complained D’Aleth, was of a UDHR that “illuminates the future like a beacon.”71 While the lightweight kit could reach far, radio was the most penetrating vector for disseminating the human rights message and seeking to translate abstractions into daily experience. It also reflected the international quality of the UDHR, with seven countries engaged in relaying radio celebrations around the world in December 1951. Such simulcast processes held the promise of an internationally “imagined community,” with people across the planet encountering the same message and self-­conscious that a diverse world was listening along to the same message.72 Along with the central UN Radio Network, almost every independent state had a national broadcast and, in conjunction with abundant regional programming, radio commemoration covered much of the earth’s landmass. Canada devoted a whole week of broadcasts, across the territory, seeking to promote the UDHR in ways that were mindful of the audience. Programs avoided a blanket recitation of articles and ideas and attempted instead to deploy “special techniques to attract all types and ages to listen.”73 A joint radio program, undertaken between Denmark and Liberia, was a fine example of internationalism in operation, necessitating not merely technical exchange and coordination but content which could speak to audiences that had markedly dissimilar patterns of life. Norman Corwin’s 1949 radio documentary, “Document A/777,” a long-­form journalistic account of the UDHR and its universe, exemplified the initial output—mapping the sinews between authors, places, and the realization of human rights principles in daily life.74 Broadcast addressed dissemination, but from the outset there was attentiveness to a more dialogic mode of engagement. UNESCO’s endeavors at human rights education reflected a serious and sustained attempt to navigate the teaching of universal ideals to audiences with vastly disparate experiences and traditions.75 By the late 1950s, it was advancing art and poster contests— seeking submissions from audiences around the world. Students were invited to illustrate one of the articles of the UDHR as they understood it as part of Human Rights Day. Essay competitions were also conducted across a variety

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of education levels and travel scholarships provided. UNESCO sought partnerships with UNICEF, which had already developed a superb capacity not merely for global outreach but for means for citizens of the globe to reach inward to the organization and toward each other. A more dialogic mode was also fused with the radio form, to excellent effect. In its radio documentary for Human Rights Day 1951, UNESCO’s “Our Present Duty: Human Rights,” foregrounded universal promotion at all scales and to all audiences via a dialogue overlaid with narrative. The narration opened with a bald statement on the immensity of difference across different countries: “To secure their universal and effective recognition: there’s the rub. When you think of the vast variety of customs, cultures and prejudices, social and economic problems distributed pell-­mell among the fifty-­ six nations who tried to agree on common principles for all humanity, you may well ask ‘what hope there is of putting them into practice in all parts of the world.’”76 Acknowledging the plurality of conditions and traditions, however, was promptly revealed as no impediment to human rights universalism. Discussion commenced with a selection of articles from the UDHR that dealt with the most primordial rights—against torture, slavery, and extrajudicial treatment—which were considered difficult to relativize or plausibly contest. The program then quoted from a letter to a London newspaper, published “not so long ago,” describing scenes of child labor in Victorian Britain. It advised its listeners that it had been barely a century since the abolition of chattel slavery, which was an accepted reality “only two average lifetimes ago.”77 Self-­ evidently, the documentary reminded listeners—both in the West and outside of it—that Western civilization had hardly been “civilized” for long. Moving from those rights where there was assumed to be the greatest normative consensus, the narrator then embarked on a much more provocative measure, challenging the prejudices that were still prevalent in much of the political West. In an unsettling sequence of excerpts, the program drew together voices from men and women stating their own presumptions about which rights should be granted to colonized peoples, the poor, and the socially marginal. One woman spoke in floridly paternalist terms. It was “not,” she said, “a question of disliking any particular nationality—or even colour.” The constraint, apparently, was intrinsic capacity. “Surely one must recognize the limitations of people,” she warned. Accordingly, it was “quite absurd to grant all these rights to anyone and everyone. Some human races



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just haven’t the intelligence to make proper use of them.”78 Additional examples, more and less stunning, followed. One man asserted that when it came to the UDHR “with backward races,” it would be counterproductive. “They’re happy the way they are” was an observation that elided the actual treatment of colonized peoples by European imperialism, which was far from such nonintervention. As a concept, he was prepared to concede the validity of universality but was otherwise unconvinced. “It all sounds,” he admitted, “very fine but it just won’t work.”79 Listeners were then confronted with a previously unheard voice—the “backward” person speaking back and citing a variety of the UDHR’s principles as his own. “Thank you for your opinion of me,” he responded, “I am the man of the backward races, as you call them.”80 Discomforting even in the transcript, it was surely more powerful when heard aloud. The narrator then cited U ­ NESCO’s recent work on race and the falsity of racial essentialism. The absence of any scientific credibility for racism, he mused rhetorically, leaves “good old-­fashioned ideas about racial differences rather out on a limb, doesn’t it?” Moving away from the dialogic confrontation, and traveling through a litany of exciting developments across Africa and Latin America, the narrator concluded that, for practical purposes, in an increasingly technological world society, the UDHR was an expression of “what everybody wants above all whoever they are and wherever they are.”81 In such circumstances, self-­serving Western ventriloquism on the inherent difference between collective peoples was deeply unwise—particularly when all of the world was thought to be listening. For his part, Secretary-­General Hammarskjöld posited a conjoined process of commemoration and promotion. The UDHR’s genesis had not closed on 10 December 1948. The strength of universal human rights, he proclaimed in December 1954, was not as an episode but as a process: the moment would dissolve as it was woven into “the fabric of international society.” In the ongoing infusion of its ideas into the world, the UDHR was “more than an historic document.”82 In 1958, for the tenth anniversary, Hammarskjöld found little need to recite its origin, merely to exalt a selection of golden “pages that stand out by their lasting power to evoke a sense of human kinship, and to inspire new efforts for great ideals.”83 Every one of the speeches between 1951 to 1958 from the secretary-­general was emphatically oriented toward the present and often bereft of any specific reference to the UDHR’s creation. Hammarskjöld’s annual statements for 10 December were marked by extreme economy, sometimes well under a page and closer to a paragraph.84

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Hammarskjöld’s successor, U Thant, was more expansive, but his verbosity involved, primarily, a thorough exposition of pressing world problems that held implication for human rights.  As with Hammarskjöld, quotation and precise reference to the UDHR’s text, and context, was mostly set aside. His 1961 Human Rights Day address did not provide explicit reference to the day or year of the UDHR’s adoption. Instead, contemporary priorities were the central subject, with the UDHR framed relationally to what had followed, and what remained unfulfilled, a rather abundant subject. Peace was a focal point, reasonably enough, in 1961, with the ongoing violence in the Congo— where Thant’s predecessor had died—and in the shadow of a cataclysmic Soviet nuclear test of a 60 megaton hydrogen bomb. Thant took Human Rights Day as a grim moment for global introspection, as NATO and Soviet tanks stared each other down at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. “This day,” intoned the secretary-­general, “is an occasion to concentrate on the urgent choice confronting mankind.” His speech opined on the arc of a year that had seen ratcheted-­up tensions, and he invited his audience to consider the trajectory of the Cold War on the eve of 1962: “Shall we choose, in hopeless despair, a course which will inevitably lead to the extinction of life itself? Shall we continue preparing for a Holocaust which, if any survive, will leave behind a subhuman world hardly worth living for?”85 Thant furnished no direct quotation of the UDHR but rather a powerful excerpt from the poet Rabindranath Tagore, which closed the address. Across his tenure, Thant took Human Rights Day as a summative observation on wide humanitarian and rights questions. The UDHR was included as a pluripotent origin for present-­day legacies and causes, deployed for its authority rather than remembered as an achievement on its own terms.86 In his speech to New York primary school children for Human Rights Day 1962, Thant cataloged an understated set of dark milestones to the presumably bewildered students: “We have come to the end of another year, and I must tell you that it has really been rather a difficult and dangerous one. There is a lot of distrust and bad feeling between some important countries. . . . There was serious fighting between China and India; and in October things were so tense over Cuba that many people thought a war would break out.”87 He then elaborated the vision of the UN, and plans for UNICEF and global development, closing with a strangely cheery farewell of “Good luck and happiness to you all,” a strained salutation given the preceding litany of apocalyptic portents.



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Legal and political evolutions of 1948 tended to dominate the second half of the decade, and these almost invariably cast the UDHR as a worthwhile but obsolescent design. In 1964, with the mounting progress on a binding convention against racial discrimination, Thant observed that “the goal proclaimed sixteen years ago, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, is fast becoming the reality of today,” a statement of debatable accuracy but reflective of the first tepid forays into translation of human rights into international treaty. The focus on the juridical vision of human rights was stronger still in 1965 and 1966. In 1966, shortly after the adoption of the treaty texts that were originally conceived alongside the UDHR, Thant noted that since 1948, “the world has been anxiously awaiting the completion of all the parts of what was then envisaged as an International Bill of Human Rights” and the arrival of the legal arm of the project.88 In a hybrid celebration text, which combined an element of Human Rights Day and a preemptive celebration for the expected adoption of the covenants, which would pass five days later, Thant lauded the UDHR in a relational frame. The recently completed International Covenants were the focus for human rights promotion. In this context, the UDHR’s adoption on 10 December 1948 was a preliminary herald to the greater success of 15 December 1966, which delivered the legally binding covenants. The remainder of Thant’s supervision was inclined to follow this schema of the UDHR as premonition and key point of commencement. Development and the growing demands from the Global South for economic redistribution were a central priority for 1968; so too were the progress of decolonization and the growing international mobilization against apartheid South Africa. Human Rights Day was for the present, and a historical frame for memorialization was glimpsed in more contingent moments. Cassin’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968 was one such example, in an acceptance speech that reflected on the events, world, and peoples of 1948.89 Ceremonies and anniversaries surrounding the death of Eleanor Roosevelt were another, in a commemorative event that engaged a much more historical vision of the UDHR and the unique milieu of the late 1940s. The celebration for the eightieth anniversary of her birth, convened on 21 October 1964, was the most introspective and historical. As the inaugural major event for the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Foundation, the ceremony was a gala occasion hosted at the palatial Lincoln Center in New York. Funds had been secured by a worldwide popular appeal, with stamps issued in a score of countries and a national “Million Mailmen” appeal led by the American Postal Workers Union.90

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These kinds of departures from the promotional frame of the 1950s and 1960s were comparatively uncommon and more typically the province of the aging veterans of the 1948 vote. Institutionally, the presentism of Human Rights Day was firmly established and, indeed, consolidated. Across the 1970s, the efflorescence of human rights NGOs adopted 10 December for contemporary mobilizations. Inside the UN, the anniversary celebrations were the site for growing contention about which visions of human rights should be evangelized. On its twentieth-­anniversary, International Human Rights Year 1968, the dedicated World Conference on Human Rights, held in Tehran, witnessed frank skepticism about the UDHR’s relevance.91 Milestone anniversaries in 1973, 1978, and 1983 were at least as riven with conflicting versions of what constituted “human rights”—a tribute to the nominal triumph of the term though certainly not a consensus on a unitary meaning.92 By the 1980s, human rights content was mostly decoupled from any historic human rights text. Human Rights Day was, however, increasingly embraced as a rallying point. Promotion and education persisted as UN priorities. Protest and practice emerged as an annual, citizen-­driven phenomenon. Any grand sense of a centralized past was secondary—or more typically fully obscured—by a proximate struggle. The formal UN endeavor excelled in explaining the normative elements of the UDHR, which popularly invoked the day as part of localized and immediate rights concerns while also being timeless, bloodless, and universal. By the late twentieth century, these elements seemed immiscible—but the UDHR had acquired such power by embodying their interrelationship. For a time, a genuine national-­and community-­level interest and enthusiasm for the new UN and its founding ideals appeared to offer a remedy. At least in places, there were signs of an ordinary citizenry trying to connect itself to the new global order and its foundational principles and purpose. Those substrates of engagement and goodwill required for major national commemorative ceremonies did exist. In 1946 the high-­circulation Courier-­ Mail celebrated Australia’s representative to the UN, Colonel William Hodgson. Hodgson, for instance, had his war service, at Gallipoli, a crucible in the national mythopoeia, and the foremost National Day of Remembrance (ANZAC Day), connected to his UN role. As the headline proclaimed, “UN’s Hodgson” was a “True ANZAC,” and that spirit was shown in his candor and resolve in the new UN.93 Despite the abject failure to interlace national and international past and present, opportunities did exist to make Human Rights Day a kind of hybrid



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memorialization, situating national memory and local struggle in a global frame. Given the abundance of war heroes, from the Resistance in Europe, alongside those who had lost family to conflict or freedom to imperialist tyranny, the UDHR’s drafting cohort embodied national stoicism, loss, and victory, and international redemption. A Human Rights Day centered around these humans offered another way of mediating between the impersonal and the ethereal of naked principles and recent national experience. Renovations to the disposition of the commemorative enterprise surrounding the UDHR were generally only managed outside of international institutionalism and formal national politics. National and NGO-­affiliated networks pinned their causes to Human Rights Day and secured a lever for attracting press interest. In December 1984, for instance, a small community protest demanding respect for religious freedom in the USSR was conducted under the auspices of Human Rights Day. By the 1990s and 2000s, Human Rights Day protests and small-­scale ceremonies with a local inflection were common. In regions and states that were at best partly free, if not candidly authoritarian, Human Rights Day served as a means for connecting the local with the international—as could be seen by events from Kashmir (2002, 2004) and Tibet (2004), to Manila (2006), to Kabul (2010). Cuban dissidents assembled to commemorate Human Rights Day annually in the 2000s. Chilean activists marched to demand accountability for the victims of the Pinochet regime (2014). Brazilians commemorated the efforts of essential workers across the pandemic (2021). The unveiling of statues and monuments was organized to coincide with Human Rights Day and, episodically, to reference the UDHR explicitly. In Buenos Aires, the local Anne Frank statue was unveiled on Human Rights Day (2014).94 In Boise, Idaho, Anne Frank’s memorial positioned the iconic young girl clutching her diary adjacent to a sculptured copy of the UDHR.95 In a way, this was inconsistent with the energies of 1948: universal principles had infinite, equally worthy, dates for celebration. As the UN’s own 2014 promotional Human Rights Day video observed, “Human Rights Day” is “a UN mission, 365 days a year.”96 However, in terms of the practicalities of mobilization and organization, and as an attachment point for global press coverage, a discrete date clearly held value—10 December could be placed on a calendar or a handbill. Journalists could be invited to a time and place on 10 December. If the UN’s efforts tended to founder in the vortex of abstraction and totalizing principles, the specificity and particularity of a day conferred much to specific activisms.

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Conclusion: The Perilous Status of a Human Rights Without Humans The UDHR’s construction as a document without a singular place or past was an oversuccess. As its living custodians receded and the rubble of the world in which it was promulgated was cleared away, it was no longer a monument tightly bound to a remarkable cohort operating in the late 1940s.97 The original impulse of the 1950s to ensure that memorialization would serve an instrumentalist purpose—of promotion, inclusion, and education—was admirable. Much of it stemmed from the obvious prospective intonation of the UDHR as a project. It defined the horizons of a perpetual struggle. Its adoption opened an effort and proclaimed, in hope, that the nadir had been seen and safely passed.98 By paring back contextualization and any vestigial historical and cultural particularism in the promotional works, the UN privileged communication of the substance of universality, a task embraced by UNESCO. As a boundlessly universal vision, the UDHR was always resistant to orthodox memorialization. At the more prosaic artifactual level, it marks the first emancipatory charter where the personal and the contextual were inherently lost by the literal artifact, known at best in its official UN Publication typeset or, more typically, rendered in HTML or PDF.99 Unlike the eighteenth-­ and nineteenth-­century charters of freedom, there is no singular material text to sacralize.100 Without the cues and artifacts of materiality and production or birthplaces for pilgrimage, the personal and the affective are a register that has, until recently, been positioned parenthetically. What remains is a shining philosophy, the countless social movements that have invoked it, and the emancipatory crusades which have been attached to its precepts. Nevertheless, given the steady disintegration of faith in this abstraction of the UDHR and the sterility of modern human rights institutions—a memory that defers more to the specificities of place and personalities, to felt desperation rather than transcendent principle—may serve as a stable terrain on which to secure an increasingly precarious human rights concept.101 Despite countless accretions and renovations, human rights abstraction, and the ever-­more overbuilt legal and procedural systems of human rights promotion have proven brittle.102 The UDHR’s content has served admirably as an untarnished and ambidextrous aspiration, albeit one susceptible to platitude. Its context serves as a warning, a more urgent companion, of a globe soaked in misery, seeking redemption. Memorialization of the UDHR is replete with



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utopian hope. Its historical memory, as found in the conditions and mentality of 1946 to 1948, is commingled with the power of desperation, crafted by exertions of a small but striking cohort who had seen the most total of failures at close range.

Notes 1. For the two foremost narrative histories of the UDHR, and its place in the wider human rights edifice, see William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); and Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Random House, 2001). 2. William Schabas, ed., The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: The Travaux Préparatoires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Johannes Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). 3. Secretary-­General’s Message for Human Rights Day, issued by Department of Public Relations, 1 December 1953, Press Release SG/356, SYG Press Releases, 8 April–22 December 1953, S-­0928-­0001-­01-­00001, UN Archives. 4. Annemarie Devereux, Australia and the Birth of the International Bill of Human Rights (Annandale, NSW: Federation Press, 2005), 179–86. 5. UN Photo 140575, 3 April 1950. UN Photo Digital Asset Management System, https://​ dam​.media​.un​.org/?, access date 14 November 2022. 6. “A Day to Remember Every Day,” UNESCO Courier 2, no. 12 (1950): 4. 7. Astrid Erll, “Travelling Memory,” Parallax 17, no. 4 (2011): 4–18; see also Jenny Wüstenberg, “Locating Transnational Memory,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society (July 2019), online before print, https://​doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s10767​-019​-09327​-6. 8. Roosevelt, quoted in Glendon, World Made New, ix. 9. Report of the Expert Committee on United Nations Public Information, A/3928, 16 October 1958, with appended comment from the secretary-­general (A/3945), 52, para. 129. 10. Eleanor Roosevelt and William A. De Witt, UN: Today and Tomorrow (New York: Harper, 1953); Eleanor Roosevelt and Alan Watt, The Work of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (New York: UNICEF, 1949); Jeanette Eaton, The Story of Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Morrow, 1956); George Johnson, Eleanor Roosevelt: The Compelling Life Story of One of the Most Famous Women of Our Time (New York: Monarch, 1962). 11. Terrace of the Rights of Man, adjacent to Palais de Chaillot, GPS coordinates latitude 48°51'45.15'' N, longitude 2°17'20.36'' E. 12. Roosevelt is pictured with three of the official-­language copies of the UDHR, in near identical pose; see UN Photo 1292 (English), 83980 (French), and Spanish (117539). 13. For general illustration on the state and the arc of the field, see Barbara Rosenwein, “Emotions and Material Culture: A ‘Site Under Construction,’” in Gerhard Jaritz, Emotions and Material Culture (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2003), 165–72; Astrid Erll and

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Ansgar Nünning, eds., Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008); Susannah Radstone and Katharine Hodgkin, eds., Memory Cultures: Memory, Subjectivity, and Recognition (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2006); and Geoff Eley, “The Past Under Erasure? History, Memory, and the Contemporary,” Journal of Contemporary History 46, no. 3 (2011): 555–73. 14. Alicia Marchant, ed., Historicising Heritage and Emotions: The Affective Histories of Blood, Stone and Land (London: Routledge, 2019); Divya Tolia-­Kelly, Emma Waterton, and Steve Watson, eds., Heritage, Affect and Emotion: Politics, Practices and Infrastructures (London: Routledge, 2016), 1–11. 15. Stephanie Downes, Sally Holloway, and Sarah Randles, eds., Feeling Things: Objects and Emotions Through History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 8–27; Andrea Witcomb, “Remembering the Dead by Affecting the Living: The Case of a Miniature Model of Treblinka,” in Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations, ed. Sandra Dudley (London: Routledge, 2013), 39–52. 16. Marianne Hirsch and Nancy Miller, eds., Rites of Return: Diaspora Poetics and the Politics of Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); Peter Stearns, “Emotion and Change: Where History Comes In,” in Emotions in International Politics: Beyond Mainstream International Relations, ed. Yohan Ariffin, Jean-­Marc Coicaud, and Vesselin Popovski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 48–64; Andrew Ross, Mixed Emotions: Beyond Fear and Hatred in International Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 15–34. 17. Chiara De Cesari and Ann Rigney, eds., Transnational Memory: Circulation, Articulation, Scales (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 1. 18. The Message of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: UN Department of Publication Information, December 1951). 19. Cf. Charlene Mires, Independence Hall in American Memory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). On the wider milieu of memorialization around 1776, see Remembering the Revolution: Memory, History, and Nation Making from Independence to the Civil War, ed. Michael A. McDonnell, Clare Corbould, Frances M. Clarke, and W. Fitzhugh Brundage (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013); and Joseph Clarke, Commemorating the Dead in Revolutionary France: Revolution and Remembrance, 1789–1799 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 20. Commission of Human Rights of the Economic and Social Council, Summary Record of the First Session, 29 April 1946, E/HR6, 1–2. 21. Ibid. 22. Confidential, Various Meeting Records, Secretary-­General Trygve Lie, 610 Fifth Avenue, NYC, on logistical plan for the move to Sperry, 12, 16 June 1946, Secretary-­General’s private meetings with Under-­Secretaries-­General, 1946, S-­0847-­0001-­01-­00001, UN Archives. 23. On the decision to locate at Sperry, see the deliberations across 28–29 March 1946, Meeting Records, Secretary-­General Trygve Lie, UN Archives. 24. Confidential, Report from Abraham Feller to the Secretary-­General, 18 May 1946, S-­0847-­0001-­01-­00001, UN Archives. 25. Confidential, Various Meeting Records, Secretary-­General Trygve Lie, 610 Fifth Avenue, NYC, on logistical plan for the move to Sperry, 7 June 1946; see also, for context, 12 and 15 April 1946, S-­0847-­0001-­01-­00001, UN Archives. 26. John Humphrey, Human Rights and the United Nations: A Great Adventure (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Publishers, 1984), 5. More generally, on housing difficulty and UN



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pursuit of “black market” transactions, see Meeting Record, Secretary-­General, 7 June 1946, S-­0847-­0001-­01-­00001, UN Archives. 27. Humphrey was compelled to seek a week’s leave from the site to compile the first framework draft of the UDHR, in his hotel room, as the general ambience was rather too frenzied for deep consideration. Great Adventure, 31. 28. Ibid., 4. 29. Ibid., 48. 30. John Humphrey, A. J. Hobbins, and Louisa Piatti, On the Edge of Greatness: The Diaries of John Humphrey, First Director of the United Nations Division of Human Rights (Montreal: McGill University Libraries, 1994), vol. 1, 66, entry for 24 October 1948 (2:20 a.m.), Paris. 31. Eleanor Roosevelt, On My Own (London: Hutchinson, 1958), 86. 32. Megan Hutching, “Newlands, Mabel Annie,” Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, accessed 30 December 2019, https://​teara​.govt​.nz​/en​/biographies​/5n5​/newlands​-mabel​-annie. 33. Gerard Maguire, “Klompé, Margaretha Albertina Maria,” Digitaal vrouwenlexicon of the Netherlands, 20 November 2017, accessed 1 January 2019, http://​resources​.huygens​.knaw​.nl​ /vrouwenlexicon​/lemmata​/data​/Klompe. 34. Margaretha Klompé, “The Council of Europe and the Spiritual Crisis of Mass Society,” June 1949, as reproduced in Documents on the History of European Integration: The Struggle for the European Union by Political Parties and Pressure Groups in Western European Countries, 1945–1950, ed. Walter Lipgens and Wilfried Loth (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1988), 418–20. 35. “Marie-­Hélène Lefaucheux et René Cassin: Leurs contributions aux droits de l’Homme,” French Permanent Representative Office to the United Nations, 7 December 2018, accessed 12  January 2019, https://​onu​.delegfrance​.org​/Marie​-Helene​-Lefaucheux​-et​-Rene​-Cassin​-leur​ -contribution​-aux​-droits​-de​-l​-Homme. 36. Humphrey, Great Adventure, 24. 37. Alan Watt, “William Roy Hodgson,” in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian National University, 1983, accessed 10 January 2019, http://​adb​.anu​.edu​.au​/biography​/hodgson​ -william​-roy​-6695. 38. UN AVL, Human Rights Commission, Lake Success, New York, 9 June 1947, “Establishment of the Drafting Committee on the Declaration of Human Rights,” at 5 min., 57 sec.; see also UN Photo 181938, background element, which appears to be the handle of a cane. 39. A. W. B. Simpson, Human Rights and the End of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 364. 40. For an especially striking example, see UN Photo 324084, 6 January 1948. 41. Roosevelt, On My Own, 11–21. 42. Ibid, 42. 43. Ibid, 71–72. 44. Ibid, 71–75. 45. Roosevelt, My Day column, 1 December 1948; available at https://​www2​.gwu​.edu​ /~erpapers​/myday​/displaydoc​.cfm?​_y​=​1948​&​_f​=​md001138 access date 16 November 2022; Humphrey, Hobbins, and Piatti, Edge of Greatness, vol. 1, 84–85, entry for 28 November 1948. Both Roosevelt and Humphrey remarked on the exceptional cold of the journey. 46. Roosevelt, “Address by Eleanor Roosevelt at Stuttgart, Germany,” 28 October 1948, reproduced in Allida Black and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers: The Human Rights Years, vols. 1 and 2: 1945–1948 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010), 924– 26; and Roosevelt, On My Own, 106–7.

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47. The two extant photos are dated 1 November 1948, but the UN held no meetings on that date, breaking for the French All-­Saints’ Day. The settings, personalities, and dress are consistent with the later part of the spring 1948 session. 48. GA Resolution A/1623, Human Rights Day, 4 December 1950. 49. See, generally, the tenor of the activities as detailed across the annual reporting on Human Rights Day, notably UNESCO Radio, Deputy-­Director John Taylor, “Human Rights Day Message, 1951,” UNESCO document, radio transcripts, MCR/173; Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Day, Second Anniversary Celebration, 23 March 1951, E/CN.4/531. See also, Report on the Fourth Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, A/INF/55; and Report on the Third Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, A/INF/50. 50. UNESCO, “Notes for Six Filmstrips on Human Rights,” c. 1949, WS/109.38. 51. UN and UNESCO, Freedom of Movement, c. 1949, UN Photo 329502. 52. UN and UNESCO, Freedom of Expression, c. 1949, UN Photo 329512. 53. UN and UNESCO, Equality and Universality, c. 1949, UN Photo 329515. 54. Report of the Expert Committee on United Nations Public Information, A/3928, 16 October 1958, 53, para. 131. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid, 99, para. 255. 57. Humphrey, Great Adventure, 42–43. 58. A facsimile appears to have been gifted to the UN, on French Provisional Republic letterhead, well before the UDHR was actually completed. See “Copy of handwritten first draft of Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Prof. René Cassin,” Historic Items and Gift Collection First Draft of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by René Cassin, 16 June 1947, UN Archives, 18069-­00001. 59. UN Photo 139561, 10 December 1958. 60. Humphrey, Hobbins, and Piatti, Edge of Greatness, vol. 1, entry for 10 December 1949, 250. 61. Filmed program record, timing cards, UN AVL, 35mm, reels 1-­3, 07-­33, 07-­34, 07-­35, Second Anniversary of the Universal Declaration, 10 December 1950, Metropolitan Opera, NYC. For the atmospherics of the event, see UN Photos 334836, 334947, 334953, 10 December 1950, Metropolitan Opera, receptions area, NYC. 62. Humphrey, Great Adventure, 132, on the 1950 performances; and 100, on the general trajectory of the concerts, their shifting quality, and latter-­day “variety show” character. See also, as an exemplar of the more diverse and diffuse message of the post-­interregnum approach to the concert, Norman Corwin and Christobel Halffter, UN Concert in Honour of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, concert programme (New York, 1968). 63. Humphrey, Great Adventure, 59, 132. 64. Ibid, 281. 65. Humphrey, Hobbins, and Piatti, Edge of Greatness, vol. 4, 11 December 1964, 71. 66. Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Day, Third Anniversary Celebration, 4 April 1952, E/CN.4/656, 6. 67. “The Slaves Who Claimed Their Rights as Men: Les Droits de L’Homme at Port-­Au-­ Prince,” UNESCO Courier 3, no. 1 (1950): 11.



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68. Radio UNESCO, interview transcript with curator Clive Entwistle, Human Rights Exhibition, 14 October 1949, UNESCO document D.328. 69. A full kit was held (comfortably) by the author in 2016, Human Rights Exhibition: Album (Paris, United Nations, UNESCO, 1950). See digitized demonstration by Roland Burke, “A Universal Mosaic for a Universal Declaration: Visualizing the Genealogy of Human Rights,” United Nations History Project (October 2016), available at Magdalene College, Cambridge, UK, accessed 27 April 2019, https://​www​.histecon​.magd​.cam​.ac​.uk​/unhist​/image​-of​-the​_month​ /image​_of​_the​_month​_Oct16.html. 70. W. E. Williams, “UNESCO Portrays History of Human Right[s],” Museum 2, no. 4 (1949): 201–5. 71. Pierre D’Aleth, “A UNESCO Exhibition,” Tablet: The International Catholic News Weekly, 26 November 1949, accessed 24 April 2019, http://​archive​.thetablet​.co​.uk​/article​/26th​ -november​-1949​/8​/a​-unesco​-exhibition. 72. On radio and “imagined community” dynamics, see Michael Hilmes, “Radio and the Imagined Community,” in The Sound Studies Reader, ed. Jonathan Sterne (New York: Routledge, 2012), 351–61. The work draws on the pioneering concept introduced in Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 73. Human Rights Day, E/CN.4/656, 7. 74. Norman Corwin, On the Universal Declaration, UN document A/777 (1949). 75. UNESCO, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Guide for Teachers (Paris: UNESCO, 1953). 76. Keith Wood and UNESCO, transcript, “Our Present Duty: A UNESCO Radio Feature on the Third Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” December 1951, UNESCO document MCR/164, 3. 77. Ibid., 4. 78. Ibid., 5. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., 6. 81. Ibid., 17. 82. Dag Hammarskjöld’s 1954 address barely exceeded two hundred words; it focused on the UDHR as a lodestar, with Human Rights Day serving as a call “to follow the path to which it is a guide.” Secretary-­General’s Message for Human Rights Day, issued by Department of Public Relations, 8 December 1954, Press Release SG/411, SYG Press Releases, 13 January–30 December 1954, S-­0928-­0001-­02-­00001, UN Archives. 83. Secretary-­General’s Message for Human Rights Day, issued by Department of Public Relations, 8 December 1958, Press Release SG/752, SYG Press Releases, 22 January–27 December 1958, S-­0928-­0001-­06-­00001, UN Archives. 84. Secretary-­General’s Message for Human Rights Day, 1 December 1953, Press Release SG/356; Secretary-­General’s Message for Human Rights Day, issued by Department of Public Relations, 9 December 1955, Press Release SG/454, SYG Press Releases, 9 February–22 December 1955, S-­0928-­0001-­03-­00001, UN Archives. 85. U Thant, Draft Speech for Human Rights Day, 10 December 1961, SYG Operational Files of the Secretary-­ General, U Thant: Speeches, Messages, Statements, and Addresses, S-­0885-­0003-­32-­00001, UN Archives.

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86. General Assembly President Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, who had made an important intervention on religious freedom on the eve of the final vote on the UDHR, was similarly focused on the shifts since 1948, foremost the cascading progress of anticolonial nationalism. Message by the President of the General Assembly, Zaffrula Khan, on the Occasion of Human Rights Day, 10 December 1962, Advance Release as HRD/15, 5 December 1962. 87. U Thant, Note of Remarks, hand-­dated 7 December 1962, SYG Operational Files of the Secretary-­General, U Thant: Speeches, Messages, Statements, and Addresses, S-­0885-­0003-­ 32-­00001, UN Archives. 88. Secretary-­General’s message for Human Rights Day, Draft, hand-­dated 26 November 1965; and Statement by the Secretary-­General in the Plenary Meeting on the Occasion of the Adoption of the Covenants on Human Rights, 15 December 1966, S-­0885-­0003-­32-­00001, UN Archives. 89. René Cassin, Nobel Address, 11 December 1968, reproduced at Nobel Foundation, accessed 1 February 2019, https://​www​.nobelprize​.org​/prizes​/peace​/1968​/cassin​/biographical/. 90. Richard Gershman to Lemieux, United Nations, On Eleanor Roosevelt Tribute, 6 October 1964; Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Committee, Dinner Program, full facsimile and speaker list; Address by U Thant, Secretary-­General of the United Nations, at a dinner marking the 80th anniversary of the birthday of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, 12 October 1964, Operational Files of the Secretary-­General, U Thant: Speeches, Messages, Statements, and Addresses—not issued as press releases, S-­0885-­0002-­30-­00001, UN Archives. 91. Roland Burke, “From Individual Rights to National Development: The First UN International Conference on Human Rights, Tehran 1968,” Journal of World History 19, no. 3 (2008): 275–96. 92. See discussion of anniversaries and their contested human rights variants, in Roland Burke, “‘How Time Flies’: Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 1960s,” International History Review 38, no. 2 (2016): 394–420; and Burke, “Human Rights Day After the ‘Breakthrough’: Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations in 1978 and 1988,” Journal of Global History 10, no. 1 (2015): 147–70. 93. “UN’s Hodgson Is True ANZAC,” Courier-­Mail (Brisbane), 26 April 1946, 2. 94. AP Archive, Human Rights Day record, worldwide, c. 1980–2021. 95. Grimly, the Boise statue was also vandalized with Nazi symbols, at some point on or around the evening of Human Rights Day, 2020. See NPR, “Idaho Anne Frank Memorial Defaced with Nazi Propaganda,” 10 December 2020, accessed 10 February 2022, https://​www​ .npr​.org​/2020​/12​/10​/945150729​/idaho​-anne​-frank​-memorial​-defaced​-with​-nazi​-propaganda. 96. UN, OHCHR, “Human Rights Day: A UN mission, 365 days a year,” 12 December 2014. 97. For analysis of the postwar aspect, see Marco Duranti, “The Holocaust, the Legacy of 1789 and the Birth of International Human Rights Law: Revisiting the Foundation Myth,” Journal of Genocide Research 14, no. 2 (2012): 159–86. 98. This structure, of a redemptive path chosen, was the central motif of the UN’s earliest major exhibition, “Road to Peace,” held at UN HQ, 16 September 1947–23 November 1947. For its curatorial motif, see UN Photos 101832, 101833, 308715, 308717, 17 March 1947. 99. On the mechanical and electronic reproduction of emancipatory texts and their translation and circulation, see Siobhan Brownlie, Mapping Memory in Translation (Basel: Springer, 2016), 75–106. 100. There are obvious candidates, from John Humphrey, held by his archives at McGill University. See selections presented on the seventieth anniversary of the UDHR. Frédéric



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Giuliano, “70 candles for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” McGill University, 10 December 2018, accessed 21 January 2019, http://​news​.library​.mcgill​.ca​/70​-candles​-for​-the​ -universal​-declaration​-of​-human​-rights/; and United Nations, UN Photo 1165, Draft Notes from the UDHR, c. 1947–48. 101. On the proceduralist inflection of the modern human rights order, see the critique from Stephen Hopgood, The End Times of Human Rights (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); on the administrative ritualism, see Hilary Charlesworth and Emma Larking, eds., Human Rights and the Universal Periodic Review: Rituals and Ritualism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 102. Roland Burke, “The Rites of Human Rights at the United Nations,” Humanity 9, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 127–42.

CHAPTER 13

International Conflict, National Pasts, and UNESCO World Heritage and Memory of the World Kristal Buckley and Kate Darian-­Smith

T

he formation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the aftermath of the destruction, death, and dislocation of World War II has been attributed as heralding a fresh approach to international relations, with its focus on cultural internationalism and cultural diplomacy as the means for furthering peace across the globe, an end to racism, and the emergence of cross-­cultural and transnational understandings and appreciation of the civilizing values of humankind.1 A specialized agency of the United Nations, with its own governance structures, UNESCO’s constitution was signed by thirty-­seven nations in November 1945, and its headquarters established in Paris a year later.2 From its “dystopian beginnings” to a “utopian promise,”3 UNESCO’s identity is oriented toward “building peace in the minds of men and women.”4 Its constitution aims to override the propensity for conflict by increased educational and cultural understandings: “That ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war.”5 Among UNESCO’s founding ambitions was the reinterpretation of the past in a way that united humanity and stepped beyond national, political, and ethnic divisions. One such foundation initiative instigated by UNESCO’s first director-­general, the British scientist Julian Huxley, and supported



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by leading historians and scholars across the globe, was a six-­volume History of Mankind. This endeavor spanned world history from 1200 BC to the mid-­twentieth century. The final volume, which  tackled historical events still firmly within living memory, commenced in 1952 amid the escalation of the Cold War. Its recasting of contemporary history away from a narrative of conflicts to encompass global trends—such as environmental and technological change—was widely rejected by decolonizing nations, liberals, Communists, and Christians among others. The Soviet Union, for instance, commissioned its own ten-­volume history of the world written from a Marxist perspective.6 Another historical project launched by UNESCO in the 1960s was a monumental multivolume General History of Africa, which stepped away from dominant colonialist narratives and took nearly forty years to complete. However, history is not merely the scholarship of historians; it is a powerful force for expressions of contemporary identity. This can be seen in the evolving narratives of specific cultural groups, most notably of modern nation-­states, about their past, and in the politics and poetics of how these historical narratives and all they stand for are actively and collectively remembered through the meanings applied to particular places, objects, and social practices. Indeed, it is in relation to the acknowledgment and protection of such cultural heritage—notably through its World Heritage and lesser-­known Memory of the World (MoW) programs—that UNESCO has been most influential in promoting the significance of national and transnational histories. This process of world recognition of nominated forms of heritage by an international organization is complex and ambitious, and has proved to be ambiguous and sometimes contentious in its realization. The historical context and spirit of the UNESCO constitution is reflected in the early normative instruments developed in its Culture Sector such as the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954), and the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970). These reinforced the idea of a shared cultural heritage of humanity, placing responsibilities on Member States as well as the international community to ensure its continuity. They also established some common features of the work of UNESCO’s Culture Sector, such as the notion of “cultural property” and the broad scope of both movable and immovable cultural heritage encompassing objects, collections, architectural and archaeological monuments, documents, books, and works of art.

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Reflecting the context of postwar reconstruction, the UNESCO Monuments Committee was established in 1950, and from the 1960s UNESCO coordinated a number of high-­profile multilateral projects to rescue cultural heritage at risk.7 The best known was the twenty-­year “Nubian Campaign” to conduct excavations and relocate the monuments of Abu Simbel prior to their flooding by the Aswan Dam project by Egypt and Sudan. UNESCO’s involvement raised global awareness, creating a vector for flows of expertise, funds, and prestige for both donors and recipients. Further multilateral efforts to protect cultural heritage were launched in Athens (Greece), Florence and Venice (Italy), Mohenjo-­daro (Pakistan), Carthage (Tunisia), and Borobudur (Indonesia).8 Such international cooperation was a direct antecedent of the World Heritage Convention (UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage), adopted in 1972. Indeed, as an indicator of its increasingly high profile in the public domain, not least through the promotion of a globalized heritage tourism, World Heritage is often taken as synonymous with UNESCO itself, with the program presented as UNESCO’s flagship. Over time, the texts of UNESCO’s cultural conventions illustrate a spectrum from the object-­orientation implied by the need to protect “cultural property” to greater emphasis on cultural diversity. UNESCO’s cultural conventions also progressively reflect the evolving international human rights regimes, particularly in the twenty-­first century texts and programs.9 The Conventions for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) and for the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Expressions (2005) move from protecting cultural property to valuing diverse cultures, thus avoiding the overt hierarchies of cultural significance expressed in earlier documents.10 As this chapter demonstrates, UNESCO’s conventions and programs for recognizing the culture of humanity reveal an unresolvable structural tension between the rhetoric of acting collectively and the primacy of the interests and sovereignty of its Member States. From the earliest World Heritage inscriptions, there have been tensions between UNESCO’s recognition of universal heritage and the specificity of national interests. These have been typically resolved through diplomatic exchange. While not new, the past decade has seen an acceleration of deep ruptures within the UNESCO World Heritage and MoW programs around questions of national identity and an increasing desire by states to recognize their recent histories as heritage. This chapter examines a series of recent case studies in East Asia and the contestations between Japan, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and the



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Republic of Korea (ROK) over the universal value of heritage sites and documents that relate to twentieth-­century histories of war between empires, nations, and peoples that still exist within living memory. These emerging issues about the uses of international heritage regimes are not limited to the Asian region but are clear illustrations of widespread trends. While the events under scrutiny are in the past, they are intensely tied to current expressions of nationalism, to questions of human rights, and to present geopolitical power struggles within East Asia. More broadly, they are illustrative of how, in the twenty-­first century, histories and cultural heritage—encompassing historical places, built structures, documentary and archival materials, cultural and social practices, memorials and exhibitions—are comprehensively intertwined. Connections between history, memory, and heritage are particularly fraught when they re-­remember a past that is violent, conflicted, and traumatic for survivors and, in different ways, for perpetrators. The foundational work of Pierre Nora directs us to the importance of the symbolic and material lieux de mémoire that constitute the heritage of communities and nations in our contemporary “age of commemoration.”11 This relationship between the collective significance of the past and the formation of identities is a dynamic one, operating across multiple levels of meaning: local, national, and transnational. Michael Rothberg usefully theorizes the ongoing negotiation between differing historical memories as multidirectional, creating cross-­ cultural 12 spaces for negotiation and exchange about the past. In the sphere of international governance where UNESCO operates, recent histories of conflict have been publicly remembered and contested in ways that can be described as multilayered and multidirectional. UNESCO’s authoritative recognition of “world” heritage has also been increasingly challenged, exposing the different dimensions of national interest and diplomacy at work.

World Heritage, Diplomacy, and Sites of Conflict In 2022 the World Heritage Convention celebrated its fiftieth anniversary and with 194 States it has achieved extraordinary global participation.13 In the post–World War II period, this international framework evolved from earlier efforts by the League of Nations. UNESCO facilitated the adoption of the Venice Charter (1964) which established a global doctrine for heritage conservation, as well as the establishment of the International Centre for the

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Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). The World Heritage Convention was formed from two parallel proposals— one for nature, developed by the United States and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)—and a second for culture, developed by UNESCO. Intense diplomatic activity brought these together in 1972, situating natural and cultural heritage within a single multilateral mechanism.14 The convention’s obligations require ratifying states to ensure the “identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations of the cultural and natural heritage.”15 Although considered to be one of the last international heritage texts assuming universal heritage values, the convention has enduring public and political appeal due to its embrace of diverse understandings of heritage and its usefulness in joining nationalist narratives to claims of universality.16 Since its beginnings, the World Heritage List of properties deemed to be of “Outstanding Universal Value” has become a marker of national prestige. Listing began with twelve sites in 1978 (eight “cultural” and four “natural”), and there are now more than 1,000 inscribed World Heritage properties located in 167 countries. The three advisory bodies—ICCROM, IUCN and ICOMOS—are named in the convention and provide technical advice on cultural and natural heritage issues; the decision-­making body for the World Heritage List consists of twenty-­one member states elected to the World Heritage Committee. The convention’s text anticipated that the elected national delegations would be heritage experts, but over time this has gradually shifted; these delegations are now typically headed by diplomats. The decisions are not therefore made by UNESCO as is often assumed, which explains why the decisions do not always align with UNESCO’s policies. Recent scholarship has examined the complex role of expertise in the international governance of heritage and its conservation, finding that UNESCO’s heritage programs and World Heritage Committee meetings are dynamic sites of international diplomacy.17 Tim Winter’s framing of heritage as a form of governance and therefore a “space of both cooperation and contestation” offers a lens for understanding how such issues as cultural aid and hard power underpin the complex negotiations that have emerged recently in relation to World Heritage and MoW inscriptions.18 Expert intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations act as mediators, including between the national interests of UNESCO’s member states and the universal principles of heritage value and internationalism that lie at the core of the World



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Heritage system. Winter usefully teases out the duality of heritage “both in diplomacy and as diplomacy.”19 The first is aligned to ideas of international cooperation and cultural exchange. Heritage as diplomacy acknowledges that heritage processes, meetings, and discussions constitute diplomacy in action. For instance, the collaborations between nations in joint or serial nominations to World Heritage cross national borders and serve as a mechanism for strengthening bilateral and regional relations. Recent examples include the transnational inscriptions for the Frontiers of the Roman Empire and the land and maritime Silk Routes, each of which has a growing number of projects and participating states across several continents. Over the past decade, issues of heritage diplomacy have become more evident within UNESCO’s World Heritage program in relation to sites associated with the living memory of conflict and war. In 2018 ICOMOS presented a discussion paper to the World Heritage Committee on the heritage of sites of “recent conflict.”20 This work was stimulated by a World Heritage nomination by France and Belgium seeking the inscription of a series of 139 “funerary and memorial sites” of the Western Front of World War I.21 The nomination occurred in the context of the centenary of World War I and the subsequent intensification of national memorialization of the impact of that conflict by participating nations. Several countries commissioned significant new memorial structures on the Western Front, such as Australia’s Sir John Monash Centre at Villers-­Bretonneux (2018) and the restoration of the Canadian memorial at Vimy in France (see figure 13.1). The scale of investment and symbolism contained in these national memorials reflects how World War commemorations on former battlefields continue to be foundational sites of national memory and identity. The World Heritage nomination by France and Belgium, representing the culmination of years of intense research and memory work, posed a dilemma for the World Heritage Committee. It had previously been understood that valorization of the wars, conquests, and losses of the twentieth century might not be consistent with the World Heritage Convention’s peace-­making purposes. Exceptions had been made in relation to several prominent symbols of World War II, notably the 1979 inscription of the Auschwitz-­Birkenau (German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp, 1940–45) (Poland), and the 1996 inscription of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome) (Japan). Each of these was the subject of contentious debate prior to their inscription, and care was explicitly taken by the Committee to underscore their exceptionality. For example, in 1979 the ICOMOS evaluation report of Auschwitz-­Birkenau

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Figure 13.1. The Canadian National Vimy Memorial (France) memorializes the Canadian involvement in the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917, and commemorates Canadian soldiers presumed killed but who are without known graves. Photo credit: Vimy Ridge France CC BY-­SA.

quoted Michel Parent, a leading expert in World Heritage, who said that ensuring that Auschwitz remains the only inscribed place of its kind was necessary to “bear witness,” transforming it into a symbol that would stand for other sites. The World Heritage Committee specifically noted that heritage associated with “negative memories” was at odds with the objectives of the convention.22 Close to forty years later, ICOMOS—the nongovernmental body responsible for evaluating World Heritage nominations—recommended a “cautious approach” to the World War I cemeteries nominated by Belgium and France. Concerned about the possibility of a precedent, ICOMOS recommended the nomination be postponed to allow a “comprehensive reflection.”23 This was adopted by the World Heritage Committee, with the result that the nomination from France and Belgium has been postponed, along with other nominations of conflict sites currently included in national World Heritage Tentative Lists (see table 13.1). The proposals listed in table 13.1 relate to twentieth-­century histories of war, genocide, and violent conflicts of repression and resistance. While there



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Table 13.1. Places of Recent Conflict Included in World Heritage Tentative Lists State Party

Name of Property

Description

Angola

Cuito Cuanavale, Site de Libération et Independence

Monument and battlefield. One of the most violent conflicts on the African continent in the late twentieth century. Angolan fighters were joined by Cubans in a battle against the South African apartheid regime in 1987–88.

Argentina

ESMA Site Museum Former Clandestine Centre of Detention, Torture, and Extermination

Genocide museum. A former navy officers’ mess building became the Clandestine Centre of Detention, Torture, and Extermination in the period of military dictatorship 1976–83. More than 5,000 people were tortured or disappeared.

Cabo Verde

Camp de Concentration du Tarrafal

Concentration camp. Used in 1936–56 and 1962–74 to detain and punish antifascist Portuguese, Guineans, Angolans, and Cape Verdeans opposed to the Salazar regime in Portugal.

France

Les Plages du Débarquement, Normandie, 1944

Sites of “D-­Day” Allied Landing in Normandy on 6 June 1944. Includes memorials, natural elements, and associated remnants on land and underwater.

India

Cellular Jail, Andaman Islands

British penal settlement. Initially established in the late 1850s in response to the First War of Independence. The massive cellular jail (designed according to the Pennsylvania system of separation) was completed in 1905–6 using prison labor. Used to punish political prisoners opposed to British rule. Closed in 1938, the partly ruined building was made a national memorial in 1979.

Russian Federation

Mamayev Kurgan Memorial Complex “To the Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad”

Memorial and war cemetery. The Battle of Stalingrad (1942–43) was a significant land battle, a turning point in the course of World War II, and a symbol of Soviet nationalism. (continued)

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Table 13.1. (continued) State Party

Name of Property

Description

Rwanda

Sites Mémoriaux du Génocide: Nyamata, Murambi, Bisesero et Gisozi

Memorial sites to the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994, containing material evidence.

Slovenia

The Walk of Peace from the Alps to the Adriatic— Heritage of the First World War

Memorial route, museum and military cemeteries. Connects sites of World War I in Slovenia. Represents mountain warfare in karst terrain.

Turkey

Çanakkale (Dardanelles) and Gelibolu (Gallipoli) Battle Zones in the First World War

Landscape of World War I military campaign (1915–16). Battle sites, memorials. Turkish, Australian, New Zealand, English, and French war graves.

Source: Summarized from ICOMOS 2018: 16–25 and ICOMOS 2020: Annex 2.

are few survivors still alive in some of these cases, other nominations are for places where there is direct or living memory of the events, with clearly assigned perpetrators and victims linked to present-­day national narratives. The concerns for the delicate balancing of diplomatic cooperation, should these come into the decision-­making space of the World Heritage Committee, are readily apparent, although it is also easy to puncture the logic of the distinctions that have been drawn for these recent conflicts given that so many of the world’s most notable and iconic monuments reflect earlier periods of violent conquest, colonization, and political repression. Yet the nomination of the World War I cemeteries signaled the need for caution, indicating the potential for destabilizing international cooperation in the interests of individual nations. ICOMOS raised a range of technical challenges that apply to the nomination of recent conflict sites, such as the appalling prospect of comparing the tragedy and violence of specific events and places in order to establish their ability to meet the threshold of “Outstanding Universal Value.” ICOMOS also pointed to the difficulties of evaluating memories that are still evolving, subject to postconflict reconciliation processes, or are likely to present “one side of the story,” creating discord with other communities or nations. It asserted that World Heritage inscriptions should not be used to validate some national narratives over others, investing some historical memories as overarching “truths.” The response by the World Heritage Committee was to request an expert meeting, which was held in Paris in December 2019.24 The meeting



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identified risks involved in fixing outstanding universal value at a specific temporal moment, which could potentially hinder reconciliation processes, as well as the difficulties for UNESCO if it were seen to be an arbiter of competing narratives, thus creating a “hierarchy of victims.” It concluded that sites associated with recent conflicts and/or negative and divisive memories “do not normally relate to the purpose and scope of the World Heritage Convention and the broader purpose of UNESCO to build the foundations of peace.”25 Curiously, the meeting also suggested that the UNESCO MoW program (or possibly the International Coalition of the Sites of Conscience) could be more suitable for contested proposals than the World Heritage List, which seems to simply move the problem to a different heritage arena. Differing versions of historical events between nations and the key role of recent conflicts to contemporary politics and forms of nationalism are not specific to any region of the world. In the 2021 session of the World Heritage Committee, the pause on nominations that have fallen into this category was fiercely resisted by delegates from the African region. They argued strongly for less emphasis on the universalizing “Western” or “expert” perspectives, placing greater weight on the views of States Parties themselves. In light of these interventions, it was decided that further meetings and reflection were required, leaving the matter of how the World Heritage system would conclusively deal with the nomination of sites associated with recent conflict and competing national histories unresolved. These unsettled tensions in the World Heritage system are experienced according to the diversity of national narratives and are particularly pertinent to the case studies from East Asia discussed in the remainder of this chapter. These historical places and events that have brought controversy to the idea of universal heritage are sites of international and national memory, and the competing national claims of heritage and history can only be understood within the diplomatic and power complexities of the geocultural and geopolitical present.

The World Heritage Inscription of the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution The significance of heritage to national interests and to international diplomacy can be seen in Japan’s engagement with UNESCO, which it joined in 1951. In the aftermath of World War II, Japan underwent a process of

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modernization, introducing democracy and rapidly expanding industrialization. Membership in UNESCO was seen both domestically and internationally as part of Japan’s peacetime rehabilitation, and much of UNESCO’s initial work in Japan focused on history education in schools and universities. Natsuko Akagawa has shown how historically Japanese national identity was bound to its cultural heritage sites and practices, and how heritage conservation was to become central to Japan’s increasing role in international affairs.26 This included Japan’s sponsorship of economic development and aid, including substantial financial support for heritage conservation in many parts of the world. A turning point occurred in the 1980s when, in the wake of the withdrawal of the United States and the United Kingdom from UNESCO, Japan became its major donor, establishing its Funds-­in-­Trust program (1989) to provide special funding for designated projects, with a strong emphasis on cultural heritage. This commitment to UNESCO served to elevate Japan’s standing in the international field of heritage conservation while at the same time fulfilling its national interests and responsibilities as a global citizen and a leader in the Asian region, although it did not ratify the World Heritage Convention until 1992.27 Japan’s position was strengthened by the election of Matsuura Koichiro as the director-­general of UNESCO (1999–2009). Korea and China have also utilized their involvement in UNESCO as a mechanism of diplomacy, although they did not join the World Heritage Convention until 1985 (ROK) and 1988 (PRC). Both countries have pursued international recognition of their heritage sites as a means of promoting national identity and pride, funding international projects, and stimulating the economy through tourism.28 Despite China’s delayed start, it is now only surpassed by Italy in its number of entries on the World Heritage List. With fifty-­six inscribed World Heritage properties and a further sixty-­two waiting in its Tentative List,29 China’s heritage “craze” means it is likely that it will soon have more World Heritage properties than any other country. Haiming Yan explains this as an explicit aspect of China’s soft diplomacy, coupled with the domestic popularity and prestige bestowed on World Heritage sites.30 The pursuit of World Heritage validation has become fervently sought by Chinese local officials, and the alignment between regional histories and present geopolitical agendas has meant that China has become a global leader of several large transnational heritage projects that recognize the vast experiences and territories of cultural exchange afforded by the land-­and sea-­based Silk Roads/Routes. Through the constitution of usable historical narratives and their associated heritage, China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative now



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underpins new diplomatic, trade, and infrastructure opportunities across Eurasia and Africa that aim to reshape political and economic alliances, which are also reflected in World Heritage decisions and alignments.31 The competing cultural and geopolitical claims and tensions between these three major powers of East Asia have led to disputes over the way the past is understood and the implications of those histories today. These can be seen in relation to the 2004 World Heritage inscriptions of two properties associated with the Koguryo culture, which ruled an area over parts of modern-­day northern China and the northern half of the Korean Peninsula from the third century BC,32 and in China’s objection to the entry of Korean Ganjeung Danojie in the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage on the grounds that it was based on the Chinese Dragon Boat festival (Duanwu).33 A major recent flashpoint was the inscription on the World Heritage List in 2015 of twenty-­three sites in Japan exemplifying the nation’s rapid industrialization during the Meiji period. These industrial places of “iron and steel, shipbuilding and coal mining” demonstrate the rapid transformation of Japan’s feudal society from the 1850s to 1910. The desire for improved defensive capacity in response to foreign threats was acknowledged as driving Japan’s industrialization, although the later consequences of modernization, the rise of imperialism, and the Pacific War were carefully omitted. The nomination reflects a sense of national triumph, situating Japan’s development of a “world-­ranking industrial nation” through the dual capacities for innovation and toil of the Japanese people.34 The “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal-­Mining” (2015) was a departure from Japan’s previous engagement with World Heritage. The nomination was not developed through the processes established by the national cultural agency but was stewarded by the Japanese Cabinet Secretariat35 and was given transnational credibility through the involvement of a number of international industrial heritage experts— particularly from Britain and Australia.36 Furthermore, some of the industrial complexes that make up the serial property are still operating and others are in an advanced state of ruin, posing challenges to Japan’s legal framework for the protection of cultural properties. Diplomatic controversy surrounded this inscription because of the unreconciled transnational histories of several of these sites. Between 1910 and 1945 (the period of Japanese annexation of Korea), many thousands of Koreans were forced to work in Japan, and many Korean “comfort women” were sexually exploited. Seven of the twenty-­three inscribed components of Japan’s

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“Meiji Industrial Revolution” listing were places where Korean and Chinese people were forced to work, often in harsh and dangerous conditions, such as Gunkanjima (Hashima Island) (see figures 13.2 and 13.3). Korean media reports estimate that 57,900 Koreans worked as forced laborers, and that many had lost their lives in these and other industrial sites in Japan.37 Some observers have drawn connections between this inscription and the unreconciled claims between Korea and Japan concerning the coercion of the “comfort women,” underscoring the complexity and high stakes involved.38 China and the Republic of Korea indicated their opposition to this World Heritage nomination, claiming it distorted a difficult history and was not compatible with the mission of UNESCO.39 However, the usual routine of checking the dossier for completeness and forwarding it to ICOMOS had already occurred;40 and the ICOMOS evaluation had been conducted “as usual,” according to the steps outlined in the World Heritage Committee’s Operational Guidelines.41 ICOMOS recommended that the twenty-­three sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution be inscribed in the World Heritage List but also recommended that an interpretation strategy be developed that “allows an understanding of the full history of each site,”42 the only explicit indication of the transnational tensions surrounding this nomination. The ICOMOS report was provided to UNESCO and to Japan in May 2015, prior to the start of the thirty-­ninth session of the World Heritage Committee in Bonn. Opponents of the proposal feared that the inscription would be adopted without acknowledgment of underlying contested histories, and diplomatic exchanges were accompanied by critical reports in the international English-­language media. Although China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) had also raised concerns about the nomination prior to the start of the World Heritage Committee session,43 the spotlight was primarily on Japan and the Republic of Korea. Korean activists established a booth outside the meeting venue, distributing literature that contrasted Germany’s willingness to atone for its wartime atrocities with the steadfast denial of Japan, and slogans such as “Wake up! UNESCO; Wake up! World; Wake up! Mankind”. It was unclear how a resolution could be reached and open debate avoided.44 Eventually, brief preapproved statements were read at the committee session by representatives from Japan and the Republic of Korea, and the chairperson requested that no other interventions be made. Japan’s statement acknowledged the labor of a “large number of Koreans and others” who were “forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites, and that, during World War II, the Government of Japan also implemented its policy

Figures 13.2 and 13.3. Gunkamjima, also known as Hashima or “Battleship Island” in Nagasaki Prefecture, is one of the components of the World Heritage listed Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution which used Korean forced labourers during World War II. Photo credits: (top) Flickr user: kntrty. CC BY; (bottom) Jordy Meow, CC BY.

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of requisition.” It indicated that Japan was willing to “incorporate appropriate measures into the interpretive strategy to remember the victims such as the establishment of an information center.”45 For the moment, the diplomatic rupture had been overcome, demonstrating the capacities of the World Heritage system to assist with the resolution of continuing and hurtful disagreements. From 2015 the Korean National Commission for UNESCO began to actively champion the importance of the interpretation of World Heritage properties, ensuring that all aspects of history are explained and shared, even if these do not fall in the more narrowly defined recognition of outstanding universal value.46 However, the Sites of the Meiji Industrial Revolution continues to attract Korean complaints that Japan has failed to comply with the commitments made in Bonn in 2015. Two years later, Japan submitted its required State of Conservation Report on progress toward the recommendations of the World Heritage Committee. Over eight hundred pages long, the report included an Interpretation Strategy and an Interpretation Audit that again invoked the authority of international heritage experts.47 It indicated that research on the experiences of Korean workers and oral histories with Japanese industrial workers was ongoing, with Japan’s intention to focus on the outstanding universal value of specific heritage components, rather than the larger/longer histories of the sites. The report conceded that broader interpretation “may allow an understanding of the fact that the Government of Japan implemented its policy of requisition of workers under the National Mobilization Law during World War II, and that there were a large number of those from the Korean Peninsula who supported Japanese industries before, during, and after the War.”48 [emphasis ours] This is a more convoluted acknowledgment than the one made by Japanese delegates at the World Heritage Committee in 2015, and the World Heritage Committee’s response in 2018 “strongly encouraged” Japan to follow best international practices to work on the interpretation of the full history of the sites through “continuing dialogue between the concerned parties.”49 In 2020 a World Heritage Industrial Heritage Interpretation Centre was established, though it was in Tokyo and distant from the industrial sites, and displayed minimal information about the histories of Korean forced labor.50 In an interview, the Korean culture minister Park Yang-­woo said that international criticism would be “unavoidable,” unless Japan acknowledged human rights abuses at the Hashima industrial site.51 An expert mission was requested by UNESCO to consider the disputed views about Japan’s interpretation, although this was delayed until June 2021 due to the COVID-­19 pandemic. Based on



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the mission report, the World Heritage Committee expressed “strong regret” that the previous commitments had not been implemented.52 The next report from Japan on its progress was due in December 2022. In light of this continuing diplomatic standoff, it is perhaps surprising to note that a nomination for Japan’s Sado Mine is close to completion. It evokes similar historical and contemporary tensions between Japan and the Republic of Korea, suggesting that more complex national purposes are at play.53 As this case study demonstrates, the tensions unsettling the processes of the World Heritage system are not technical or specialist concerns about heritage conservation and preservation but are about the unreconciled sites of international history and memory. William Logan has referred to an “intractability” in the “memory contests” between the nations of East Asia.54 It is clear that the World Heritage system may provide an avenue for the recognition and validation of these “difficult histories,” offering possibilities for healing for victims, but that international heritage can also be utilized in the name of national interests and geopolitical aspirations. This has been evident in a further conflict that has emerged in East Asia and involves UNESCO’s increasingly prominent MoW program.

UNESCO’s Memory of the World Conflict and upheaval, looting and dispersal, environmental factors, inadequate accommodation, and lack of funding have all contributed to the destruction of significant documentary collections and objects in recent decades. In response, UNESCO established its MoW program in 1992. Months later, 1.5 million books in the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo were destroyed, vindicating MoW’s ambitious vision to “protect and promote the world documentary heritage through preservation and access.”55 The underlying principle that MoW constitutes the heritage of humanity, and thus maintains the ongoing memory of this heritage, is outlined on its website: “The world’s documentary heritage belongs to all, should be fully preserved and protected for all and, with due recognition of cultural mores and practicalities, should be permanently accessible to all without hindrance.”56 The program’s mission is also to widen access to and awareness of documentary heritage, increasingly via digital dissemination. Located within the Communication and Information Sector of UNESCO, the relatively small MoW is seen as a complement to UNESCO’s other heritage initiatives that sit

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within its Culture Sector.57 It is overseen by a fourteen-­member International Advisory Committee (IAC), convened by the director-­general of UNESCO. The IAC works with international library and archives bodies, with governments and international organizations, on a range of strategies, including the nomination of inscriptions for MoW’s International Register, often seen as a documentary version of the World Heritage List. Member States are also encouraged to establish national and regional committees and registers.58 While MoW thus operates on three tiers, much of its work is focused on the International Register, established with thirty-­seven inscriptions in 1997. Nominations for international accessions are presented to the IAC and follow a process of reactive evaluation prior to acceptance and endorsement by the director-­general of UNESCO. Today, MoW’s International Register includes ancient texts on clay tablets, manuscripts, films, archives, records, websites, and a host of other documentary materials from every region of the world. The majority of inscriptions have been for heritage of historical significance, with an early dominance of European inscriptions.59 These are, as UNESCO expressed in the subtitle of a book issued to commemorate MoW’s twentieth anniversary, “The Treasures That Record Our History from 1700 BC to the Present Day.”60 Whether categorized as of world significance or as indicative of major currents or stages in human history, these inscriptions are wide-­ranging. They include the Magna Carta; Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis; archival collections of the International Prisoners of War Agency and the Documentary Heritage of Enslaved Peoples of the Caribbean; the Nebra sky disc; and Peruvian and South American first editions (a collection of books printed between 1584-­1619). The vast majority of nominations to MoW have proceeded without controversy, particularly in comparison to debates that have surrounded nominations to UNESCO’s World Heritage List. This can partly be explained by the initial low profile of MoW and often of the archival and documentary materials placed on its registers. More importantly, the absence of formal government obligations to preserve or protect heritage on the MoW International Register limits its status to one of symbolic recognition. The MoW International Register attests to the difficult histories of slavery, oppression, and genocide across many geographical and national locales, including some events that exist within living memory, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Archives. Others are directly related to the history of human rights, often linked to colonization, such as the Treaty of Waitangi, the Australian Mabo Case Manuscripts, and the South African trial documents banning



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the African National Congress and sending Nelson Mandela and others to prison. In addition, MoW has overseen a multiple-­nation project devoted to the digitization and greater knowledge of archives relating to the transatlantic Slave Trade. As a group, such documents and artifacts illuminate the complex relations between what Hilary Charlesworth has neatly summarized as the “the universalism of human rights and the particularity of cultural heritage.”61 UNESCO adopted a Strategy on Human Rights in 2003, and its major declarations on cultural heritage recognize the centrality of human rights.62 In widening the accessibility of documentary heritage, MoW draws on a firm foundation within international human rights law; for instance, the deliberate destruction of documentary heritage can constitute a war crime under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Nonetheless, MoW’s preservation of documentary “memories” is not framed in terms of either individual or collective human rights but rather on criteria of “significance.” While the rhetoric of the MoW Program suggests that a global archival memory can be achieved, there are barriers to and complexities within this conceptual framing.63 Archival memory, whether national or transnational, is open to interpretation and cycles of remembrance and forgetting, evolving in response to contemporary political forces and nodes of resistance, not least in relation to issues of social justice and human rights. Documents that arise from regimes of oppression and conflict can become rhetorical weapons, and symbolically utilized as a form of state control or, conversely, as a spur to resistance to power structures across national and transnational contexts. As the communications academic Matthew Houdek puts it, “The memory of pain and struggle for one, may be a narrative of progress and victory for another.”64 Nonetheless, the international inscription process for MoW progressed with limited contestation and low political visibility during its first two decades. Since the early 2000s, as the International Register has become more prominent, and heritage diplomacy more strident, this is no longer the case. There have been growing debates around the politics of MoW’s designation of significance; the efficacy of its activities, especially relating to born-­digital material; and the biases inherent in the selection of significant inscriptions.65 Such conflicts have been particularly intense in East Asia where there is continuing friction between Japan and China and Korea over the potential inclusion of the oral histories of both Chinese and Korean “comfort women” during World War II. The advocacy of feminism and human rights movements, and particularly Korean diasporic communities, has now elevated the historic plight of “comfort women” to a global level. A major controversy

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Figure 13.4. The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre was built in 1985 by the Municipal Government to memorialize the many thousands of Chinese victims killed by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1937. Photo credit: Nanjing Massacre Memorial, Jim Bowen from Zhenhai, China/CC.

erupted in 2015 when China nominated the Documents of the Nanjing Massacre, referring to the Japanese destruction of that Chinese city in 1937, to the MoW International Register. Japan’s angry response showed how MoW’s notion of a universal documentary heritage is highly contested and highlights the tensions between international and national understandings of the past.

The Nanjing Massacre as a Site of Memory In December 1938, the Japanese Imperial Army seized the city of Nanjing during the Sino-­Japanese conflict that preceded World War II. Historical debates surround the number of Chinese killed, with estimates ranging from 100,000 to 300,000. While today the Nanjing Massacre is a site of international—and transnational—memory, it was mostly forgotten for several decades. Following the



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establishment of the PRC in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party focused on its revolutionary narratives, overlooking events that blocked its postwar relations with Japan. However, since the early 1980s, prompted by Japan’s recasting of its own role in World War II, there has been an active re-­remembering of the massacre within China that commenced at the local level. Municipal authorities built the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in 1985 on the site of a mass grave, later substantially extending the grounds and the museum building, which is designed to resemble a tomb (see figure 13.4). By 2014 public commemoration of the Nanjing Massacre was firmly established at the national and transnational levels. A National Commemoration Day was proclaimed, with remembrance events organized in other countries and among Chinese diasporic communities. In Nanjing, a history and peace institute has now opened, and the city belongs to a network of International Cities of Peace. The Memorial Hall has become a major tourist attraction, and analysis of visitor responses to its exhibits reveals broad emotions of shock and pain. For Chinese visitors, these are tempered by feelings of national shame, whereas international tourists emphasize peace-­building and the prevention of similar conflicts in the future.66 It was in this context of a highly nationalistic Chinese re-­remembering and increasing global awareness of the events at Nanjing in 1937–38 that, in 2015, China put forward its nomination to the MoW International Register. The Documents of Nanjing Massacre were compiled by China’s six national archives and the collection at the Memorial Hall, and it included films, photographs, and written materials that covered the period of the Japanese invasion, the subsequent trials of Japanese war criminals at the Tokyo Tribunal at the end of World War II, and the Chinese investigation of the atrocities during the 1950s. The MoW inscription implicitly compared the massacre to the Holocaust of World War II in the extent and global importance of its crimes against humanity, situating the Japanese as perpetrators and the Chinese as victims.67 Japan viewed this historical interpretation as offensive, contested the number of casualties, and made various attempts to persuade China to withdraw the MoW nomination. As Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Suga Yoshihide put it in October 2015, “There is a big discrepancy of views between Japan and China,” asserting that UNESCO’s decision to accept the Documents of the Nanjing Massacre turned “the issue into a political problem.”68 Certainly, this contestation over the past served to escalate current tensions between Japan and China. The objections from the Japanese government over MoW’s “universal” recognition of the Nanjing Massacre were framed by the broader contestation

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of the historical narrative and public memory of Japan’s role in World War II, taking a conservative approach that denies the extent of Japanese aggression and militarism. More specifically in relation to MoW’s inscription, Japan raised doubts about the authenticity of the Chinese documents. Criticism was extended to UNESCO itself, with the Japanese government expressing concerns about the organization’s neutrality and the transparency of the MoW process.69 As a long-­term and ardent supporter, and a major funder of World Heritage and other conservation initiatives, Japan’s attack on UNESCO was unprecedented. The protest became more vehement, with Japan withholding its sizable annual payment to UNESCO until December 2016. At the twelfth biennial meeting of MoW’s IAC held in Abu Dhabi in 2015, and amid diplomatic approaches from China, Japan, and Korea, ­UNESCO commenced a comprehensive review of the program’s statutes, rules, and guidelines. When MoW’s IAC met in 2017 in Paris for its thirteenth meeting, on the agenda for inscription was renewed efforts from competing Chinese and Korean organizations to include documentation about the “comfort women” listed on the MoW International Register (see figure 13.5). To quell the controversy, and in response to a further threat from Japan to delay its payment, UNESCO announced it would postpone consideration of the “comfort women” nominations. The review of MoW processes has proven difficult to resolve. Working groups have been established, an online questionnaire with Member States was implemented during 2018, and there are draft revisions to the MoW guidelines, the statutes for the IAC, and a code of ethics.70 The MoW program has repeatedly stated that the recognition of documentary heritage through its International Register does not imply endorsement of one side of a historical event but only assesses the influence of that event on the peoples and places where it occurs. Nonetheless, as Ryōko Nakano has pointed out in relation to the Sino-­Japanese conflict over the Nanjing Massacre archives, there is an underpinning “difficulty in pursuing global heritage in a world that lacks a common memory of the past.”71

Conclusion The controversies that erupted in 2015 over inclusions to UNESCO’s World Heritage List and its Memory of the World International Register demonstrate ongoing contestations over history and its sites of international and



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Figure 13.5. Japan offered an apology and monetary compensation for the Korean “comfort women” in 2015, and there has been advocacy for the records to be registered in the Memory of the World. A symbol of this campaign has been the replication of this statue in many public contexts, beginning with its location opposite the Embassy of Japan in Seoul. Photo credit: Kristal Buckley, War and Women’s Human Rights Museum, Seoul, June 2016.

transnational memory in East Asia, where interpretations and the use of the past are active within the surging nationalism and political jostling that exists between China, Japan, and Korea. These are also shaped by and enact what Winter has referred to as “two broader interconnected histories: that of diplomacy itself and its evolution; and the emergence of international and global governance structures.”72 These controversies challenge UNESCO’s expert authority and moral global leadership, as well as revealing the limitations of the recognition and designation of heritage in its peace-­making mission. While this chapter has examined some specific cases in East Asia, where the diplomatic dimension of multilateral heritage-­making has been starkly exposed, there are other controversies over the past—and its sites of international memory—in other geocultural and historical contexts. UNESCO’s conventions and programs mean that these tensions over historical events, places, and objects surface in different ways and more commonly now involve diplomatic interventions from Member States and the pursuit of national agendas and transnational alliances. In the World Heritage system, the inscription of sites is increasingly driven by economic factors, particularly hoped-­for

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domestic and international tourism, in addition to the prestige-­enhancing possibilities of linking national identities and symbols to international themes and recognition. Member States had once imagined the relatively abstract MoW program to be free of such political concerns. But national contestation over the past and its documentary heritage was always inevitable, and is now clearly so, with the program creating a space for the dynamics of multidirectional memory work to be played out as a dimension of contemporary multilateral decision-­making about assertions of heritage and its universal significance to a world community. UNESCO’s regimes for the multilateral consideration and designation of international forms of heritage therefore reveal a complex interplay with the construction and recognition of international memory, conflating and complicating the assumed logic of local, national, and transnational spheres.

Notes 1. Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Roger-­Pol Droit, Humanity in the Making: Overview of the Intellectual History of UNESCO, 1945–2005 (Paris: UNESCO, 2005); Paul Betts, “Humanity’s New Heritage: UNESCO and the Rewriting of World History,” Past and Present 228, no. 1 (August 2015): 249–85. 2. UNESCO traces its origins to the Paris-­based International Committee of Intellectual Co-­Operation established in 1922 by the Council of the League of Nations; the International Bureau of Education, established in Geneva in 1925 (led between 1929 and 1968 by Director Professor Jean Piaget), and the International Council of Scientific Unions that had been formed in 1919. 3. Lynn Meskell, A Future in Ruins: UNESCO, World Heritage, and the Dream of Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), xvi. 4. This is how the catchphrase of the UNESCO Constitution is described today, although originally this phrase only mentioned men. The origin of this phrase is credited to the former British prime minister Clement Atlee. A short film clip of the announcement in 1945 was made by a woman, Ellen Wilkinson (then British minister of education), but it has only been very recently that the gendered language of “mankind” and “man” has been adjusted in UNESCO’s texts. 5. UNESCO 1955, Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, adopted in London on 16 November 1945 and amended by the General Conference at its second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth sessions. Paris, 22 March 1955. Available from the UNESDOC Digital Library, accessed 25 July 2020, https://​unesdoc​.unesco​ .org​/ark:​/48223​/pf0000179478. 6. Betts, “Humanity’s New Heritage,” 266. 7. Aurélie Élisa Gfeller and Jaci Eisenberg, “UNESCO and the Shaping of Global Heritage,” in A History of UNESCO, ed. P. Duedahl (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 279–99.



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8. See Gfeller and Eisenberg, “UNESCO and the Shaping of Global Heritage.” 9. Human rights are not explicitly mentioned in the World Heritage Convention, although the Operational Guidelines were revised in 2015 to acknowledge the rights of Indigenous ­peoples, and the World Heritage Sustainable Development Policy (2015) advocates for rights-­ based approaches. 10. Christina Cameron, “The UNESCO Imprimatur: Creating Global (In)significance,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 26, no 9 (2020): 845–56, 853. 11. Pierre Nora, Les Lieux de Mémoire, vols. 1–3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–92); Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” trans. Marc Roudebush, in “Memory and Counter-­Memory,” special issue, Representations 26 (1989): 7–24. 12. Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 1–29. 13. Christina Cameron and Mechtild Rössler, Many Voices, One Vision: The Early Years of the World Heritage Convention (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). 14. Cameron and Rössler, Many Voices, One Vision, 3–11, 24; see also Gfeller and Eisenberg, “UNESCO and the Shaping of Global Heritage.” 15. UNESCO 1972, Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by the General Conference at its 17th session, Paris, 16 November 1972, article 4, accessed 8 August 2020, https://​whc​.unesco​.org​/en​/conventiontext/. 16. Cameron and Rössler, Many Voices, One Vision, 26. 17. Luke James and Tim Winter, “Expertise and the Making of World Heritage Policy,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 23, no. 1 (2017): 36–51. 18. Tim Winter, “Heritage Diplomacy,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 21, no. 10 (2015): 997–1015. 19. Winter, “Heritage Diplomacy,” 1007. 20. The work undertaken by ICOMOS as an advisory body to the World Heritage Committee is supported by its Paris-­based International Secretariat and World Heritage advisers from many different countries. However, its decisions are overseen by the ICOMOS World Heritage Panel, made up of experts from different disciplines and regions. The make-­up of the panel for the 2018 cycle of work is outlined on its website: https://​www​.icomos​.org​/en​/home​-wh​/42724​ -icomos​-world​-heritage​-panel​-2017​-2018, accessed 31 December 2021. 21. ICOMOS, “Funerary and Memorial Sites of the First World War (Belgium, France),” no. 1567, Evaluations of Nominations of Cultural and Mixed Properties, Report to the 42nd Ordinary Session of the World Heritage Committee, Manama (Bahrain), 24 June–4 July 2018, WHC-­18/42.COM/INF.8B1, 136–54. 22. ICOMOS, “Funerary and Memorial Sites of the First World War (Belgium, France),” 154. 23. Ibid. 24. O. Beazley and C. Cameron, “Study on Sites Associated with Recent Conflicts and Other Negative and Divisive Memories,” WHC/21/44.COM/INF.8.2 (2020); “Outcomes of the Expert Meeting on Sites Associated with Recent Conflicts and Other Negative and Divisive Memories (Paris, 4–6 December 2019),” WHC/21/44.COM/INF.8.1 (2021); ICOMOS, “Second Discussion Paper: Sites Associated with Memories of Recent Conflicts and the World Heritage Convention” (2020), accessed 31 December 2021, https://​www​.icomos​.org​/en​/home​-wh​/75087​-sites​ -associated​-with​-memories​-of​-recent​-conflicts​-and​-the​-world​-heritage​-convention​-icomos​ -second​-discussion​-paper. 25. Beazley and Cameron, “Study on Sites Associated with Recent Conflicts,” 31.

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26. Natsuko Akagawa, Heritage Conservation and Japan’s Cultural Diplomacy: Heritage, National Identity and National Interest (London: Taylor and Francis Group, 2014). 27. See Akagawa, Heritage Conservation, 79–114. 28. Hyung Il Pai, Heritage Management in Korea and Japan: The Politics of Antiquity and Identity (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013); Helaine Silverman and Tami Blumenfield, “Cultural Heritage Politics in China: An Introduction,” in Cultural Heritage Politics in China, ed. Tami Blumenfield and Helaine Silverman (New York: Springer, 2013), 3–22. 29. “UNESCO: China: Properties Inscribed on the World Heritage List,” accessed 29 August 2020, http://​whc​.unesco​.org​/en​/statesparties​/cn. 30. Haiming Yan, World Heritage Craze in China: Universal Discourse, National Culture, and Local Memory (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018). 31. Tim Winter, Geocultural Power: China’s Quest to Revive the Silk Roads for the Twenty-­ First Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). 32. William Logan, “Heritage Interpretation and the Quest for Post-­Conflict Reconciliation in East Asia,” presentation to the Association of Critical Heritage Studies Biennial Conference, London, August 2020. The two inscribed properties are the “Capital Cities and Tombs of the Ancient Koguryo Kingdom” (China), and the “Complex of Koguryo Tombs” (Democratic ­People’s Republic of Korea), both inscribed in 2004. 33. Yan, World Heritage Craze in China. 34. “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal-­ Mining (Japan)” (2015), Statement of Outstanding Universal Value, accessed 29 August 2020, http://​whc​.unesco​.org​/en​/list​/1484. 35. See Logan, “Heritage Interpretation.” Masahiro Ogino considers this case to illustrate “conflict between old and new actors” in Japan. Masahiro Ogino, Sociology of World Heritage: An Asian Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2022), 56-­60. 36. Japan commonly invites the involvement of international experts in the development of World Heritage nominations, as do other countries, so this is not especially noteworthy. However, in this case, it appears that the involvement of the international experts was used more explicitly to validate the proposal, particularly in the face of criticism. 37. “UNESCO Listing,” Korean Herald, 12 May 2015, accessed 17 May 2015, http://​www​ .koreaherald​.com​/view​.php​?ud​=​20150512000677. 38. For example, see Justin McCurry, “Battleship Island—a Symbol of Japan’s Progress or Reminder of Its Dark History?,” Guardian, 3 July 2015, accessed 11 August 2020, https://​ www​.theguardian​.com​/world​/2015​/jul​/03​/battleship​-island​-a​-symbol​-of​-japans​-progress​-or​ -reminder​-of​-its​-dark​-history. 39. “Japan’s UNESCO Campaign Upsets Former Adversaries,” Deutsche Welle, 18 May 2015, accessed 10 May 2017, http://​www​.dw​.com​/en​/japans​-unesco​-campaign​-upsets​-former- adversaries/a-­18455898; “UNESCO Listing,” Korean Herald, 12 May 2015, accessed 17 May 2015, http://​www​.koreaherald​.com​/view​.php​?ud​=​20150512000677. 40. See ICOMOS, www​.icomos​.org, accessed 29 August 2020. 41. See Annex 6 of the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. These are regularly revised, and all versions are available from http://​whc​ .unesco​.org​/en​/guidelines/, accessed 31 December 2021. The current version is dated 2021. 42. ICOMOS, “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution (Japan),” no. 1484, Nominations of Cultural and Mixed Properties to the World Heritage List, ICOMOS Report for the World Heritage Committee 39th ordinary session, Bonn, 28 June–8 July 2015, 88–103, WHC-­15/39.



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COM/INF.8B1, accessed 9 September 2020, http://​whc​.unesco​.org​/archive​/2015​/whc15​-39com​ -inf8B1​-en​.pdf. 43. Leo Byrne, “North Korea Lashes Out at Japan’s UNESCO Candidates,” NK News, 20 May 2015, accessed 11 August 2020, https://​www​.nknews​.org​/2015​/05​/north​-korea​-lashes​-out​ -at​-japans​-unesco​-candidates/; “China Against Japan’s World Heritage Bid for Slave Labor,” Korea Herald, 14 May 2015, accessed 17 May 2015, http://​www​.koreaherald​.com​/view​.php​?ud​ =​20150514001174. 44. This observation is made in Peter Bille Larsen and Kristal Buckley, “Approaching Human Rights at the World Heritage Committee: Capturing Situated Conversations, Complexity, and Dynamism in Global Heritage Processes,” International Journal of Cultural Property 25, no. 1 (2018): 85–110. 45. UNESCO, World Heritage Committee: Summary Records of the Thirty-­Ninth Session, Bonn, Germany, 28 June–8 July 2015, WHC-­15/39.COM.INF.19, 222, accessed 10 May 2017, http://​whc​.unesco​.org​/en​/sessions​/39COM​/decisions. 46. See Logan, “Heritage Interpretation.” 47. Japan, Cabinet Secretariat, State of Conservation Report: “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding, and Coal Mining (Japan),” 2018 (ID: 1484), 452, accessed 29 August 2020, http://​whc​.unesco​.org​/en​/list​/1484​/documents/. For information about ICIP, see http://​icip​.icomos​.org/, accessed 9 September 2020. 48. Japan, Cabinet Secretariat, State of Conservation Report: “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution,” 451. 49. World Heritage Committee Decision 42 COM 7B.10 (2018), paras. 7–9, accessed 5 September 2020, http://​whc​.unesco​.org​/en​/decisions​/7239. 50. Yi Whan-­woo, “Japan Snubs UNESCO Recommendation on Forced Korean Laborers,” Korean Times, 4 December 2017, accessed 6 December 2017, http://​www​.koreatimes​.co​.kr​/www​ /nation​/2020​/09​/120​_240340​.html. See also Ogino, Sociology of World Heritage, 61. 51. Jeong-­Ho Lee and Stella Ko, “South Korea Warns Japan of Coalition to Highlight Wartime Abuses,” Bloomberg​.com, 23 July 2020, accessed 9 September 2020, https://​www​ .bloomberg​.com​/news​/articles​/2020​-07​-23​/south​-korea​-warns​-japan​-of​-coalition​-to​-highlight​ -wartime​-abuses. 52. Report on the UNESCO/ICOMOS Mission to the Industrial Heritage Information Centre Related to the World Heritage Property, “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining” (Japan) (C 1484), July 2021, accessed 31 December 2021, https://​whc​.unesco​.org​/en​/documents​/188249/; World Heritage Committee Decision 44 COM 7B.30, accessed 31 December 2021, http://​whc​.unesco​.org​/en​/decisions​/7748. 53. “Controversial Sado Mine Proposed for UNESCO Nod,” Japan News, 29 December 2021, accessed 31 December 2021, https://​the​-japan​-news​.com​/news​/article​/0008139703; “Another Trigger of Concerns,” Korea JoongAng Daily, 30 December 2021, accessed 31 December 2021, https://​koreajoongangdaily​.joins​.com​/2021​/12​/30​/opinion​/editorials​/Japan​-Unesco​ /20211230201714071​.html; The Sado Complex of Heritage Mines, Primarily Gold Mines, 22 November 2010, Tentative Lists–Japan, accessed 31 December 2021, https://​whc​.unesco​.org​ /en​/tentativelists​/5572/. 54. Logan, “Heritage Interpretation.” 55. Protecting and Promoting Global Recorded Knowledge, Memory of the World Twentieth Anniversary booklet, accessed 4 August 2017, https://​ unesdoc​ .unesco​ .org​ /ark:​ /48223​ /pf0000224658.

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56. UNESCO, “Memory of the World Programme,” http://​en​.unesco​.org​/programme​/mow, accessed 4 August 2017. 57. Michael Heaney, “The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme,” Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues 26, no. 1 (2016): 46–55, 52; Anca Claudia Prodan, “The Memory of the World and Its Hidden Facets,” in A Companion to Heritage Studies, ed. William Logan, Máiréad Nic Craith, and Ulrich Kockel (Chichester: Wiley-­ Blackwell, 2015), 133–45, 135. 58. National Committees are autonomous but must meet various parameters and be accredited by their UNESCO National Commission. There are currently at least seventy-­six countries with National Committees. UNESCO, “National Memory of the World Committees,” accessed 4 August 2017, http://​en​.unesco​.org​/programme​/mow​/national​-committees. 59. Heaney, “UNESCO Memory of the World Programme,” 48–50. 60. UNESCO, Memory of the World: The Treasures That Record Our History from 1700 BC to the Present Day (Paris and Glasgow: UNESCO and HarperCollins, 2012). 61. Hilary Charlesworth, “Human Rights and the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme,” in Cultural Diversity, Heritage and Human Rights: Intersections in Theory and Practice, ed. Michele Langfield, William Logan, and Máiréad Nic Craith (London: Routledge, 2010), 23. 62. See William Logan, “Cultural Heritage and Human Rights,” in Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, ed. Brian Graham and Peter Howard (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 439–54. 63. Matthew Houdek, “The Rhetorical Force of ‘Global Archival Memory’: (Re)Situating Archives Along the Global Memoryscape,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 9, no. 3 (2016): 204–21, 206. 64. Houdek, “Rhetorical Force of ‘Global Archival Memory,’” 213. 65. See Prodan, “Memory of the World and Its Hidden Facets.” 66. Yujie Zhu, “Heritage Making of War Memories: Remembering the Nanjing Massacre in Nation-­Building,” paper presented at the Association of Critical Heritage Studies Conference, London, August 2020. 67. Ryōko Nakano, “A Failure of Global Documentary Heritage? UNESCO’s ‘Memory of the World’ and Heritage Dissonance in East Asia,” Contemporary Politics 24, no. 4 (2018): 481–96, 488. 68. Justin McCurry, “Japan Threatens to Halt UNESCO Funding over Nanjing Massacre Listing,” Guardian, 13 October 2015, accessed 10 May 2020, https://​www​.theguardian​.com​ /world​/2015​/oct​/13​/japan​-threatens​-to​-halt​-unesco​-funding​-over​-nanjing​-listing. 69. McCurry, “Japan Threatens to Halt UNESCO Funding.” 70. UNESCO, “Comprehensive Review of the Memory of the World Programme,” accessed 25 September 2020, https://​ en​ .unesco​ .org​ /programme​ /mow​ /review; Ian E. Wilson, “The ­UNESCO Memory of the World Program: Promise Postponed,” Archivaria 87 (2019): 106–37. 71. Nakano, “Failure of Global Documentary Heritage?,” 492. 72. Winter, “Heritage Diplomacy,” 1000.

CHAPTER 14

Internationalism from the Inside: The Women of the United Nations Secretariat in New York Alanna O’Malley

T

he striking glass tower of the UN headquarters in New York looming over the East River is commonly regarded as emblematic of the institution, presenting to the world as an austere, elite, glistening glass palace. But behind its opaque walls lies a labyrinth of bureaucratic structures, systems, and people—a microcosm of international society. The individual diplomats, experts, officials, and officers who make up the Secretariat have played a formative role in the construction of narratives of what the UN is in reality, beyond the idealistic rhetoric of the Charter. They have shaped its purposes, processes, and practices as well as its efficacy. Crucially, these individuals have also significantly shaped the image and impression of the UN in the public’s mind, not least through the production of memoirs that have shed light on its inner workings; they have also given rise to both soaring praise and scathing criticisms of the international system. Moreover, such memoirs tend to follow these polarized positions and often clash with the official memory of the UN’s various organs, departments, and agencies as recorded in its documents and resolutions while standing apart from most historical literature on the organization. However, these personal accounts of the Secretariat offer insider perspectives that are essential for closing the gap between the political level of UN decision-­making and the implementation of those policies by and among the people who serve the Secretariat. This process between decision and implementation requires individuals to make choices as they filter the options and methods for operationalizing policies. Their memories of these specific moments, decisions, and

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challenges offer insights into how the institutional memory has been formed, and why and in which ways the UN Secretariat has functioned as a cosmos of internationalisms. The processes by which the UN Secretariat works to shape global policies involves systems of recording, communicating, and measuring a variety of ideas and proposals, and producing the knowledge, practices, and policies of the organization. Historically, the actors within the Secretariat in New York who gained visibility and prominence from the 1950s to the 1980s (often because they wrote popular memoirs) tended to be men—examples include Secretary-­General Dag Hammarskjöld; Brian Urquhart, who was one of his main advisers; Ralph Bunche (the first African American UN diplomat and under-­secretary-­general); Raul Prebisch, founding secretary-­general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD); and Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan, who was the executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East and later under-­secretary for Special Political Questions.1 Yet behind, in front of, below, and beside these men were a host of female assistants, diplomats, interpreters, officers, and secretaries who actually ran the Secretariat. Their impressions and experiences of the UN have received scant attention from most analyses of the organization, even though they offer unique, if sometimes subjective, memories of how it worked in practice. This internal world, and some different female memories of it, are the focus of this chapter. It has been argued that the absence of these voices from general histories of the UN are indicative of the politics of memory of the organization. For the most part, the UN and the experiences of those who worked there, especially up to the 1980s, have been eulogized in glowing terms, usually by men employed in high-­level positions within the Secretariat. This leads to several questions: Where are the women? Why have their accounts not received the same sustained attention and what can we learn from them? This chapter takes two different accounts from women who worked at different levels both within the Secretariat and in the field. These perspectives are important in providing unconventional views of the organization that differ from both their male counterparts’ and more mainstream institutional histories. Second, the memoirs from these women have been selected because they offer a gendered view that contrasts with the more utopian visions of men who forged careers at higher levels. This provides insight into the gendered reality of working for the UN in the 1960s and 1970s where discrimination was rife



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and at times proved to be a real obstacle to career advancement. Finally, these often microlevel impressions provide insights into the mostly unrendered and unfiltered social and intellectual memory of the UN. Many of the interactions recorded in these pages are filtered out of more general accounts of UN activities, which makes these memoirs an important site of memory for the organization. The impression that emerges differs from the hopeful, idealistic version of Hammarskjöld’s UN as “a priesthood of a new and better ideology, a form of supranational religion of which he is the head.”2 Rather, it becomes clear that these alternative memoirs of the Secretariat contrast with official and more mainstream versions to illuminate new aspects of the organization from the perspective of actors who have not become part of its conventional history. Two different female accounts are selected here to capture a snapshot of the inner workings of the organization in the 1960s and 1970s. They are suitably comparable since both women began their UN careers around the same time in the 1950s under Hammarskjöld, although their experiences, and ultimately their views of the functionality and utility of the UN as a whole, are very different. Including the comparability of their individual experiences, these memoirs reveal the inside reality of the UN for women during these years, which is not featured at all in institutional or more conventional accounts such as those just mentioned. First, I focus on the Australian Shirley Hazzard, who worked at the clerical level at the UN headquarters in New York beginning in 1952, before leaving the organization ten years later to pursue a full-­time career as a writer. In that role, she produced two nonfiction books, Defeat of an Ideal (1973) and Countenance of Truth (1990), which analyzed the inner workings of the organization, and a collection of short stories, People in Glass Houses: Portraits of an Institutional Life (1967), that offers a satirical and often caustic impression of working for the UN.3 Hazzard’s works provide both a unique impression of the microlevel operation of the UN and a searing criticism of the organization. Starting off with an idealistic zeal of what it would be like to be in the service of internationalism, she later became frustrated by the lack of opportunities for advancement, the bureaucracy, and the politics and ultimately became completely disillusioned with the UN. Her writing about her experience did not immediately become part of the canon of UN literature. In later years, especially as the UN appeared increasingly paralyzed by Cold War politics, and the tone of UN literature shifted from being largely laudatory to increasingly critical, there was a growing appreciation of her perspective.4 Yet only in recent years has there

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been any kind of sustained engagement with her UN writings by scholars and critics, indicating the limited resonance of her work among her peers when it was published.5 A different view is offered by the memoirs of Margaret Anstee, who worked as a UN official in a variety of roles both at the Secretariat and in the field missions from 1952 to 1993. As a UN career woman, she experienced similar hindrances and difficulties in advancement, albeit ascending to a higher level than Hazzard. Anstee’s memories of the UN revolve as much around the everyday personal relationships she forged as around the broader struggles she and her colleagues experienced in the realization of the UN’s grand ideals. Her memoir, Never Learn to Type: A Woman at the United Nations (2003), and her oral history interview included in an in-­house archive of “UN Voices” (2007), offer a gripping account of the challenges facing a woman working in various capacities in the UN system.6 Her account was published for a different international audience in 2003 when fresh disillusionment with the UN (following the failure of the organization to act decisively in the face of genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and later in Bosnia in 1995) was more commonplace but also because, despite her personal disenchantment with the organization she had spent her life serving, Anstee ultimately balances her skepticism with realism about the UN’s potential. This chapter utilizes the memoirs and oral histories of these UN women to compare and contrast their views in order to demonstrate how narratives of what the UN is and how it works have been produced, absorbed, and resisted by those bound together in pursuit of global ideals. This selection of impressions and insights is instructive when analyzing how the Secretariat works as a site of international memory and it also highlights how personal memoirs can be connected to and contrasted with institutional records. From the lower levels of service to the top levels of politics, the memoirs of these women show how personal experiences impact the formation and portrayal of the macro processes of the UN. I aim to analyze their contributions also with a view to showing how their memories of its operational limits shaped public views of the UN and demonstrate how it can serve as a site of international memory. It is clear from her work that Anstee wrote for a more specialized audience, whereas Hazzard’s writings were aimed toward the general public. Both, however, sought to illuminate and popularize their UN experiences, with a view to critical revelation and, at times, humorous recollections. This chapter is guided by a series of questions: What purpose did these authors have in mind as they were writing their memoirs? Who was their



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intended audience and how were they received? Did the memoirs and oral histories of these women disrupt general understandings of the UN (especially how the Secretariat functioned) and/or the role the organization played in the events they described? How can the interventions of these memoirs be reconciled with each other and with the existing field and what does this tell us about the UN Secretariat as a site of international memory? With these questions in mind, it is important now to turn to the framing of the UN Secretariat in New York as a site of international memory. In the first instance, this study is framed as an intervention in the field of UN history given that it utilizes personal memoirs and oral histories of select actors working as part of the so-­called second UN.7 The growing historiography of the UN has recently devoted increasing attention to the officials and experts of the secretariats and agencies. Among others, Madeleine Herren-­ Oesch and Sandrine Kott have contributed insightful intellectual histories of diplomacy, focusing on how actors negotiate within and outside organizations, thereby influencing each other on an individual level.8 This perspective ascribes importance to the role of actors who utilized the organization to influence national and international policy and connect global solutions to local contexts, and used various networks to advance their political objectives.9 The question of where the officials and experts of the UN fit into this context is in focus here, as the gender perspective contrasts with the official institutional public image and certainly with the memoirs of men who worked at the UN during the same time period. While not alone in their public criticism of the workings of the UN, the memoirs of these two women stand in stark contrast to the accounts of their male counterparts, including figures such as Conor Cruise O’Brien, Ralph Bunche, and Brian Urquhart, whose recollections of the same period of UN activity portray a much more harmonious and laudatory impression of its workings.10 Rather, Anstee and Hazzard demonstrate that the outward show of an expanding UN in terms of membership, dynamism, representation, and prestige had little or no bearing on the internal workings of the clunky bureaucracy. Despite the declaration of a new era of equality, opportunity, and representation, there was little or no change within the UN Secretariat in the position of women. Anstee and Hazzard contradict the official institutional public image and certainly the cosmopolitan narrative of the UN in the 1960s, but they also offer more granular histories of the internal workings of the UN. In particular, they highlight the uneven topography of agency between the genders, not just between different levels of the Secretariat. These memoirs add to the landscape of narratives

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about the gender politics and dynamics of the UN at a time when the institution was proudly promoting but simultaneously failing to practice gender equality. In this essay, I draw on the work of Patricia Owens, Katharina Rietzler, and Glenda Sluga who have pushed forward the boundaries of international history with their pioneering work on the role of women at the forefront of international relations.11 They argue that women have played formative roles as leading international thinkers in international relations and diplomacy, despite being historically overlooked and undervalued. So too has Sluga argued that women have been a central part of the “major political debates and processes of twentieth-­century liberal internationalisms.”12 Anstee and Hazzard, while working at different levels within the UN Secretariat, precisely fulfilled the role of women who were not feminist leaders or major political figures but who, in their own way, advanced the agenda of feminism at the UN by pointing out the inequalities and obstacles preventing female advancement. At the center of their reasoning was the hypocrisy between the UN’s declaration of human rights for all in the face of their failure to implement gender equality internally. As feminist internationalism progressed through the 1950s and 1960s, and thought leaders such as Hansa Mehta—the Indian member of the drafting committee of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Liaison Committee of International Women’s Organizations (LCIWO)—pushed for the advancement of women’s rights on public platforms, individuals like Hazzard and Anstee worked behind the scenes to implement these ideas within the UN, often encountering the kinds of obstructions that so pointedly exemplified the necessity of such wider campaigns.13 Secondly, this essay contributes to the ways in which the politics and processes of internationalism at the UN has been historicized. These personalized institutional memoirs illuminate different visions of internationalism in practice. These select accounts are used to reconstruct the difficulties of realizing visions of the international through the UN system because they provide insights into its workings and the challenges of overcoming the gap between the theory and practice of internationalism. The UN Secretariat conforms to what Pierre Nora describes as the “embodiment of memory in certain sites where a sense of historical continuity persists.”14 Certainly, the memoirs discussed here, with their implicit critiques of the UN, are shaped by the memories of their authors, but they also in turn serve to shape broader memories of attempts to enact internationalist ideals within that space. In this essay, I argue that such memories of processes and practices of the UN



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have had an important influence on how it has been portrayed over time, in many ways contributing to the image of the Secretariat as a stagnated, elitist, and dysfunctional space. The recollections analyzed here reveal the pattern of compromises and concessions that undergird even perfunctory UN decisions, demystifying the idealism of other recollections of individuals serving the UN with an almost religious zeal.15 As Nora points out, “Memory . . . nourishes recollections that may be out of focus or telescopic, global or detached, particular or symbolic.”16 Therefore, it has been argued that memoirs can provide critical often overlooked voices from inside institutions that considerably impact the how they themselves are remembered. Thirdly, this essay is a contribution to the scholarship on the nature of the international secretariat from its early creation with the League of Nations to its composition at the UN and how this changed in the 1960s.17 Karen Gram-­Skjoldager, Haakon A. Ikonomou, and Torsten Kahlert have developed important scholarship that charts the genealogy and anatomy of public administrations, particularly in their “institutional make-­up, leadership procedures and human composition.”18 Their research demonstrates that the political level of international organizations cannot be detached from the transnational environment and the individual actors that make up the practices of internationalism. As Bob Reinalda has also pointed out, a comprehensive overview of international governmental secretariats and international civil servants adds to the understandings of the functionality and sometimes dysfunction of international organizations.19 Focusing on the 1960s in particular, Leland Goodrich, Paul Novosad, and Eric Werker have analyzed how the composition of the Secretariat changed in terms of geographic distribution, though little attention was paid to the representation of women.20 Writing in 1976, Theodor Meron openly highlighted the discriminatory practices toward women. He agued that the Charter’s call for the equal eligibility and participation of men and women should be “translated into administrative arrangements that enable all candidates for recruitment to be considered for appointment under fair and equal conditions” in order to give significance to this principle21 Both Anstee and Hazzard encountered this discrimination and became justifiably frustrated with the contrast between the rhetoric and the reality of the UN. As discussed below, despite working at different levels within the Secretariat and in field missions, they were both confronted with challenges to their own career advancement and to the enactment of their agency. Their experiences demonstrated that, despite the lofty promises of the Charter,

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equality was a long way off even within the chorus halls of the UN where those principles were publicly venerated. While further highlighting the ways in which such principles were often only selectively rather than liberally applied, this perspective also adds a more critical account to the history of the Secretariat during these years, which are often viewed as a period of high activity and aspiration in terms of the UN’s longer history.

Pushing Against the Glass Ceiling Shirley Hazzard began her career at the UN when she joined the Secretariat in New York as a typist in 1952. Her status as an Australian was important in shaping her perspective toward the UN as reflected in her fiction writing where she emphasises Australia’s relations to an inherited and displaced European culture.22 She grew up during a period of uncertainty during World War II and had a remarkably mobile life during the formative years of her teens and early twenties. At sixteen she began working for British Combined Services Intelligence in Hong Kong and only reluctantly returned to Australia two years later when her sister became ill. Moving to New Zealand shortly afterward with her family, she yearned for the cosmopolitan world she had left behind in Hong Kong, viewing Wellington as “extremely subdued, ingrown and conventional.”23 Birgitta Olubas describes what she terms Hazzard’s “disavowed ex-­patriotism,” which highlights female agency in both her fiction and nonfiction work. It was this craving for cosmopolitanism that drew her to apply for a position at the UN in New York where she began working in a clerical position in 1953. Hazzard worked at the clerical level within the Secretariat until 1962 when she departed to pursue a full-­time career as a writer. Her experiences at the UN provided the impetus for her first book satirizing her experiences and “the Organization.” She later described her work there as “virtually meaningless and cruelly underpaid.”24 Taking a critical view of her UN writing, Olubas argues that Hazzard conflates the inside with the outside, the public and private faces of the UN.25 Hazzard herself describes the “fusion in the public mind between the constitutional principles of the United Nations and the Organization’s actual practices.”26 Believing that the public chose to ignore the blatant weaknesses and self-­interest of the UN, she sets up her perspective as defensive of the public front of the UN while highly critical of the private world within it. This led to severe criticism by some readers who argued that her critique was too harsh and deconstructive



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since she did not offer any solutions to the problems she exposed. However, as Olubas argues, it was not Hazzard’s intention to propose reform but rather to reveal the moral problems in the way the UN operated in practice.27 As Hazzard sought to expose the challenges and frustrations of her work at the clerical level of the UN, she details the difficulties in attempting to advance her career and the discrimination she faced. She describes (acerbically at times) an environment in which ambition and commitment to ideals were thwarted by the bureaucracy and politics of this international organization. Her impressions offer an unpolished view, recounting the everyday realities and struggles of those working within the UN as they attempted to impact the issues they worked on and in the process practiced internationalism in striving to make the UN more effective. Hazzard defines her work on the UN as less a catalog of its failures than an attempt to “show how the present body—and the basis on which it conducts all its operations—has been to a large extent shaped by a continuity of events and attitudes which, unlike the much-­chronicled political development has not so far . . . been drawn to public attention.”28 This emphasis on drawing public attention to the private sphere of the UN in a novel way underpins all her nonfiction work, but it is difficult to decouple her personal frustrations with her career from the more generalized criticisms she outlines. Hazzard’s recollections were certainly designed to demonstrate to the public the glaring contrast between the humanitarian ideals of the UN, on the one hand, and the moral reticence of those who worked in the service of the same ideals, on the other. To her, it had become “an appalling institution” that was weak, ineffectual, and failed to practice internally many of the principles it espoused externally.29 For her critics, Hazzard’s work represents a critical conundrum; her writing, noted for its wit and irony, often eluded cultural frames of reference, yet it remains enduringly popular and has been awarded a series of literary prizes. While many of her books remain in print, it is only in recent years that Hazzard’s work and its significance for “gendered modernism” has been the subject of a sustained scholarly engagement.30 Hazzard worked for the UN during perhaps its highest moment of influence and power during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was precisely during these years that the membership of the UN expanded with the gradual addition of newly independent countries from the Global South. This infused the diplomatic environment and the Secretariat with a new generation of anticolonial activists and leaders who believed in the potential of the UN and

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sought to innovate its structures and politics.31 Moreover, these were the years of Dag Hammarskjöld’s tenure as secretary-­general from his appointment in 1953 to his untimely death in 1961.32 Hammarskjöld became a figure of idolatry in UN circles, partly because he was killed in action in mysterious circumstances en route to negotiate a ceasefire in the Congo during the political crisis there in 1961, but also because Hammarskjöld’s approach to his office was deeply innovative. He believed that the UN should act to realize the ideals of the charter, to the benefit of the smaller nations in the world, rather than service the interests of the Permanent Members of the Security Council (P5). His activist and interventionist attitude led him into controversy on numerous occasions, especially when his vision clashed with the objectives of the P5 as happened in the crises that erupted over the Congo intervention and the restructuring of the Secretariat.33 For many, including Hazzard, he gave a physical form to what the Secretariat should be: “An enterprising, active, and courageous Secretariat has a crucial role to play in any realization of internationalist aims: that obligation is embodied in the United Nations Charter, and it was recognized and fulfilled in the peacemaking efforts of Hammarskjöld.”34 From the beginning of his appointment, Hazzard states, Hammarskjöld inspired an atmosphere of enterprise and initiative.35 Although he came into the job as a relatively anonymous Swedish civil servant, he soon seized his office with a vigor and tenacity that spread a sense of renewed purpose and motivation among the staff of the Secretariat.36 At the center of this was the sensation that, finally, the UN had a leader who realized that the potential of the organization was yet to be fulfilled and that governments left to their own devices could not be trusted to bring the UN to full fruition. Rather, the organization had to serve as the moral guiding hand for the member states, especially newly independent nations—an important reversal from the view of his predecessor Trygve Lie.37 With his ambitious vision for the future of the UN, Hammarskjöld charted a course to make the Secretariat itself into an instrument of peace that would be available to the member states but would work in the “common interest.” He drew his authority, and that of the Secretariat broadly, not just from the direct mandates of his office but also from a broad and expansive reading of the charter—not limited to the articles governing the Secretariat.38 That, as Hazzard argues, “is the crux of his contribution to the United Nations.”39 During these early years, Hazzard recounts feeling temporarily personally inspired and motivated by the Hammarskjöld effect of imbuing the staff with



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this sense of purpose, which she admits was essential to help them overcome their sense of frustration and demoralization following Trygve Lie’s problematic term as secretary-­general. She describes a rather convivial environment, where Hammarskjöld made a conscious effort to eat lunch in the delegates’ lounge, to take the elevator with everyone else, and to tour the offices of the lower ranks of the Secretariat staff. He also sought to reorganize the Secretariat, not just to make it more efficient but also to streamline the powers of the personnel office which had been given unprecedented liberty under Lie. Of particular importance to Hazzard, Hammarskjöld was sensitive to the consequences of geographical appointments and the dangers of frustration among the staff.40 He recognized that a particular problem became evident in political missions (such as in Suez or Congo) where unsuitable personnel were sent to assume posts for which they were not trained or sufficiently experienced. He gradually sought to offset this problem by increasingly reverting to the use of special representatives from outside the UN system—who themselves often proved to be problematic.41 In the process, he opened up avenues for advancement, and as Hazzard outlines it, “some of the lower orders bloomed on finding themselves actively engaged at last.”42 This occurred as more positions were created in UN field offices and more advisers were dispatched to monitor and assess fieldwork and report back to the Secretariat. Interestingly, this was a practice that may, in Hazzard’s view, have invigorated the New York staff but, according to Anstee, led to friction between field agents and Secretariat officials. However, for all his energy and vision for the role of the international servant, Hazzard became deeply critical of the long-­term effect of Hammarskjöld’s tenure.43 While he did initiate some new innovations, spread a renewed sense of purpose among his staff (at least for a while), and expanded the possible range of their activities, she maintains that he failed to make any lasting changes to the Secretariat. She argues that, in fact, it “emerged from the Hammarskjöld years as more bureaucratized and with less identity than ever.”44 Arguably, there is reason to believe that he may have achieved a fundamental reorganization of the Secretariat and its staff had his tenure not been so abruptly ended.45 Certainly, the parallels between his activist stance and that of his successor U Thant point to his legacy of opening the door to achieving the full potential of the UN’s role in world affairs. Hazzard herself concedes that he did seek to wring meaning from the abstract prose of the Secretariat’s functions as outlined in the Charter. This is where the subjectivity of her UN memoirs become problematic. Even within this reinvigorated environment,

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and despite the increase in opportunities for advancement, her own ambitions were thwarted. Set in this context, her razing critique of the Secretariat requires some reflection, especially considering that although Hammarskjöld failed to achieve the high ambitions he had set out for the Secretariat, he certainly demonstrated that individual agency could have a pervasive and fundamental effect on how the UN operated. Although she worked for the secretary-­general who, in theory, appreciated more than anyone the importance of individual agency within the Secretariat, Hazzard remained unfulfilled. The more famous (and infamous) Hammarskjöld became—due to his interventions in the Suez Crisis (1956) and the conflicts in Lebanon (1957), Jordan (1958), and Congo (1960)—the more social and intellectual distance emerged between him and his staff. As she describes it, many began to feel “rather like some obscure country cousin repeatedly complimented on his connection with the famous relative who never sends him so much as a Christmas card.”46 This sense of isolation from power was exacerbated by how he organized his inner circle, which was made up of mostly senior officials who followed his directions to the letter since he acted as “his own brain trust.”47 The whole arrangement was aggravated by his personality—he was rather austere, deeply reserved, and often aloof. For Hazzard, this was another demonstration of the hypocrisy of the UN, now with a leader who failed to practice among his staff the very directives he himself had devised. Hazzard derides his indifference to discriminatory attitudes that pervaded the Secretariat—especially as experienced by women and younger staff members. In her view, Hammarskjöld’s approach was to reduce his staff to an “anonymous, unreasoning servility in the name of an ‘internationalism’ that was in fact to suffer incalculable harm from this debilitating legacy.”48 The effect of his dismissive attitude toward large swaths of his staff was exacerbated by Hammarskjöld’s reform efforts whereby the under-­secretaries would report directly to him, creating a firm layer of bureaucracy between the upper and lower echelons of the organization. At that point, those who had already been frustrated by the lack of career advancement became further disenfranchised by a simultaneous reinvigoration of their role and purpose in theory and the rolling up of the career ladder in practice with a more centrally organized system. When the staff protested this new arrangement, he became imperious and officious in his response, denying that there were any problems with his management of the Secretariat and arguing that, in fact, “present arrangements have proved entirely sound, and in practice have



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worked well.”49 There emerged, then, a curious dissonance between his chorus of proclamations on what the role of international civil servants ought to be and his practice of putting in place only a few provisions to enable the realization of these ideas among his staff. In fact, he seemed largely out of touch with the frustrations of his colleagues; if he did sense it, he failed to respond to it. In a biting criticism, Hazzard wrote that during his tenure “some of the best remaining quality in the United Nations staff was starved or died at its post for lack of any effective nourishment, and able persons whom he himself recruited into top positions quickly departed because they were allowed no scope for their talents.”50 Hazzard’s devastating criticism flies in the face of many other accounts by officials who worked in Hammarskjöld’s UN. By and large, the historiography on his tenure has become something of a hagiography and the memoirs of other colleagues—such as Brian Urquhart, Joseph Lash, and Andrew Cordier—differ from Hazzard’s significantly in that they heap accolades on his leadership. Hazzard’s account disrupts the carefully curated narrative about Hammarskjöld’s leadership, largely construed to honor the slain secretary-­ general. This was of course her intention—to emphasize the different experiences within the Secretariat between the top-­level staff members of the thirty-­eighth floor, who were able to execute clear agency and pursue long and fruitful careers within the system, and those at the lower levels, who faced roadblocks and discrimination. Unfortunately, Hazzard doesn’t engage with these accounts or compare their experiences or memoirs to her own. But her contribution in setting out the contradiction between the UN’s outer public face and proclamations and its inner, compromised world of private interactions in this way stands out. Hazzard’s analysis of the UN, although subjective in part because it was difficult to divorce entirely from her own frustrated ambitions, provides important if less lustrous memories of internationalism as a thankless and exasperating endeavor in practice and as something that was often contravened by the UN itself, even at a moment when the organization had extraordinarily strong leadership. She continually emphasizes the role of what she terms “human affairs,” that fallible human element within the UN which she identifies as the source of its weakness and its potential. In calling for UN reform, she laments that “what was not foreseen was that the original United Nations Organization would become so stultified in its early years, so antagonistic to self-­knowledge, and so subservient to transient national demands, with expansion preeminently in volume over quality and initiative turned

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inwards to officialism.”51 From her perspective, the practice of internationalism and the preservation of the international begins with the individual. But the system of the UN Secretariat became so heavily stacked against the advancement of individuals during these years that it became almost impossible to work in the service of internationalism. Her memoirs foreshadowed the criticisms of a lame-­duck UN that we continue to see proliferating today.52 However, they also point to the problem with the emphasis on individual purpose within an international organization that is inevitably governed by compromise and negotiation, rather than principle and practice. Her contribution in contrasting the public face and the private world of the UN illustrates one of the fundamental difficulties of practicing internationalism. In addition, she provides important critiques of the ways in which the Cold War paralyzed the UN and inhibited the agency of its officials. In many ways, her view of the UN Secretariat as a site of internationalism confirms the worst critiques and internal contradictions of the organization, but it also highlights the danger of the empty nature of internationalism without a functioning system with which to realize its core principles.

Blazing a Trail Margaret Anstee began working for the UN almost by default. Having left a promising career at the British Foreign Office when she got married (as was the law in Britain at the time), she accompanied her husband, also a British diplomat, on a posting to Manila where her marriage quickly disintegrated. This led her to take a job with the local United Nations Technical Assistance Board as an administrative officer—not an administrative secretary because, as she makes clear in her book, she could not type—and thus began a lifetime relationship with the organization that would see her hold a variety of positions both in the Secretariat in New York and in field offices across Asia, Africa, and Latin America as resident representative of the UN Development Program.53 She also served as director-­general of the UN Office at Vienna (UNOV) and was the special representative of the secretary-­general in Angola, becoming the first woman to lead a UN peacekeeping mission in 1992. Like Hazzard, she had joined the UN in 1952, albeit in the field rather than at the Secretariat in New York. As the title of her memoir, Never Learn to Type: A Woman at the United Nations (2007), suggests, she faced similar challenges and discrimination in her efforts to advance her UN career. Her



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memoirs differ from Hazzard’s in terms of perspective, focus, and analysis; it is written from a much more personal standpoint, which gives the impression that networks and relationships were as much a part of a UN career as the open opportunities and the institutional environment that Hazzard emphasized. Like Hazzard, however, she describes this early phase as a period when the reality of working for internationalism clashed with the idealistic vision of such a career: “It was a heady period when, fired by the optimism of youth and the ideals enshrined in the United Nations Charter, many of us thought, perhaps naively, that together we might really help to change the world. That vision was to be tempered by sober experience.”54 When she initially joined the Manila office of the Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance (EPTA), Anstee did so with the intent of earning enough for her fare home to Britain, rather than with any clear ambition toward working for the UN. Created in 1949 by the General Assembly, the EPTA was designed to help develop poorer countries under the UN Technical Assistance Board. It was organized by the heads of various agencies who established networks of representatives in developing countries. Interestingly, this was the other side of Hammarskjöld’s vision for the UN, that while the organization should politically support newly independent nations, it should also aid the social and economic development of poorer countries around the world. As Anne Orford has outlined: “According to Hammarskjöld, the UN represented an advance beyond older forms of internationalism premised upon ‘conference diplomacy’ because it introduced ‘joint permanent organs, employing a neutral civil service, and the use of such organs for executive purposes on behalf of all the members of the organizations.”55 Hammarskjöld viewed these two main aims of the UN as complementary—that the preservation of global peace and security also depended on advancing economic and social development around the world. This required a strong role for the UN and, during his period in office, he set in place several initiatives—such as EPTA—that were designed to define and strengthen the capacity of departments, offices, and agencies to tackle these issues while also enhancing a cooperative framework among them. A key part of Hammarskjöld’s view of global development was the harnessing and proliferation of expertise and knowledge across various fields. This was to be implemented through skills and training, coordinated by the Secretariat in New York and based on the specific requests arising from the member states. Experts were selected from the various UN agencies and departments, and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New

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York dispatched the appropriate experts to the field to conduct surveys and dispense advice, before reporting back to the host governments and to the New York office. This was a rather slow and laborious methodology that led to long delays in the supply of resources and materials and often had the effect that requests for experts and advice were not in accordance with the reports and surveys that were conducted or that research was rendered redundant as the situation on the ground changed. As Eva-­Maria Muschik has recently argued, part of the problem was that the whole system was underfunded, receiving only $288,000 annually from the UN budget, although this was later raised to $2 million upon President Harry Truman’s announcement of the Point Four Program in his inaugural address in 1949.56 But the main issue was that Hammarskjöld’s expansion of the size and function of the Secretariat had the effect of employing more people to conduct this work without analyzing whether or not it was effective in practice. Moreover, this top-­down approach relied on the UN dispatching relevant experts and advice on a case-­ by-­case basis rather than creating the administrative capacities at a local level for countries to implement their own development programs. This methodology was also problematic in practice in the field. Anstee encountered numerous difficulties operating the office in Manila, with a constant scramble for resources, requests to New York often landing on deaf ears, and agency politics playing out between different experts, often with disastrous results.57 Her office was responsible for running a range of development projects across the Philippines, from disease prevention schemes to pulp and paper production to textile management and design. In one incident, she describes the struggle to keep the office open and a row that erupted between the field director and an inspector dispatched from New York who arrived to examine productivity. Eventually, the dispute was resolved when the tension between the officials was broken by an explosive incident at a cocktail party.58 These colorful descriptions of the dysfunctional office in Manila paint a humorous image of life in the field, but they also point to the effort even low-­ level officials such as Anstee spent negotiating personal politics between representatives of the various agencies, each with their own mandate to defend. What is also evident from her recollections of her years spent in a ramshackle office without much protection from the elements, is that UN staff operated in difficult conditions, were not well-­paid (she began petitioning the Secretariat about her personal conditions shortly after starting work since she was earning only $100 a month) and faced an almost constant existential threat of extinction as New York looked for ways to economize.59



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Anstee’s observations of institutional politics in Manila were born out in a very similar way in the Secretariat where well-­meaning officials clashed over access to, and the use of, the limited resources available for technical assistance. The way that Hammarskjöld envisioned the system of technical assistance working placed extra emphasis on the individuals within the various agencies being able and willing to coordinate with each other and the Secretariat to implement their programs. As Anstee describes it, “The whole thesis then was that it was not going to take very long before the developing countries no longer needed external assistance. There was a dichotomy between technical assistance and capital assistance. The UN and EPTA were not to do capital assistance. This was very early, just before the debate on SUNFED (Special UN Fund for Economic Development).”60 In practice, though, as both Anstee and Hazzard recount at various levels, officials more often competed for their causes, leading to the splintering of relationships between different agencies and departments rather than a coordination of development efforts. She also refers to the repeated directives from New York that the local office had difficulties implementing while, in return, the surveys and local knowledge and data that they collected was simply fed back into the Secretariat with little or no concrete outcomes. After her two-­year stint in Manila ended, Anstee was put forward for a position as deputy resident representative in Mexico, before being diverted to Colombia at the last moment when the resident representative in Mexico refused to accept her. “A woman, he objected, could not possibly work in a senior role in the ‘macho’ environment of Mexico.”61 Her appointment had also been slowed down by the McCarthyism witch hunts that were ongoing as the United States vetted the appointment of all international UN staff. On this point she shared Hazzard’s revulsion that the United States could so flagrantly intervene in internal UN management and challenge the independent nature of the international civil service.62 Her appointment as deputy resident representative in Colombia—though it was initially temporary and had come about directly due to discrimination from a male UN colleague not wanting a female deputy in Mexico—was highly significant. Anstee was the first international female field officer appointed to a representational position by the UN, a precedent for the organization. For her, it was also the beginning of a long and illustrious career but one in which, from the 1960s through the 1990s, she consistently encountered challenges to advancement and—as in her brief time in Manila—repeatedly found her agency hindered by the labyrinthine system of UN bureaucracy and the atmosphere of political hesitancy created by her

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gender. As she surmised, “I thought, here is the UN, which unlike the Foreign Office will send a woman to Latin America. This is much more my organization than the British government. And even that turned out to be difficult.”63 Anstee records her last moments in the service of the UN in July 1993 as being something of an anticlimax: “I had served in many different countries, in all regions of the world, and participated in virtually every aspect of the organization’s work. Privileged to have pioneered many new paths previously untrodden by women, I was the senior woman in the organization and possibly the longest-­serving official of either sex, at any level.”64 But no recognition of this fact came from the UN. Despite her successful career across the UN system, Anstee was critical of the ways in which her agency had been rendered ineffective by the politics and administration of the UN in practice. As the title of her autobiography indicates, she believed that individuals, especially women, had some room to maneuver within the UN system but that ultimately their agency was limited. Her vision and belief in the power and effectiveness of the UN as an instrument for change was continually frustrated by the power realities of the conflicts she dealt with. Yet she never lost faith in the potential of the UN, despite its limited effectiveness. As she describes it, “I still believe passionately in the ideals and aims for which the UN was created, and in the indispensable need for it to exist.”65 Anstee’s memoirs and the associated interviews she gave about her UN career differ in focus from Hazzard’s. She does not portray herself as an objective analyst of the inner functioning of the UN; rather she tells the story of her career simply from her own perspective. In some respects, this means that her recollections lack context and are based very much on her personal interactions and experiences, both positive and negative. Like Hazzard, she emphasizes the important role that individuals played and much of her work in her various roles is shown to be highly dependent on relationships and networks to get the job done—certainly much more than following a particular set of ideals. In this way, she illuminates the practice of internationalism even more fully than Hazzard because she points to the differences in culture and comprehension that diverse nationalities sought to overcome when they worked together. In particular, she states that her role as a woman required her to challenge the “deeply rooted beliefs and traditions that had hitherto circumscribed a woman’s role in international affairs.”66 Referring to femininity, she states: “I always thought that women have so many disadvantages and that they should not fail to make use of the few advantages, but obviously not in an unscrupulous way.”67



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Her contribution to the field of UN memoirs is significant precisely because she was so successful in overcoming the discrimination that ran throughout all levels of the Secretariat. Similar to Hazzard’s, but with a less overtly critical edge, her memoirs contribute a view of the Secretariat as a place where national prejudices and politics played out with stultifying effects on the progression of the UN’s agenda and programs. In this way, her perspective adds depth and a tone that tempers the rather utopian memoirs of many of her male colleagues who worked alongside her during those years.68 Working at the Secretariat at the same time in 1960, for example, was Conor Cruise O’Brien who, while emphasizing the importance of bringing the realities of the institution into public discussion as both Anstee and Hazzard do, describes his own experiences as revolving around the tension between high-­level directives and local realities. While his account is critical of the UN and the Secretariat, he still manages to defend the institution admirably, especially Hammarskjold’s Secretariat: “We even, I think, found something slightly intoxicating in the paradox of equivocation being used in the service of virtue, the thought of a disinterested Talleyrand, a Machiavelli of peace.”69 But whereas Hazzard’s memoirs have an undertone of deep dissatisfaction, Anstee’s reflections are more balanced; she manages to weigh her personal disappointment and challenges with more general observations of the workings of the Secretariat. She reveals how, on an individual level, within the Secretariat the pursuit of internationalism required the contestation and sometimes abandonment of nationalist impulses, cultures, and ideas. The Secretariat as a site of international memory emerges from her descriptions, then, not as a utopian space of various internationalisms working harmoniously together but, rather, as a fraught environment in which internationalist objectives were contended, negotiated, tested, and in many cases, found wanting.

Conclusion The memoirs and recollections of Anstee and Hazzard offer different impressions of working for the Secretariat during the same period of expansion from the early 1950s through to the 1960s. If considered from the perspective of the politics of memory, ultimately their views diverge. Hazzard ends her decade-­long UN experience completely disillusioned with the organization and internationalism in general. She appears unable and unwilling to separate her personal frustrations with the UN from a more balanced impression

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of its pros and cons. In part this is due to her limited influence within the system from her position, which lacked authority and agency, in addition to her personal politics.70 But it is also due to the institutional environment of the Secretariat in New York where personal ambition was often thwarted by administrative politics, power networks, and deeply engrained national prejudices. Her memoirs are important precisely because of these features— which are not evident in other (mostly male) recollections of those years— and reveal the problems and challenges of enacting internationalism, even with the best of personal intentions. Anstee shares this view of the Secretariat as a space where internationalism was contested rather than easily realized and practiced. But her memoirs still ultimately aim to preserve the image of the UN as a fountain of knowledge, ideas, and promise for humanity. This is, of course, because she negotiated her way to a groundbreaking career at the UN which laid out a path that other women could follow. But she does portray the hurdles and difficulties she had to overcome to forge this opportunity, even in Hammarskjöld’s Secretariat in the 1950s, and she illuminates how the interactions between officials in field offices and their counterparts in New York created an almost impenetrable system of checks and balances with very little space for female advancement. Both memoirs portray a UN and an impression of the international civil service that is far removed from the idealism and utopianism that Hammarskjöld’s vision sought to portray. They also differ significantly from conventional memoirs from this period, which do not detail the same prejudices, challenges, and infighting within the Secretariat and between the different agencies. These memoirs were produced at different times and received in different ways by both fans and critics. Hazzard’s work, provocative and analytical, was the most criticized, with some describing her book Defence of an Ideal as “shrill”—itself a gendered and highly discriminatory term.71 Others praised its emphasis on the moral conundrum of working for the UN, and the complex reality of personal and professional tensions in a Cold War UN. For Anstee, however—in the context of her long career, her dedication to public service, and the precedents she set—her accounts, both written and oral, were met with widespread praise.72 These sets of impressions are both critical of the internal workings of the UN and reveal the challenges faced by women—which are not featured in the memoirs of their male colleagues. Moreover, an essential contribution of both authors is their shattering of the image of Hammarskjöld’s Secretariat as an ideological paradise that



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embodied internationalism and describing it, instead, as a contested space in which international ideals were operationalized and disrupted while individuals struggled against institutional and personal challenges. This disrupts the rather linear history of his Secretariat and the succeeding years of the 1960s UN as a place of open opportunity and equal advancement. Crucially, these women, who had relatively little power within the system at the time, have enriched our understanding of the workings of the UN because they have provided memories that deviate from the official record. Ultimately, this means that these memoirs and reflections are very significant for how the UN is historicized and how memories of the international have been preserved through the prism of the organization. This brief examination of some of their moments of agency and frustration serves to highlight how, given their varied experiences, memories of the UN range from the hopeful and visionary, to the critical and depressed. Taken together, these individual stories complicate our understanding of how internationalism works. It is clear that striving in the service of international objectives is not always a straightforward process of pushing toward a set of ideals but involves many setbacks, disappointments, and failures. These experiences point to the structural inequality within the system but also to the effect it has had on histories of the UN and the creation of less triumphalist narratives of internationalism in the 1960s. This perspective offers the opportunity to disrupt the teleological narrative of state-­driven internationalisms by showing how, at certain moments, individual agents can shape the story at the institutional level, and how their memories of working for, even struggling against, the organization in pursuit of international ambitions offers insights into the winding pathways that constitute the international system.

Notes 1. Charles P. Henry, Ralph J. Bunche: Selected Speeches and Writings (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Charles P. Henry, Ralph Bunche: An American Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993); Edgar J. Dosman, The Life and Times of Raul Prebisch, 1901–1986 (London: MQUP, 2008); Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan, United Nations: An Inside View (Columbia, MO: South Asia Books, 1995); Brian Urquhart, A Life in Peace and War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991). 2. Desmond Fisher, “The Future of the UN,” Irish Press, 12 January 1961, microfilm reel P104/6262, Aiken Papers, University College Dublin Archives. 3. Shirley Hazzard, Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case (New York: Viking Penguin, 1990); Shirley Hazzard, Defeat of an Ideal: A Study of the Self-­Destruction

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of the United Nations (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973); Shirley Hazzard, People in Glass Houses: Portraits from Organization Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967). 4. As Hazzard’s reputation as a fiction writer grew, there was a resurgence of interest in her nonfiction work. See also Michelle de Kretser, On Shirley Hazzard (New York: Catapult, 2020). For a selection among a wide range of UN literature that is more critical, see Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thompson, Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone (London: Ebury Digital, 2011); and Linda Polman, We Did Nothing: Why the Truth Doesn’t Always Come Out When the UN Goes In (New York: Penguin, 2013). 5. In fact, “Hazzard’s highly significant writing about the United Nations has never before been considered by critics.” Brigitta Olubas, Shirley Hazzard: Literary Expatriate and Cosmopolitan Humanist (Sydney: Cambria Press, 2012), 2. 6. Margaret Joan Anstee, Never Learn to Type: A Woman at the United Nations (London: Wiley and Sons, 2003); Margaret Joan Anstee Oral History, United Nations Intellectual History Project, Complete Oral History Transcripts from UN Voices, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2007. 7. On the so-­called second UN, see Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, and Thomas G. Weiss, UN Ideas That Changed the World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). 8. Madeleine Herren, “Towards a Global History of International Organizations,” in Networking the International System: Global Histories of International Organizations, ed. Madeleine Herren (Heidelberg: Springer, 2014), 1–15; Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post–Cold War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Sandrine Kott, “International Organizations—A Field of Research for a Global History,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 8, no. 3 (2011): 446–50; Sandrine Kott, “Par-­delà la guerre froide: Les organisations internationales et les circulations Est-­ Ouest (1947–1973),” Vingtième Siècle: Revue d’histoire 109, numéro spécial “Le bloc de l’Est en question,” dirigé par Justine Faure et Sandrine Kott (2011): 143–54; Sandrine Kott and Joelle Droux, Globalizing Social Rights: The ILO and Beyond (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Sunil Amrith and Glenda Sluga, “New Histories of the United Nations,” Journal of World History 19, no. 3 (2008): 253. 9. Magaly Rodriguez Garcia, Davide Rodogno, and Liat Kozma, eds., The League of Nations’ Work on Social Issues: Visions, Endeavours and Experiments (New York: United Nations Publications Office, 2015); Ryan M. Irwin, Gordian Knot: Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Simon Jackson and Alanna O’Malley, “Rocking on Its Hinges? The League of Nations, the United Nations and the New History of Internationalism in the Twentieth Century,” in The Institution of International Order: From the League of Nations to the United Nations, ed. Simon Jackson and Alanna O’Malley (London: Routledge, 2018), 1–22; Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin, eds., Internationalisms: A Twentieth-­ Century History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 10. Conor Cruise O’Brien, To Katanga and Back: A UN Case History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962); Urquhart, Life in Peace and War. 11. Patricia Owens and Katharina Rietzler, “Introduction: Towards a History of Women’s International Thought,” in Women’s International Thought: A New History, ed. Patricia Owens and Katharina Rietzler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 1–26. 12. Glenda Sluga, “Women, Feminisms and Twentieth-­Century Internationalism,” in Internationalisms, ed. Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 61–85.



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13. For more on the LCIWO, see Nova Robinson, “‘Women’s Point of View Was Apt to Be Forgotten’: The Liaison Committee of International Women’s Organizations’ Campaign for an International Women’s Convention, 1920–1953,” in The Institution of International Order: From the League of Nations to the United Nations, ed. Simon Jackson and Alanna O’Malley (New York: Routledge, 2018), 136–63. 14. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” trans. Marc Roudebush, in “Memory and Counter-­Memory,” special issue, Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7–24, 7; Alon Confino, “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method,” American Historical Review 102, no. 5 (1997): 1386–1403; Aleida Assmann, “Memory, Individual and Collective,” in The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 210–24. 15. Certainly, this refers to the rather mythic literature that has sprung up around Dag Hammarskjöld’s time in office, including Monica Bouman, Dag Hammarskjöld: Citizen of the World (Kampen: Ten Have Baarn, 2005); Roger Lipsey, Hammarskjöld: A Life (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013); Peter Heller, The United Nations Under Dag Hammarskjöld, 1953–1961 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001); and Brian Urquhart, Hammarskjöld (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994). 16. Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 8. 17. Carol Miller, “Geneva—the Key to Equality: Inter-­War Feminists and the League of Nations,” Women’s History Review 3 (1994): 219–45; Susan Pedersen, “Metaphors of the Schoolroom: Women Working the Mandates System at the League of Nations,” History Workshop Journal 66, no. 1 (2008): 188–207; Jaci Eisenberg, “The Status of Women: A Bridge from the League of Nations to the United Nations,” Journal of International Studies 4, no. 2 (2013): 9–24. 18. Karen Gram-­Skjoldager, Haakon A. Ikonomou, and Torsten Kahlert, introduction to Organizing the 20th-­Century World: International Organizations and the Emergence of International Public Administration 1920–1960s, ed. Karen Gram-­Skjoldager, Haakon A. Ikonomou, and Torsten Kahlert (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 2. 19. Bob Reinalda, International Secretariats: Two Centuries of International Civil Servants and Secretariats (London: Routledge, 2020), 2. 20. Leland M. Goodrich, “Geographical Distribution of the Staff of the UN Secretariat,” International Organization 16, no. 3 (1962): 465–82; Paul Novosad and Eric Werker, “Who Runs the International System? Nationality and Leadership in the United Nations Secretariat,” Review of International Organizations 14, no. 4 (2019): 1–33. 21. Theodor Meron, “Staff of the United Nations Secretariat: Problems and Directions,” American Journal of International Law 70, no. 4 (1979): 659–93, 675. 22. Olubas, Shirley Hazzard, 40. 23. Ibid., 38. 24. Shirley Hazzard, interview by James Campbell, Guardian, 8 July 2006, accessed 1 March 2022, https://​www​.theguardian​.com​/books​/2006​/jul​/08​/featuresreviews​.guardian review19. 25. Olubas, Shirley Hazzard, 39. 26. Hazzard, Defeat, xii. 27. Olubas, Shirley Hazzard, 42. 28. Hazzard, Defeat, xiii. 29. Ibid. 30. Olubas, introduction to Shirley Hazzard.

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31. For more on this, see Alanna O’Malley, “India, Apartheid and the New World Order at the UN, 1946–1962,” in “Liberal and Illiberal Internationalisms,” special issue, Journal of World History 31, no. 1 (2020): 195–223. 32. For more on the mysterious death of Hammarskjöld, see Susan Williams, Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa (London: Hurst, 2011). 33. Manuel Frohlich, “Dag Hammarskjöld 1953–1961,” in The UN Secretary-­General and the Security Council: A Dynamic Relationship, ed. Manuel Frohlich and Abiodun Williams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 42–71: 42; Henning Melber, Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations and the Decolonisation of Africa (London: Hurst, 2019), 51. 34. Hazzard, Defeat, 246. 35. Cruise O’Brien, To Katanga and Back. 36. This was shared by many, including Cruise O’Brien and King Gordon, who served with the UN for twelve years and worked for Hammarskjöld’s Secretariat in several posts including as chief information officer for the UN operation in the Congo. King Gordon, UN in the Congo: A Quest for Peace (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1962), 21. 37. Ellen Jenny Ravndal, “Trygve Lie, 1946–1953,” in The UN Secretary-­General and the Security Council, ed. Manuel Frohlich and Abiodun Williams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 22–42, 25. 38. Chapter XV: The Secretariat, Articles 97–101 of the UN Charter detail the role and responsibilities of the secretary-­general and the international secretariat, https://​www​.un​.org​/en​ /about​-us​/un​-charter​/chapter-15. 39. Hazzard, Defeat, 164. 40. In what proved to be his final address to his Secretariat colleagues, he admitted that “there is, generally speaking, within the Secretariat not enough of a diplomatic tradition of staff with training in political and diplomatic field activities to meet the needs which have developed over the years.” Dag Hammarskjöld, “Two Differing Concepts of United Nations Assayed: Introduction to the Annual Report of the Secretary-­General on the Work of the Organization, 16 June 1960–15 June 1961,” International Organization 15, no. 4 (1961): 549–63. 41. Conor Cruise O’Brien is a good example of this as he is considered by many to have exceeded his authority during his appointment as Special Representative of the Secretary-­ General in the Congo in 1961. See Alanna O’Malley, The Diplomacy of Decolonisation: America, Britain and the United Nations During the Congo Crisis 1960–64 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), 118. 42. Hazzard, Defeat, 183. 43. Dag Hammarskjöld, “The International Civil Servant in Law and in Fact,” lecture delivered at Oxford University, 30 May 1961, https://​ www​ .daghammarskjold​ .se​ /blog​ /dag ​-hammarskjolds​-1961​-oxford​-lecture​-three​-untold​-stories/. 44. Hazzard, Defeat, 194. 45. The timing of his last public address on this issue in May 1961 may suggest that this was on his mind around the time of his death in September 1961. 46. Hazzard, Defeat, 167. 47. Joseph P. Lash, “Dag Hammarskjöld’s Conception of His Office,” International Organization 16, no. 3 (1962): 542–66. 48. Hazzard, Defeat, 170. 49. As quoted in Hazzard, Defeat, 171. 50. Hazzard, Defeat, 174.



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51. Ibid., 246. 52. For one of the most recent examples of this view, see Rick Gladstone, “U.N. Security Council ‘Missing in Action’ in Coronavirus Fight,” New York Times, 2 April 2020, https://​www​ .nytimes​.com​/2020​/04​/02​/world​/americas​/coronavirus​-united​-nations​-guterres​.html. 53. Anstee, Oral History, United Nations Intellectual History Project, interview by Thomas G. Weiss, 14 December 2000, 23. 54. Anstee, Never Learn to Type, xiii. 55. Anne Orford, “Dag Hammarskjöld, Economic Thinking and the United Nations,” in Peace Diplomacy, Global Justice and International Agency: Rethinking Human Security and Ethics in the Spirit of Dag Hammarskjöld, ed. Carsten Stahn and Henning Melber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 176. 56. Eva-­Maria Muschik, “Managing the World: The United Nations, Decolonization, and the Strange Triumph of State Sovereignty in the 1950s and 1960s,” Journal of Global History 13, no. 1 (2018): 127. 57. Anstee, Never Learn to Type, 99–107. 58. Ibid., 103. 59. Anstee, Oral History, 23. 60. Ibid., 30. 61. Anstee, Never Learn to Type, 122–23. 62. Anstee, Oral History, 36. 63. Ibid., 37. 64. Anstee, Never Learn to Type, 504. 65. Ibid., 518. 66. Ibid., xiii. 67. Anstee, Oral History, 157. 68. This includes the memoirs of men who worked at the Secretariat at different levels but with similar roles at the same time as Anstee including Ralph Bunche, the UN’s chief mediator; Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan, who was executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East and later under-­secretary for special political questions under Hammarskjöld; and Brian Urquhart who was one of his main advisers. 69. Cruise O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, 47. 70. Olubas describes Hazzard’s personal politics as “liberal humanism.” Olubas, Shirley Hazzard, 41. 71. Andrew J. Pierre, “Review of Defeat of an Ideal,” Foreign Affairs 69, no. 3 (1990): 170. 72. One example terms the book “a fascinating account of the diplomatic absurdities and infighting.” Hugh O’Shaughnessy, “‘United It Falls’: Review of Never Learn to Type: A Woman at the United Nations by Margaret Anstee,” Guardian, 20 July 2003, accessed 9 March 2022, https://​ www​.theguardian​.com​/books​/2003​/jul​/20​/biography​.shopping.

CONTRIBUTORS

Dominique Biehl studied history at the University of Heidelberg and at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. He is currently working at the Institute of European Global Studies of the University of Basel. His research interests include European and global history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as military history. In his continuing research, he focuses on aspects of interimperial interactions in late nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century East Asia with a particular focus on the Boxer War. Kristal Buckley has lectured in cultural heritage at Deakin University, Australia. She worked for more than thirty years as a heritage practitioner in government, consulting, and with community organizations. Her research focuses on World Heritage and international heritage practices, including the integration of natural and cultural heritage. She served as international vice-­president of ICOMOS from 2005 to 2014 and now works as a World Heritage adviser for ICOMOS. In 2013 she was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for significant service to conservation, the environment, and cultural heritage. Roland Burke is senior lecturer in world history at La Trobe University, Australia, and author of Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). His recent work explores the history of human rights, including the memorialization processes around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Journal of Global History, International History Review, History and Memory), and the tensions between sentimental and legal framings of human rights and humanitarianism (Diplomacy and Statecraft and Human Rights Quarterly). Kate Darian-­Smith has published widely on histories of war, childhood, media, migration, memory, and heritage in Australia and the wider British

348 Contributors

world. She is executive dean and pro vice-­chancellor of the College of Arts, Law and Education at the University of Tasmania, Australia, and professor of history. Her recent publications include the volumes The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia-­Japan Relations (ANU Press, 2023), The First World War, the Universities and the Professions in Australia 1914–1939 (Melbourne University Press, 2019), and Remembering Migration: Oral History and Heritage in Australia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Sarah C. Dunstan is a historian of French, American, and British Empire, with a focus on race, rights, and international law, and author of Race, Rights and Reform: Black Activism Across the French Empire and the United States from World War I to the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Her research has explored reform in the French Fourth Republic (Journal of Contemporary History) and the debates around decolonization, race, language, and place (Journal of Modern History and Journal of the History of Ideas). She is a lecturer in the International History of Modern Human Rights at the University of Glasgow. Current projects include a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship exploring the twentieth century development of thinking on citizenship and rights in the international legal sphere and a Scottish Council on Global Affairs funded study on human rights and migration. David Goodman is professor of American history at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of  Radio’s Civic Ambition: American Broadcasting and Democracy in the 1930s (Oxford University Press, 2011) and coauthor, with Joy Elizabeth Hayes, of  New Deal Radio: The Educational Radio Project (Rutgers University Press, 2022). He is completing an Australian Research Council–funded study of local debate in the United States about the American entry into World War II. Madeleine Herren is full professor of modern history and director of the Institute for European Global Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland. From 2007 to 2012 she codirected the cluster of excellence on Asia and Europe in a global context at the University of Heidelberg. She has written several books, book chapters, and journal articles on European and global history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, internationalism and the history of international organizations, networks in historical perspective, historiography, and intellectual history. These include Transcultural History: Theories,

Contributors 349

Methods, Sources (coauthor, Springer, 2012), Internationale Organisationen seit 1865: Eine Globalgeschichte der internationalen Ordnung (WBG, 2009), and Networking the International System: Global Histories of International Organizations (editor, Springer, 2014). The late Philippa Hetherington was a historian of imperial Russia and the early Soviet Union who taught and researched at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. In addition to the cultural, social, and legal history of Russia in the world, her work explores the intersections of international legal history with biopolitics and feminist theory, particularly in the context of empire and under socialism. Her scholarship links “trafficking in women” as a specific crime in turn-­of-­the-­century Russia to the development of international humanitarian law, migratory regimes, and imperial governance. Rohan Howitt is a lecturer in Environmental History at Monash University. He is an early career researcher specialising in the interconnected histories of Australia, Antarctica, and the Southern Ocean. Alanna O’Malley is associate professor of international history at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Her first book,  The Diplomacy of Decolonisation: America, Britain and the United Nations During the Congo Crisis 1960–1964, was published in 2018. Currently, she is Principal Investigator of: “Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South (INVISIHIST)” funded by a Starting Grant awarded by the European Research Council in 2019. Eric Paglia is a researcher in the European Research Council Advanced Grant project SPHERE—Study of the Planetary Human-­Environment Relationship—in the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, where he received his PhD in 2016 with the dissertation “The Northward Course of the Anthropocene: Transformation, Temporality and Telecoupling in a Time of Environmental Crisis.” His primary research interests include the historical evolution of global environmental governance since the seminal 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, science diplomacy, the idea of environmental limits, and the intersection of science and geopolitics in the polar

350 Contributors

regions. Together with Sverker Sörlin, he is the co-­author of the forthcoming book The Human Environment: Stockholm and the Rise of Global Environmental Governance (Cambridge University Press). Glenda Sluga is professor of international history and capitalism at the European University Institute in Florence and professor of international history at the University of Sydney. Most recently, she has published Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Internationalisms: A Twentieth Century History (coeditor, Cambridge University Press, 2016); and The Invention of the International Order: Remaking Europe After Napoleon (Princeton University Press, 2021). She currently leads the European Research Council-­funded project “Twentieth Century International Economic Thinking and the Complex History of Globalization.” Sverker Sörlin is professor of environmental history in the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and cofounder of the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory. Recent coedited books include The Environment: A History of the Idea (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), Grounding Urban Natures (MIT Press, 2019), and  Ice Humanities (Manchester University Press, 2022). Forthcoming is The Human Environment: Stockholm and the Rise of Global Environmental Governance (Cambridge University Press), co-­ authored with Eric Paglia. He leads the European Research Council–funded Advanced Grant project SPHERE on the history of global environmental governance. Carolien Stolte is assistant professor of history at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the international history of South Asia, with a current project on Indian activists and the Afro-­Asian movement in the early Cold War funded by the Dutch Research Council (2018–22). Stolte is editor-­in-­chief of the book series Global Connections: Routes and Roots  (Leiden University Press) and is codirector of the Afro-­Asian Networks project. Her recent work has appeared in the Journal of Social History, the Journal of World History, and Radical History Review. Beatrice Wayne is an ACLS Leading Edge Fellow with the Students Learn Student Vote Coalition. She received her PhD in history from New York University and previously completed her master’s in history at the University of

Contributors 351

Pennsylvania. She is a historian of the global Cold War, transnational 1960s social movements, and the history of student activism. Ralph Weber is associate professor for European Global Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He works at the intersection of the politics and philosophy of European global knowledge production with a specific research focus on Chinese politics, the ideology of the Party-­State, and its global ambitions. Jay Winter is Charles J. Stille Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University. He taught for many years at the University of Cambridge before coming to Yale. He is a historian of the First World War and the author of Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge University Press, 1995), editor of America and the Armenian Genocide (2008), and editor-­in-­chief of the three-­volume Cambridge History of the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2014). He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Graz, the Catholic University of Leuven, and the University of Paris VIII. In 2017 he received the Victor Adler Prize of the Austrian government for a lifetime’s work in history.

INDE X

Addis Ababa, 6, 9–10, 215–233, 234–236 Africa: Addis Ababa. See Addis Ababa; Ethiopia. See Ethiopia; Ethiopian-­Eritrean relations. See Ethiopia: Eritrea and Africa Hall, 6, 9–10, 215, 217–218, 221, 229, 234–236; Arturo Mezzedimi (architect), 222–223, 234, 235 Agamben, Giorgio, 47–48; on refugees, 48, 65 Ahmad, Rafiq, 169, 174 American Society for African Culture (AMSAC). See New York: American Society for African Culture Amundsen, Roald, 99, 104–106, 108, 109, 113 Anneau de Memoire. See memorials: Ring of Memory Anstee, Margaret, 324–327, 331, 334–342, 345 Antarctica, 9, 115–138, 140; Antarctic Treaty, 115, 116, 122–123, 126, 127, 132, 134–136; Antarctic Treaty System see Antarctic Treaty System (ATS); British Antarctic Survey, 116, 128, 135; ecology and, 122, 128; Falklands War and, 128–129; Grytviken see South Georgia: Grytviken; Mount Erebus, 116; Port Ross, 117, 129–134, 139; Port Lockroy, 9, 117, 123–124, 127, 133, 136, 138; as a site of international memory, 117–123; South Georgia see South Georgia; sovereign territory and, 116–117, 120–123; tourism in, 124–126; UNESCO and, 116, 132–134; whaling see South Georgia: Grytviken whaling industry Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), 116, 132, 136; Madrid Protocol, 116, 122 Anthropocene, the, 7, 97, 112, 152, 248–255, 260, 262, 263 anti-­communism, 170

anti-­imperialism: anti-­imperialist internationalism see internationalism: anti-­ imperialist; Indian, 166–182; Pan-­Asian, 174 Anton Larsen, Carl, 127, 319 Arab Spring, 38 Arctic, 97–111; Aeroarctic, 105; airspace and, 105–108; Arctic Council, 98; as non-­ territory, 99–101, 105–110; as a paradigm of global connectivity, 101–105, 109–110; global history and, 100; indigenous populations and, 97; sovereign territory and, 99–110; UNESCO and, 97; Arendt, Hannah, 46–48, 64, 65; on refugees, 48; The Origins of Totalitarianism, 47, 64, 65 Asian Writers’ Conference: in Delhi, 176–178, 186; in Tashkent see Tashkent: Afro-­Asian Writers’ Conference Austin, J. L., 22 Balbo, Italo, 108 Balch, Emily Greene, 120, 135 Balch, Thomas Willing, 120, 135 Barbusse, Henri, 32 Belt-­and-­Road Initiative (BRI), 141, 149, 152, 304–305 Bianchi, Robert, 146–147, 159 Biedermann, Karl, 25 Bolin, Bert, 237–257, 259, 261–264 Boxer War, 8–9, 71–93; British women and the, 81–82; Siege of the Beijing Legations, 78–80; the Boxer Protocol, 75–76; “International Gun,” 78–80 Brent, Arthur, 80–84, 93 British China Medal, 81–83 British Empire, 51, 90, 184, 195, 202; in China, 71–89; in India, 146 Brown, Reverend Frederick, 76, 91, 94

354 Index Bunche, Ralph, 201–202, 213, 322, 325, 341, 342, 345 capitalism 157, 192; Chinese, 153–156 see also Xi Jinping: Davos speech; New York as a site of commerce, 192, 194–195; Silk Road as a site of commerce, 141–158 Cassin, René, 198–203, 213, 273, 274, 277, 283, 289, 290, 292 Castro, Fidel, 206–209, 214 Caudebec-­en-­Caux, 109 Central Asia, 165–182 China, 8, 9, 59, 71–96, 113, 141–161, 180, 183, 232, 282, 296–297, 304–315, 318; Boxer War see Boxer War; Belt-­and-­Road Initiative see Belt-­and-­Road Initiative; and internationalism, 141–158; and Korea, 304–309, 311; Sino-­Japanese conflict see Sino-­Japanese conflict Club of Rome, 248, 249 Cold War, 157, 175, 179, 183, 185–187, 203, 204, 206, 211, 218, 247, 251, 282, 295, 323, 340, 342, 344; American internationalism and the, 203–204; race politics and the, 205–206; Tashkent and the, 179–182; UN and the see United Nations (UN): and the Cold War colonialism, 73, 89, 90, 119, 134, 146, 152, 184, 205, 220, 221, 227, 228, 233; British see British Empire; Italian, 221–223 commemoration. See memorials communism 20, 53, 55, 103, 141, 143, 170–175, 177, 180, 184, 185, 204–206, 214, 295, 313; Indian, 173–175; Soviet, 45, 53, 102–103; Uzbek, 177–178 connectivity, 90, 99–101, 105, 108–111, 143, 145, 154, 157–159, 168; and Antarctica, 115–129; and the Arctic, 99–111; Turkic-­ Asian, 165–182; China and, 154–158; Silk Road initiative and, 145–147, 154 Corwin, Val, 25 cosmopolitanism, 2, 7, 9, 11–14, 40, 41, 46, 48–50, 56, 57, 60, 65, 77, 97, 167, 186, 188–210, 211, 234, 325, 328, 342; methodological cosmopolitanism, 97–111, 115–134, 165–182, 215–233 Crocker, Walter, 202–203, 213 Davis, Warren Jefferson, 106, 113 decolonization, 9, 14, 168–184, 214, 216–222, 233, 270, 276, 283, 295, 317, 344, 345

Delhi Conference, 175–176 diplomacy, 209, 136, 146, 160, 161, 209, 235, 236, 243, 249, 260, 261, 294, 297–299, 303, 304, 311, 315, 317, 318, 320, 325, 326, 335, 344, 345; Cold War, 206–209; heritage as diplomacy, 299 Du Bois, W. E. B., 178, 190–191, 197, 199, 212, 213 emigration, 40-­42, 50, 52, 55, 57–59, 62–65, 67, 171; emigrantology, 58; hijrat pilgrimage, 171; Russian, interwar, 39–42, 47–49 Enderby, Charles, 130, 131, 139 environmentalism, 97, 237; Rio Declaration, 241; Stockholm Declaration, 240–241 environmental memory, 237–259; International Geophysical Year see International Geophysical Year environmental resilience, 247–249 Erie Canal, 188 Ethiopia, 215–236; Eritrea and, 218, 221, 225–226, 230; Ethiopian imperialism, 218–221; Addis Ababa see Addis Ababa; Ethiopian exceptionalism, 220, 228–233; Haile Selassie see Selassie, Haile; Pan-­ Africanism in, 215–219, 225–227, 231 exilic memory, 38–61 fascism, 54, 57, 98, 101, 102, 108–112, 273, 274; Shul’gin and fascist ideology, 54, Italian fascism and the Italia disaster, 98; fascist connectivity, 111 Ford, Ford Madox, 29 forgetting, 2, 5, 12, 60, 62, 115, 134, 142, 158, 311, 188–210; Nansen passport and, 60–61; Ricoeur on, 142; New York and Manhattan as sites of, 188–210 Franklin, Sir John, 99–100, 112 Frankopan, Peter, 145–146, 158, 159 Frey, Henri-­Nicolas, 72, 88, 89, 94 futurism: Aeropittura, 109, 114; Asian, 169 gender and memory: in the Boxer War see Boxer War, British women and the; Margaret Anstee see Anstee, Margaret; Korean “comfort women,” 311–314; Shirley Hazzard see Hazzard, Shirley; in the UN Secretariat see women: in the UN global environmental politics, 242–245, 251 global governance. See connectivity globalization, 2, 63, 84, 143–144, 154, 157, 161, 261

Index 355 Hairy, Hugues, 32 Hansen, Valerie, 150, 160 Harlem, 190, 191, 197–203, 205–214; churches of, 198; Hotel Theresa, 206–210; Pan-­Africanism in, 197–198 Hazzard, Shirley, 323–335, 337–345 Hedin, Sven, 151–152, 157 Hitchcock, Alfred, 204 Holbein, Hans, 29 human rights, 10, 12, 17, 48, 58, 155, 161, 236, 269–293, 296, 297, 308, 310, 311, 315, 317, 319, 320, 326; UDHR see Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Human Rights Commission, 199–200; Human Rights Day, 269–285; Memory of the World program and, 310–311; Nansen and, 58; women’s rights see women: women’s rights imperialism: in the Boxer War, 75–89; British, 76–84; Chinese, 71; Ethiopian, 218–225 International Building. See New York: International Building international climate science: Beijer Institute, 247; International Council of Scientific Unions, 244; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 242, 250; Stockholm Environment Institute, 247; World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 242 International Geophysical Year (IGY), 120, 135, 136, 253 international governance, 7, 8, 115–120, 124, 129, 132–133, 189, 193, 297–298, 327. See also connectivity; League of Nations; United Nations internationalism: African, 215–233; anti-­imperialist, 167, 170–174; Asian, 167–174; Black, 197–199; colonial, 19, 75–80, 165–182, 215–233; illiberal, 143–158; Indian, 165–182; institutional see United Nations (UN), see also Belt-­ and-­Road Initiative (BRI); liberal, 72–74, 154, 157–158, 192, 271; postcolonial, 165–182, 197–199, 222–226; socialist, 168–175 international law, 54–57, 107 International Polar Year (IPY), 119, 135, 136 Iqbal, Muhammad, 165–166, 182, 183 Italia airship disaster, 98, 100–105 Jünger, Ernst, 28, 33

Kollontai, Alexandra, 102 Koselleck, Reinhardt, 250, 263 Kristoferson, Lars, 247, 262 Landsmanschaft, 18 League of Nations, 39, 46, 52, 54, 107, 120, 127, 178, 190, 193, 195, 196, 198, 203, 205, 219, 220, 232, 276, 297, 327 Levi, Primo, 30 liberalism 11, 71–73, 143, 154–155, 157–158, 192, 271, 326; liberal internationalism see internationalism: liberal Lin, Maya. See memorials: Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Long, Katy, 40, 47, 63, 65 Maçães, Bruno, 148, 159 MacDonald, Sir Claude, 77, 78, 91–93 Madrid Protocol, 116, 122 “Magnetic Crusade,” 119 Makonnen, Ras, 226, 235 Maverick Lloyd, Lola, 195, 212, 214 McCarthyism, 203–206, 337 Mehta, Hansa, 274, 326 Meiji industrial revolution, 303–309, 318, 319 memorials: and the Boxer War, 84–88; Canadian National Vimy Memorial, 299, 300; Historial de la Grande Guerre, 8, 24–25, 27–33; Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, 8, 24–27, 30–31; Nanjing Massacre Memorial, 312–313; Peking Siege Medal see Peking Siege Medal; Ring of Memory, 8, 24, 31–34; Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, 34, 35 memory: “memory contests” in East Asia, 309; as movement, 270; Pierre Nora see Nora, Pierre; as palimpsest, 19–24, 41–42, 57, 97–98, 116–119; Ring of Memory see memorials: Ring of Memory; self-­effacing, 275–277; sites of / lieux de see Nora, Pierre; as stratigraphy, 97–98, 117–119, 123, 132–134; substrates of memory, 270; transnational memory in East Asia, 314–315 Memory, History, Forgetting (Ricoeur), 142 memory studies, 4–5, 11, 21, 271, 272, 288 Merkel, Angela, 38–39, 61 Muhiddinov, Mirzo Abduqodir, 171, 185 multilateral institutions. See international climate science; League of Nations; United Nations

356 Index museums: Africa Hall, 232; Historial de la Grande Guerre see memorials: Historial de la Grande Guerre; Imperial War Museum, 9, 28–29; In Flanders Fields Museum see World War I memory: In Flanders Fields museum; Kunstmuseum, Basel, 29; Port Lockroy museum, 123; Queens museum, 200; US Marine Corps Museum, 79; Sakharov Center, Moscow, 58; South Georgia (Whaling) museum, 128; Yad Vashem, 19–20 Mussolini, Benito, 101, 109, 220 Nabokov, Vladimir, 41, 50–52, 55, 57, 59, 61, 65; Lolita, 38, 50; Speak, Memory, 50; The Years of Emigration, 55 Nanjing Massacre, 312–315, 320; memorialization of, 313–314 Nansen, Fridtjof, 39, 105; memorialization of, 58–59 Nansen passport, 38–62, 64–66; Nabokov on the, 50–51; Shul’gin on the, 52–55; Soboleff on the, 51–52, 57; as palimpsest, 57; Vishniak on the, 54–56 narrative, 20–25, 229; of African internationalism, 229; Anglophone narratives of “internationalism” in the Boxer War, 75–88; declensionist narratives, 238; environmental narrative, 239–250, 255–259; memory as, 249; Italia disaster and the master narrative of connectivity, 100–106; narratives of Russian exile, 38–61 nationalism 2, 3, 11–14, 67, 68, 89, 120–121, 137, 161, 183, 184, 192–193, 210, 211, 213, 216, 233, 272, 291, 292, 297, 301, 303, 315; Italian, 98–99, 101–103, 108–109; methodological nationalism, 11–12, 272 New Silk Road. See Belt-­and-­Road Initiative New Silk Road Initiative, 144–145 New York, 6, 7, 9, 10, 49, 108, 109, 167, 188–212, 214, 223, 237, 240, 241, 270, 273, 274, 276, 282, 283, 287, 321–341; American Society for African Culture (AMSAC), 208; Harlem see Harlem; hotels, 200–201, 206–210; International Building, 195; Pan-­Africanism in, 190–208 see also internationalism: Black; Schomburg Library, 206, 208; Statue of Liberty, 192–193; UN Building see United Nations (UN): UN Building, New York Nkrumah, Kwame, 208, 216–218, 220, 224–227, 229, 235 Nobile, Umberto, 98–99, 101, 103–113

Nora, Pierre, 2, 3, 5, 14, 20–22, 36, 61, 142, 209, 256–257, 297, 326–327; Lieux de mémoire (Sites of Memory), 2–3 nostalgia, 18, 57–59, 169; Asian, 172; in exilic memory, 50 Odén, Svante, 242–243, 260 One Belt One Road. See Belt-­and-­Road Initiative Organization of African Unity (OAU), 215–218, 223–234 Pale of Settlement, 18, 53 Pan-­Africanism, 197, 198, 199, 208, 215–219, 225–227, 231; Pan-­African Association, 190–191; Pan-­African Congress, 197–198 Peking Siege Medal, 75, 80–85, 88, 94 planetary boundaries framework, 248, 249, 263 Port Lockroy. See Antarctica: Port Lockroy Port Ross. See Antarctica: Port Ross Pratap, Mahendra, 170, 172, 184–185 Prost, Philippe, 24, 32–34, 37 refugees, 8, 38–65, 192, 196, 203, 204, 209; High Commission for Russian Refugees (HCR), 39, 43, 58; Jewish, 45–47, 53–56; refugee abjection (Nabokov), 50–51; New York and, 192–193, 203–204, 209–210; refugee crisis, 38–40, 43, 46–47; Russian, 38–61 res nullius principle, 104 Reves, Emery, 197, 212 revolution and memory, 26; in Central Asia, 167–174; Ethiopian, 231; postrevolutionary emigration see Emigration: Russian, interwar Rhodes, Cecil, 19 Richthofen, Baron von, 141, 145, 151–152, 157 Rockefeller Jr., John D., 190, 194–195, 199, 210, 211, 213 Rockefeller Foundation, 193–194 Rossby, Carl-­Gustaf, 238, 250–255, 263–264 Rothberg, Michael, 4, 256, 259, 264, 297, 317; multidirectional memory, 5; noeuds de mémoire (knots of memory), 4, 14, 256–257, 259 Russia 12, 18, 26, 39–60, 62, 63, 66, 67, 71, 75, 77–79, 87, 90, 91, 95, 97, 98, 102, 121, 160, 170–172, 180, 185, 301; emigration, 38–61; Empire, 18, 39, 42, 52–54;

Index 357 revolution, 38–61, 167–173; Soviet Union, 43–60, 98–102, 104, 122, 165–182 Schomburg Library. See New York: Schomburg Library Schwimmer, Rosika, 191, 195–197, 205, 212, 214; Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 196 Selassie, Haile, 217–222, 224, 225, 229–232, 234–235 Senghor, Leopold, 216, 217, 226 Shackleton, Ernest, 129, 133, 138, 140 Shastri, Lal Bahadur, 168, 180–182, 187 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 143, 144 Shul’gin, Vasilii, 41, 52–55, 57, 66; antisemitism, 52–54 Sino-­Japanese conflict, 312–314; Nanjing Massacre see Nanjing Massacre Smedal, Gustav, 126 Smith, Arthur, 76, 92 Soboleff, Ivan, 51–52, 57 socialism: China and, 154; Central Asian, 167–174, 179–180 South Georgia island: Grytviken, 117, 127–129, 133; Grytviken whaling industry, 127–128 Spirit of Tashkent. See Tashkent Spitsbergen: Ny Ålesund island, 102, 109 Statue of Liberty. See New York: Statue of Liberty Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 106, 113 Stockholm, 237–259, 264; conference, 237–238, 241, 242–246, 257–259; and global warming see international climate science see also environmental memory; Resilience Centre (SRC), 248 see also environmental resilience stratigraphy. See memory: as stratigraphy Streit, Clarence, 196–197 Tashkent, 9, 10, 165–182, 183, 185; Afro-­ Asian Writer’s Conference, 177–181; Asian anti-­imperialism in, 167, 172; Indo-­Pakistani summit, 179; Indo-­Uzbek international exchange, 175–179; Delhi and, 175–179; 1966 earthquake, 181 Tekle, Maître Afewerk: The Total Liberation of Africa, 215–216, 227–229, 233 Thucydides, 80, 83 Thunberg, Greta, 237, 253, 256, 259 tianxia, 148 Tors, Ivan, 327; The Glass Wall, 204 transits of Venus, 119

Transport Corridor of Europe-­Caucasus-­ Asia (TRACECA), 143–144, 157 Tyrkova-­Williams, Ariadna, 41, 54, 57, 63 UNESCO, 3, 10, 18–19, 97, 116, 132, 134, 150, 192, 222, 256, 257, 270, 275, 278, 280, 281, 286, 290, 294–316, 320; Funds-­in-­Trust Program, 304; Huxley, Julian, 294–295; Memory of the World Program (MoW), 294–316; Monuments Committee, 296; Venice Charter (1964), 297–298; World Heritage Convention, 297–298; World Heritage Sites, 97, 116, 132, 134, 192; World Heritage tentative lists, 301–302 Union for the Liberation of Peoples of the East, 173–174 United Nations (UN), 3, 6, 17, 38, 99, 101, 111, 120, 188–191, 201, 202, 205–207, 212, 215, 217, 221, 228, 237, 241, 242, 244, 249, 250, 260, 276, 294, 321–341, 342; and the Cold War, 206, 282, 334; Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE), 237, 247; Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), 215; reforms under Hamarskjöld, 330–332; UN Building, New York, 188–190, 199, 321 UN personnel, 274; Cassin see Cassin, René; Cruise O’Brien, Conor, 339; ­Hammarskjöld, Dag, 281; Hodgson, ­Colonel William, 274, 284; Margaret Anstee see Anstee, Margaret; Shirley Hazzard see Hazzard, Shirley; Thant, U, 282–283 United World Federalists, 196–197 universalism: human-­earth relationship, 238–239, 250–257; Human Rights Day and, 277–286; UN and, 276, 311 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 10, 17, 269–287, 290, 326 Universal Postal Union (UPU), 1–2, 9, 11, 107, 124, 125, 133, 137; in Antarctica, 123–127 usable past, 40, 46, 60–61 Usmani, Shaukat, 169, 174, 184 Vishniak, Mark, 41, 54–57 Waldorf Astoria, 200–201, 206, 208 women: Boxer War and see Boxer War: British women and the; “comfort women” see gender and memory: Korean “comfort women”; in the UN, 321–241; Women’s

358 Index women (continued) International League for Peace and Freedom see Schwimmer, Rosika: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; women’s rights, 274, 326 World Government movement, 191, 195–197, 203, 205 World War I memory: Historial de la Grande Guerre see memorials: Historial de la Grande Guerre; In Flanders Fields Museum, 25–30; Imperial War Museum see museums: Imperial War Museum World War II memory, 25–27, 30–31, 192– 193; the Arctic and, 109–111; “comfort

women” see gender and memory: Korean “comfort women”; refugees and see emigration: Russian, interwar; Sino-­ Japanese, 303–304, 312–315; the UN and, 274–275; World Heritage Convention and, 299 Wynner, Edith, 196, 197, 205, 213 X, Malcolm, 206–207, 214 Xi Jinping, 141–158; Davos speech, 149–155, 160 yi dai yi lu. See Belt-­and-­Road Initiative