The League Against Imperialism: Lives and Afterlives 9789087283414, 9789400603707, 9789400603714

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The League Against Imperialism

Global Connections: Routes and Roots Global Connections: Routes and Roots explores histories that challenge existing demarcations between and within local, regional, and interregional arenas. The series encompasses single-site and vernacular histories as much as studies of long-distance connection. This series seeks to bridge early modern and modern history. By taking a wide timeframe of c. 1200 to the present, we embrace the many and shifting nodal points, key regions, modes of transportation and other forms of connectivity that together form the “routes” and “roots” of global history. This includes the making and unmaking of power in different manifestations, as well as the intellectual genealogies and trajectories of the ideas that did so. We welcome all work that explores the global as method. We stress the need to recover local primary sources as a way of investigating both the individual and the collective agency of all those involved in the making of the global. Series Editors Carolien Stolte, Leiden University Felicia Rosu, Leiden University Editorial Board Ananya Chakravarti, Georgetown University Scott Levi, The Ohio State University Su Lin Lewis, Bristol University Gerard McCann, University of York Prasannan Parthasarathi, Boston College Alessandro Stanziani, École des hautes études en sciences sociales Heidi Tworek, University of British Columbia Other titles in this series: Jos Gommans and Ariel Lopez (eds), Philippine Confluence. Iberian, Chinese and Islamic Currents, c. 1500–1800, 2020

The League Against Imperialism Lives and Afterlives

Edited by Michele Louro, Carolien Stolte, Heather Streets-Salter and Sana Tannoury-Karam

Leiden University Press

Cover design: Geert de Koning Cover illustration: Delegates at the International Congress against Colonial Oppression held in Brussels, Belgium, in February 1927. Institut fondamental d’Afrique noire in Dakar, Senegal Lay-out: Coco Bookmedia, Amersfoort ISBN 978 90 8728 341 4 e-ISBN 978 94 0060 370 7 (e-PDF) e-ISBN 978 94 0060 371 4 (e-PUB) NUR 680 © Michele Louro, Carolien Stolte, Heather Streets-Salter and Sana Tannoury-Karam / Leiden University Press, 2020 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the publisher and the author of the book. This book is distributed in North America by the University of Chicago Press (www.press.uchicago.edu).

To the unnamed women and men who strive for a better world

Contents List of Illustrations

9

Foreword: Plotting the Anti-Colonial Transnational Erez Manela

11

1. The League Against Imperialism: Lives and Afterlives Michele Louro, Carolien Stolte, Heather Streets-Salter, Sana Tannoury-Karam

17

2. Forging a Proto-Third World? Latin America and the League Against Imperialism Michael Goebel

53

3. An Independent Path: Algerian Nationalists and the League Against Imperialism Dónal Hassett

79

4. “Long Live the Revolutionary Alliance Against Imperialism”: Interwar Anti-Imperialism and the Arab Levant Sana Tannoury-Karam

107

5. China, Anti-imperialist Leagues, and the Comintern: Visions, Networks and Cadres  Anna Belogurova

135

6. “We will fight with our lives for the equal rights of all peoples”: Willi Münzenberg, the League Against Imperialism, and the Comintern  Fredrik Petersson 7. British Passport Restrictions, the League Against Imperialism, and the Problem of Liberal Democracy Daniel Brückenhaus

7

159

187

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8. No More Slaves! Lamine Senghor, Black Internationalism and the League Against Imperialism David Murphy

211

9. Unfreedom and Its Opposite: Towards an Intellectual History of the League Against Imperialism Disha Karnad Jani

237

10. An Anti-Imperialist “Echo” in India Michele Louro 11. Two Leagues, One Front? The India League and the League Against Imperialism in the British Left, 1927–1937 Mark Reeves

257

283

12. Herald of a Failed Revolt: Mohammad Hatta in Brussels, 1927 Klaas Stutje

309

13. The Leninist Moment in South Africa Christopher J. Lee

325

14. Towards Afro-Asia? Continuities and Change in Indian Anti-Imperialist Regionalism, 1927–1957 Carolien Stolte

347

15. Institutionalizing Postcolonial Internationalism: The Apparatus of the Third World Project Jeffrey Byrne

371

Afterword: the Zigzag of the Global in the Histories of the League Against Imperialism Antoinette Burton

397

List of Illustrations 1. Plenary Meeting of the Congress in the Main Hall of Egmont Palace. Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont, Offizielles Protokoll des Kongresses gegen Koloniale Unterdrückung und Imperialismus, Brüssel, 10–15 Februar 1927. Berlin: Neue Deutscher Verlag, 1927 (hereafter: Das Flammenzeichen).

17

2.

José Vasconcelos, Das Flammenzeichen.

18

3.

Josia Tshangana Gumede, Das Flammenzeichen.

18

4. The Executive Council as elected by the First Congress, Das Flammenzeichen.

19

5.

The Praesidium at the Congress, Das Flammenzeichen.

20

6. The Indian Delegation alongside other Congress Participants, Das Flammenzeichen.

21

7.

“An International Group at the Congress,” Das Flammenzeichen.

23

8.

Sen Katayama at the Brussels Congress, Das Flammenzeichen.

24

9.

Hafiz Ramadan Bey at the Brussels Congress, Das Flammenzeichen.

24

10. Part of the Chinese Delegation, Das Flammenzeichen.

25

11. Lu Zhonglin, general in the Guomindang Army, delivers his speech in Brussels, Das Flammenzeichen.

26

12. Nehru and Fimmen socializing at the Brussels Congress, Das Flammenzeichen.

28

13. The large German Delegation at the Brussels Conference, Das Flammenzeichen.

35

14. Lamine Senghor, Das Flammenzeichen.

42

9

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15. “English-Chinese fraternity,” Das Flammenzeichen.

42

16. The unstaged photographs of the Congress in particular reveal its mostly male participation, Das Flammenzeichen.

43

17. Brussels delegates in the palace courtyard during a break. Dutch poet Henriëtte Roland Holst is the only female delegate, second from the right, Das Flammenzeichen.

44

18. Drawing by Diego Rivera on the Front Page of El Libertador, no. 18, June 1928, depicting Nicaragua as assassinated by the United States.

57

19. “The Korean Problem.” International Institute for Social History, League Against Imperialism Archives, File 38. 

242

20. Mohammad Hatta at the Brussels Congress, Das Flammenzeichen.

309

Foreword: Plotting the Anticolonial Transnational Erez Manela The 1920s were a heady time for those fighting against imperialism. World War I had shaken the foundations of a world order based on imperial formations. Three multinational empires—the Russian, AustroHungarian, and Ottoman—lay shattered, their territories reshaped by revolutionary forces that advocated the principle of the self-determination of nations. A fourth empire, the German, was stripped of its overseas territories and reborn as a republic. And the failure of the peace treaties to fulfill the aspirations of the millions who had mobilized against imperialism in 1919 left its enemies casting about for other avenues of attack. At the same time, the Bolshevik Revolution had transformed the vast multinational domain of the Romanovs into a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The newly formed Soviet Union and the Communist International (Comintern) it led posed a sharp challenge to domestic and international orders predicated on the logic of capitalism and imperialism and dominated by Britain, France, and the United States. The League Against Imperialism (LAI) was born in that period at the intersection of the Comintern’s commitment to the promotion of world revolution, on the one hand, and the escalating resistance to empire across large swaths of Asia and Africa, on the other. In particular, Comintern officials recognized the potency of anti-imperial sentiment in the protests against foreign influence that erupted in China on May 30, 1925; in the ongoing Rif War in North Africa; and in the outbreak of the Syrian revolt against French rule in the Levant.1 The League Against Imperialism, which emerged from a meeting convened in Brussels in 1927 by Comintern organizers, was therefore in one sense an example of the transformative impact of the Bolshevik Revolution on international society in the wake of the collapse of the Wilsonian moment. Only a minority of those who attended the conference, however, were committed communists. At first, the LAI, following Moscow’s united front policy, was willing to reconcile the class-based critique of capitalism with the claims for self-determination based on distinctions of national identity. Only months after the Brussels meeting, however, the united front began to fray, most spectacularly in the break between the Chinese 11

12  the league against imperialism

Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, and the Chinese Communist Party, a break signaled with the bloody purge of Chinese communists by Nationalist forces in Shanghai in April of 1927, only weeks after the Brussels conference adjourned. The collapse of the Comintern’s united front policy shattered the unity of the LAI. Soon after, non-communist members such as Jawaharlal Nehru, the future prime minister of India, and Muhammad Hatta, the future vice president of Indonesia, exited the fold.2 As it turned out, they were the lucky ones, as some leading LAI figures who remained committed to the Comintern cause fared worse. Liao Huanxing, who was the top Chinese delegate at Brussels, and Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (“Chatto”), the Indian revolutionary who served for years as the LAI general secretary, both eventually moved to Moscow and were caught in Stalin’s purges: Chatto was executed in 1937, and Liao spent nearly a decade in a Soviet prison. And Willi Münzenberg, the German communist who was the main organizer of the Brussels conference, turned against Stalin and, condemned by his former comrades, was found dead in a forest in Southeastern France in 1940.3 Still, the ideals of anti-imperialist solidarity that the LAI represented survived, echoing in myriad ways and places through the succeeding decades. The LAI, as this volume highlights, had consequential afterlives in the minds of participants and in the mythologies of anticolonial movements across Asia and Africa. In its time and long after, the LAI helped give a concrete institutional form to the increasingly transnational nature of the struggle against imperialism in the interwar years. In this period, anticolonial activists and movements were nearly always vastly outmatched by the forces that supported and sustained imperial formations. Banding together in solidarity was one strategy of survival for these fledgling movements. Even more importantly, however, anticolonial activists across the global south saw that the defeat of imperialism in their own countries and regions would require its defeat everywhere. The transition to a postcolonial arrangement in their own context would therefore have to depend upon, and accompany, a larger shift from an international order predicated on empires to one constructed around selfgoverning political units—often, though notably not always, conceived and articulated as self-determining nation-states. The LAI was also pioneering in acting on the notion that imperialism involved not simply political domination but was also, primarily, economic in nature. This approach, based upon Lenin’s theory that imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism, allowed, indeed called for, the inclusion

foreword: plotting the anticolonial transnational  13

of the countries of Latin America within the anti-imperialist fold, despite their nominal political independence. Once inside the fold, however, the differences between the Latin American delegates and those from Asia and Africa quickly became apparent. Distinctions of race and class separated Latin Americans from the others, as did their preoccupation with an imperial power—the United States—of less concern during this period to most Asian and Africans, whose focus was on the European powers. Still, the tricontinentalism of the LAI set an important precedent, and served as a resonant echo, when Latin America swept back into the anti-imperialist fold in the 1960s.4 As the example of Latin America suggests, even as the LAI forged connections and solidarities among anti-imperialists around the world to fortify their cause, it also served as a staging ground and a premonition of their cleavages and their schisms. The most obvious and disruptive one in the context of the 1920s was the ideological divide, already mentioned, between communists and noncommunists. This was a deep and substantive schism, because it turned on the question of what the primary enemy of the anti-imperialist was. Was the primary enemy, as the Comintern saw it, capitalism, with imperialism being simply one manifestation of it? Or was the enemy the rule of one nation over another of a different region, ethnicity, or race? Put in the starkest terms, the question was this: Did class matter more, or did race? Beyond the ideological fault line between communists and noncommunists, the history of the LAI also exposes other cleavages that have challenged projects of anticolonial (and postcolonial) solidarity in the decades since, cleavages centered on distinctions of race, religion, or region. Some anti-imperialists from Africa, like Lamine Senghor, emphasized the unique suffering of the peoples of their continent and their descendants around the world.5 Other delegates focused their efforts on solidarities of a pan-Arab, pan-Islamic, or pan-Asian character, some overlapping but none encompassing the full diversity of peoples languishing under imperialism. Moreover, many delegates from the colonial world viewed with skepticism the central role of European communists in organizing the conference, and they remained determined to use the forum to advance their cause while also safeguarding their own independence.6 Another set of cleavages reflected in the history of the LAI is related not to the identity of the primary enemy (capitalism or imperialism, class or race) nor to distinctions of race, ethnicity, region, or religion among its victims, but to the remedy for imperialism. The Bolsheviks had long advocated the principle of national self-determination as a wedge to crack

14  the league against imperialism

open imperial edifices, but they were perfectly ready to subordinate that principle to the pursuit of a world revolution against capitalism. Other anti-imperialists wanted to reform rather than destroy imperial structures, as in Gandhi’s longtime pursuit of dominion status for India, akin to that of Canada under the British crown. Federalist ideas were also often aired, especially in the pan-African context but also in the pan-Asian one. Other alternative imaginaries to a world of “free nations” included a workers’ international (proposed by trade unionists) and the liberation, sought by some pan-African activists, of the “Negro masses” wherever they may be.7 In the end, many anticolonial elites found that the surest path to making the transition to postcolonial elites ran through the replacement of dependent colonial formations with independent nation-states under their leadership. These states then sought to solidify their legitimacy, both domestically and internationally, through participation in international organizations designed to scaffold and reflect a world of independent nation-states. These included, firstly, the United Nations, but also numerous other, regional organizations intended at least in part to signal the sovereignty of their members.8 But the fixation on the sovereign nation-state as the end goal of the struggle against imperialism also circumscribed the possibilities for cooperation among its former victims, as the state imperatives sidelined calls for solidarity. Despite well-known efforts in Bandung and elsewhere, enacting solidarity that went beyond mere rhetoric proved ever more challenging in the postcolonial era. The contributors to the present volume have given us, within a single cover, some of the best and most cutting-edge scholarship on the history of international society. For some time now, scholars of anticolonial movements and of anti-imperialism more broadly have been attuned to the significance of transnational and global perspectives on their subject. Each anticolonial struggle, of course, had its own local and regional contexts, and these are well represented in the chapters that follow. Most, if not all, struggles, however, were connected in myriad ways to transnational networks and contexts. Activists were often based outside their home territories, often in major imperial metropoles or other foreign capitals—London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo—and embedded within networks that spanned the globe. The ideas and ideologies that shaped anticolonial struggles and the resources that supported them also circulated globally. And the anti-imperialist imagination was itself inherently global, since it viewed the problem as encompassing the entire world. The solution, therefore, had to do the same.

foreword: plotting the anticolonial transnational  15

It may be tempting, nearly a century later, to view the LAI as little more than a failed Comintern effort to harness the rising force of antiimperialism to its goal of world revolution, an effort that began to buckle under the weight of its own contradictions soon after launching. This view, however, is belied by the attitudes of the major colonial powers themselves, who saw the LAI, its members, and its activities as a significant threat and sought to surveil and suppress them. The LAI also amplified what were in some cases nascent projects of national liberation, involving small networks of activists based outside the territories they sought to liberate. But more importantly, this volume shows how the story of the LAI, told here more fully than ever before, shines a light on the transformation of international order in the twentieth century, from a world of empires to a world of nation-states. It shows how some of imperialism’s most committed enemies came together to fight it and, at the same time, highlights the tensions that plagued their efforts at solidarity. Moreover, the LAI was perhaps the first organization to gather a broad, transcontinental coalition around the proposition that imperialism involved not only political control but also economic domination, and that its defeat therefore required not only a new international order based on political self-determination but also one that safeguarded economic sovereignty and promoted great equality among the peoples of the world. In this sense, not least, the iniquities that the LAI was formed to resist are still with us today. Notes 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8

On this last issue, see Sana Tannoury-Karam’s chapter in this volume. See Michele Louro’s chapter on Nehru and Klaas Stutje’s chapter on Hatta. Liao, Chatto, and Münzenberg were central figures in LAI history and appear throughout this volume, but esp. in the chapters by Anna Belogurova, Fredrik Petersson, Michele Louro, and Carolien Stolte. See Michael Goebel’s chapter in this volume. See David Murphy’s chapter in this volume. On this see esp. the chapters by Sana Tannoury-Karam and Dónal Hassett. See Disha Karnad Jani’s chapter in this volume. See Jeffrey James Byrne’s chapter in this volume.

Chapter 1

The League Against Imperialism: Lives and Afterlives Michele Louro, Carolien Stolte, Heather Streets-Salter, Sana Tannoury-Karam

Fig. 1. Plenary Meeting of the Congress in the Main Hall of Egmont Palace.

On 10 February 1927, 174 delegates representing thirty-one states, colonies, or regions and 134 organizations came together at the Palais d’Egmont in Brussels for a Congress on anti-imperialism. Over the course of five days, delegates witnessed and participated in demonstrations of inter-racial and inter-cultural solidarity, heard each other’s accounts of colonial oppression, hammered out specific resolutions, and planned for the future. The tone was set on the very first day, when A. Fenner Brockway of Britain’s Independent Labour Party joined hands with one of the Chinese delegates, Liao Huanxing, and the two raised their arms together in unity to a roar of applause from the entire Congress.1 Later the same day José Vasconcelos, representing Puerto Rico, reminded participants that imperialism appeared in many forms, and took the United States to task for its “robbery” and “cruelty” in Latin America.2 He then exhorted delegates to “remember, friends, from all over the world, that Latin America is not only our country but also your country, the country of every man, no matter what race or color, the country of the future and the home of all men.”3 One of the ten African delegates, Josiah Tshangana Gumede, stood in front of the Congress and told the audience that in South Africa, the country of his forefathers, “we have no 17

18  the league against imperialism

place to lay our heads. All the land was taken from us by the Crown of Great Britain and the people were turned away from their ancestral homes which were turned into farms.”4

Figs. 2 and 3. Former Mexican Education Minister and Puerto Rican delegate José Vasconcelos (l) and South African ANC delegate Josiah Tshangana Gumede (r) at the Brussels Congress.

Over the course of the Congress, delegates brought forward twenty-six resolutions and unanimously approved ten.5 These resolutions spelled out in detail what Congress members stood for, and the future they envisaged. For example, an Anglo-Indian-Chinese resolution committed, among other things, to “fighting side-by-side with national forces for the complete freedom of oppressed countries,” to opposing “all forms of oppression against colonial peoples,” to denouncing “the horrors of imperialism,” and to challenging “imperial politics in order to achieve freedom according to the teachings of class struggle.”6 At the end of the Congress, delegates voted to continue their work through the founding of a new organization called the League Against Imperialism and for National Independence. Its purpose was clear: to establish “a permanent worldwide organisation linking up all forces against imperialism and colonial oppression.”7 Its manifesto appealed specifically to “all who do not profit from the oppression of others and who do not live on the fruits of this oppression and for all who hate modern slavery

the league against imperialism  19

and are longing for their own freedom and the freedom of their fellowmen.”8 Its “Honorary Presidents” included luminaries like Albert Einstein of Germany, Madame Sun Yat-sen of China, George Lansbury of Britain, and Romain Rolland of France. Its Executive Committee was comprised of representatives from China, Mexico, India, the Philippines, North Africa, South Africa, Egypt, Persia, Japan, Puerto Rico, and Korea, as well as all of the major European states.9 The new organization was to be based in Berlin, and its day-to-day affairs were to be run by an International Secretariat headed by the German communist and Reichstag Member Willi Münzenberg, and including the Indian revolutionary Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (“Chatto”), the Hungarian journalist and communist Louis Gibarti, and later in the 1930s by the Turkish communist and Comintern emissary Bekar Ferdi.10  

Fig. 4. The Executive Council as elected by the First Congress.

The Congress itself was a remarkable affair, and those who were present at the time knew it. Its principal organizer, Willi Münzenberg, had hoped for success but was jubilant that the Congress had exceeded even his high expectations.11 Participants recalled a feeling of euphoria mixed with hope and determination as they came together to discuss the brutalities and injustices of imperial rule. Indonesia’s Mohammed Hatta, for example, said of the Congress that “however colourful and diverse the races and political colours, in purpose and aspiration, people, we are of one mind,” while the experience was deeply ideologically transformative for India’s Jawaharlal Nehru.12

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Fig. 5. The Praesidium at the Congress. From left to right: Jawaharlal Nehru (India), George Lansbury (England), Edo Fimmen (Netherlands), Lu Zhonglin (China), and Liao Huanxing (China).

While we know Congress participants believed they had just lived through an important historical moment in the history of international anti-imperialism, what does the Congress and the formation of the League Against Imperialism mean for those of us who study histories of anti-imperialism, internationalism and decolonization in the twentiethcentury world? After all, the League existed for only ten years, from 1927 to 1937, and even then it was riven with internal conflicts and was subject to intense outside pressures. Did the League represent little more than a momentary, optimistic, but ultimately unsuccessful blip in the history of anticolonialism? We think not. In spite of its many internal conflicts and outside pressures, we share the belief of the League’s original participants that its creation did indeed mark a significant historical moment. Our reasons are not entirely the same, as today’s vantage point gives us the benefit of hindsight, while our various areas of expertise allow the incorporation of multiple stories from multiple places. However briefly, the League was one of the largest, most inclusive international groups of its kind. Its leadership and membership included representatives of formal colonies as well as the semi-colonial world, and Europeans and Americans from colonial as well as non-colonial powers. The League’s membership was also ideologically diverse, especially in its first few years. Indeed, for a time the League brought together communists and

the league against imperialism  21

anticolonial nationalists in a shared platform that was not wholly defined by one side or the other. 

Fig. 6. The Indian delegation alongside other participants in the Brussels Congress.

Partly because of its diverse membership, the League was also at the centre of a variety of anticolonial networks in this period, since many of its members played key leadership roles in more regional or issuespecific activist groups.13 As such, the League functioned as a space that greased the wheels of inter-colonial connections, and allowed representatives not only to bring their own grievances to light, but also to learn about the grievances of others. The League was unique in that its entire existence was devoted to exposing imperialism as a systemic, global problem that needed to be eradicated everywhere through the activism of both colonized and non-colonized peoples. These ideas, in turn, were transformative for many future leaders and activists who emerged as significant actors in the global south both before and after the Second World War. Although the League was clearly unique in some ways, we also argue that it was not so much an exception in its time but rather an emblem of what some scholars have called the “Internationalist Moment” of the interwar period.14 Though mindful of the fact that the interwar period was far from a monolith, we believe that studying the League offers a way in to the internationalism of this period, allowing us to focus on the factors that contributed to such a heady moment on its own terms rather than on the factors that led to the second global war or to the global decolonization that we know was coming. When we do this, we are able to see how the interwar moment in which the League was created was itself deeply influenced by global events, and by new impulses for international

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cooperation. At the same time, we are able to see the enduring afterlives of the anti-imperialism championed by the League on both individuals and groups who were active in regional and global stories long after the organization came to an end in 1937. The Story of the League Against Imperialism Each of the essays in this volume offers a portion of the League’s story told from the perspective of an individual, region, or theme. To enable each essay to be read as part of the larger whole, here we provide a brief, bird’seye narrative of the League from beginning to end. For the same reason, we have reproduced the photographs from the published proceedings of the Brussels Congress in this chapter.15 The League Against Imperialism and for National Independence was founded at the end of that heady Congress in February 1927. Its operations were centralized in an International Secretariat led by Willi Münzenberg in Berlin and staffed by a diverse group of committed communists and revolutionaries. Once founded, the new organization’s immediate goals were to coordinate effective relations between the Secretariat and the League’s Executive Committee, and to capitalize on the energy from the Congress to develop solidarity between communists, socialists, and anticolonial nationalists worldwide. These two goals were meant to pave the way for campaigns to expose the brutalities of colonial rule, to support the liberation of colonies around the world, and to build solidarity between workers in imperialist countries and the oppressed in the colonies.  The months between Brussels and the Second World Congress of the LAI, held in Frankfurt in July 1929, marked a high point in the League’s history. By the end of 1927, the LAI boasted the creation of national branches in Argentina, Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Palestine, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, San Salvador, South Africa, the United States, and Uruguay.16 More importantly, the LAI secretariat in Berlin began churning out news bulletins and developing a press service that continued the work of the Brussels Congress by providing a platform for the oppressed classes and nations of the world to share their experiences and learn from other anti-imperialists. The chief architect behind this propaganda operation was Chatto, an Indian revolutionary and polyglot commanding several European and South Asian languages who, more than anyone, shaped the League’s literature before 1930.17 Thanks to Chatto’s ingenuity, the LAI produced in 1928 the inaugural issue of the Anti-Imperialist Review, the official organ of the international secretariat.18

the league against imperialism  23

Fig. 7. The original caption of this photograph was “An International Group at the Congress,” meant to convey the wide range of participants. From left to right: Marteaux (Belgium), Chen (China), Mella (Mexico), Pollitt (England), Messali (Algeria), Katayama (Japan), Jiao (Indochina), Haya Della Tarre (Peru), Fournier (France), Senghor (Senegal), Barkatullah (India), Holitscher (Germany), Roland-Holst (Netherlands), Nejedli (Czechoslovakia).

LAI ephemera legitimized the movement and strengthened its appeal, which drew ninety-eight affiliates based in Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Europe by 1928.19 Chatto was aware in his own time of the tremendous importance of the LAI to the colonial world and, as Stolte’s essay in this volume notes, he boasted to Nehru that the LAI might one day enjoy “the affiliation of all the national movements from Morocco to Indonesia.”20 At the same time, tensions developed right away as members struggled to define the anti-imperialist mission and develop solidarities across a politically, geographically, and linguistically diverse membership. One of the most significant problems was over the role that the Executive Committee of the Communist International (Comintern) would play in directing and financing the League from Moscow. Certainly, the Brussels Congress and the League had ties to the Comintern from the very beginning through Willi Münzenberg. For example, Münzenberg sought, and eventually won, approval from the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI) to organize the Brussels Congress. Comintern records also clearly show that the ECCI created a special committee to

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discuss the Congress, and that it sent a representative, Sen Katayama, to attend.21

Figs. 8 and 9. Sen Katayama (l) and Hafiz Ramadan Bey (3) at the Brussels Congress.

But these early connections did not mean that the Comintern was in control of either the Congress or the League, although essays even in this volume differ in terms of the weight they ascribe to its influence. For one thing, in 1927 the Comintern’s “united front” policy—which encouraged communists and communist parties to work closely with left-leaning, non-communist organizations as well as colonial nationalist parties— meant that the Comintern was willing to remain in the background of a number of anti-colonial or nationalist organizations.22 Indeed, in the case of the League the Comintern deliberately sought to keep its involvement secret in order to broaden its appeal to non-communists and anticolonial nationalists. But even more important than the “united front” policy was the fact that the Comintern was slow to recognize the Congress, or indeed the League, as worthy of attention. Despite having given approval for the Congress, the Comintern’s enthusiasm for the event was lacklustre at best—as demonstrated by the fact that it sent hardly any directives to Münzenberg in the first half of 1926 as the Congress was being planned. Additionally, promised Comintern funds for the Congress were slow to arrive, meaning that much of the cost was borne by Münzenberg’s Chinese and Mexican networks.23  

the league against imperialism  25

Fig. 10. Part of the large Chinese delegation to the first Congress of the League, pictured outside the palace.

The success of the Brussels Congress prompted greater interest from Moscow, and in June 1927 the Comintern created a new Anti-Imperialist Commission to finance the Secretariat in Berlin and to provide policy guidance for the League.24 By then, global events had already begun to encourage far greater suspicion between communists and noncommunists. First, in April 1927 the established “united front” between Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalist Guomindang Party and the Chinese Communist Party abruptly ended when Guomindang forces attacked and murdered thousands of communists in their midst. For Moscow, this disaster laid bare the vulnerabilities in the “united front” approach. Then, in May 1927, British security forces raided Russian-owned sites in London and discovered documents confirming the existence of an extensive Soviet spy network in Great Britain. The incident led to a collapse in diplomatic relations between Britain and the Soviet Union, and ramped up hostilities between the two states.25 Within the Soviet Union, the ascension of Stalin and his more orthodox approach to politics shaped Comintern policy, introducing a more sectarian environment within international communism. As a result of these events, Moscow began a shift in direction away from the “united front” policy and towards a “class against class” policy (though the shift was not official until 1928), while committed communists grew far more suspicious of non-communist activists and vice versa. 

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Fig. 11. Lu Zhonglin, general in the Guomindang Army, delivers his speech in Brussels.

This background is crucial for understanding why it proved to be so difficult to sustain the momentum of the Brussels Congress. While the League had been founded as an institution where communists, socialists, and anticolonial nationalists could come together, by the summer of 1927 suspicions between communists and socialists in Europe had increased

the league against imperialism  27

dramatically. Key leaders in the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) increasingly viewed the League as a threat to the European Socialist movement, and sought to discredit the League by exposing its ties to the Comintern.26 On 7 October 1927, the LSI published a report that accused the League of being a “sham” Bolshevik organization, and backed up the accusation with carefully collected evidence.27 The report was devastating for the League, for it left an open wound between European socialists and communists who, in the context of current global events, increasingly felt that a shared organization was no longer feasible. In addition, the evidence provided by the LSI report was picked up by European security services, whose leaders were now more convinced than ever that the League represented a communist front.28 As a result, organizing national chapters of the League in European states became a slow and conflictridden process since they now faced antagonism from socialists on the left and national security forces on the right. Moreover, the schisms within the European left infiltrated League meetings and discussions, often at the expense of significant issues non-Europeans had brought to the table. If these challenges were not enough, in the summer of 1928 the League faced additional pressures from Moscow. At the Sixth International Comintern Congress that year, the Comintern officially shifted from the “united front” policy to the new policy of “class against class.” This brought about the end of sanctioned cooperation between communists and either nationalists or socialists, and an insistence on following instructions from the Comintern. As part of this new policy, the Comintern began to take a much more active role in trying to direct League policy. A second international Congress of the League in 1929, in Frankfurt, clearly reflected these changes, as it was marked by infighting and denunciations by communist members of the remaining non-communist colleagues still committed to the organization. The result was that by 1931 nearly all of the non-communists in the League, including Nehru and Hatta but also the American Roger Baldwin and the Dutch trade unionist Edo Fimmen, had either resigned or been expelled from the League. The international secretariat fell into a period of inactivity and confusion, while nearly all of Berlin’s contacts to the colonial world were lost. What emerged in the period between 1930 and 1933 was a League dominated by communist party members from Europe, as well as students and expatriates from the colonial world who were based in Europe.  In spite of these many challenges from both left and right after the initial enthusiasm in Brussels, in 1929 League participants did manage to maintain several national chapters and counted sixty-three formal

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Fig. 12. Nehru (second from left) and Fimmen (first from right) socializing at the Brussels Congress.

affiliated organizations in thirty-five separate states or territories, and affiliations with five international organizations.29 In the early 1930s, the Secretariat also managed to coordinate several high-profile international anti-imperialist campaigns. These notably included a campaign against the Meerut Conspiracy Case in India beginning in 1929, a case to publicize the arrest by the Guomindang of Hilaire and Marie Noulens beginning in 1931, and an “anti-exposition” to counter the International Colonial Exposition in Paris in 1931.30 By 1931, circumstances in Berlin had deteriorated, highlighted by a raid on the headquarters of the International Secretariat by German authorities in December of that year. Although the League opened its doors again in February 1932, its staff had to flee the country for their safety when the Nazis gained power in early 1933. After much debate in Moscow and Paris, where Münzenberg lived in exile after 1933, the LAI relocated to London under the leadership of Reginald Bridgeman, the secretary of the British national section. The British LAI was among the most vibrant and robust national sections of the LAI, which managed to navigate sectarian tensions between the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and the Labour Party (LP). Only the last refused to work with the British LAI after 1927. The success of the British section should be credited to Bridgeman, who lost his Labour Party membership because he refused to resign from the LAI. A one-time diplomat stationed in Iran before the First World War, Bridgeman came to be a stalwart of anti-imperialism in Britain by the

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1920s, and he emerged as the driving force behind the British LAI from its inception in 1927 until the League’s end in 1937. Acquiring little more than an outdated list of members, Bridgeman rebuilt the LAI from the ground up.31 He emphasized his connections to anticolonial activists in London, primarily students and expatriates from West Africa and India, as well as his ties to the ILP and CPGB. By 1934, Bridgeman and the London office had surpassed Berlin in their output of anti-imperialist publications that targeted European colonialism in Africa and Asia. They had also organized mass demonstrations against Britain’s launch of the Meerut Conspiracy Case in India, a letter and telegram campaign protesting at the arrest and imprisonment of Hilaire and Marie Noulens in Shanghai, and the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. While the period between 1929 and 1933 was driven by sectarian conflict, the revitalization of the LAI in London returned the movement to a balance of communists, sympathetic socialists, and anticolonial revolutionaries. As Mark Reeves’ essay in this volume details, the LAI office in London housed a variety of leftist organizations that brought communists and non-communists together in solidarity against war, fascism, imperialism, and capitalism. Moreover, it became a meeting ground for communists such as Ben Bradley, non-party members such as Bridgeman, Pan-Africanists such as George Padmore and C.L.R. James, and Indian leaders such as V.K. Krishna Menon. By the mid-1930s, the LAI also engaged with anti-fascism and peace mobilizations as new fronts in the struggle against imperialism. After all, if imperialist competition was the root cause of war, anti-imperialism was the only path to achieving peace. Bridgeman became secretary of the British Anti-War Council in 1934, and his office served as a meeting ground for those working against war and fascism as well as imperialism. In this new milieu, the League frequently published pamphlets and organized protests against fascism in Spain and imperialist aggression in China. In May 1937, Bridgeman announced the closure of the LAI in a letter to members that encouraged a “broadening out” of their political projects to include the most pressing issues of the day: war and fascism.32 Most anti-imperialists recognized the urgency of anti-war and anti-fascist mobilizations as the world edged towards another global conflict, and the anti-imperialist struggle came to be incorporated into larger movements against the war. The League called on anti-imperialists to unite with the forces working against capitalist exploitation, imperialism, and fascist aggression. Bridgeman’s letter also announced a new effort, the Colonial Information Bureau, which would continue the LAI’s mission

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to produce news bulletins that publicized the atrocities of colonialism and imperialism, although on a smaller scale. From 1937 to 1944, the CIB circulated newsletters similar to those in the earliest days of the LAI, ones that shared stories and statistics from various colonies struggling for freedom against their imperialist oppressor. It was never an institution capable of launching world congresses or global campaigns, as the LAI did in the late 1920s, yet it carried on the anti-imperialist mission well into the Second World War. The CIB ironically outlived the Comintern, which closed its doors earlier in 1943. So, while international communism was significant in the establishment and at times the functioning of the LAI—a point on which all of the essays gathered here agree—the longevity of the CIB nevertheless demonstrates the significance of anti-imperialism as a movement in its own right.33 The League lasted ten years in spite of enormous outside pressures and deep internal divisions, while its direct successor, the CIB, survived the onset of war and the collapse of the Comintern. Given all of the obstacles stacked against it, its brief existence does not seem as brief as it might initially appear. Rather, it demonstrates the powerful and persuasive appeal of anti-imperialism across political, ideological, and geographic boundaries of the interwar world. This volume claims that the LAI was significant in the shaping of the interwar world, informing anticolonial nationalism, communism, socialism, and pacifism in ways we have failed to see because of the contentious and all too brief history of the League’s existence. The volume also overturns the common assumption that the LAI failed to connect with non-communists after the Frankfurt Congress in 1929. As many of the essays in this volume demonstrate, the afterlives of the LAI and CBI continued to shape and be shaped by both communists and non-communists in the colonized world. Finally, contributions by Lee, Stolte, and Byrne also reveal the enduring impact of the anti-imperialist movement far beyond the Second World War and into the Cold War, long after both the LAI and CBI closed their doors. Historians and the League In spite of its many high-profile participants and the global reach of its membership, the League remains relatively obscure and poorly understood in historical scholarship. Aside from a short but useful pamphlet written for the British Socialist History Society in 1996 and an entry on Reginald Bridgeman in the Dictionary of Labour Biography, only Fredrik Petersson has written a full-length work on the organization.34 Several authors have written either article-length pieces or book chapters on various aspects

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of the League, using vastly different archival sources.35 Several key works on anti-imperialism in European metropoles also pick up on the significance of the LAI. Beyond these works, the League generally appears in scholarship on the interwar period or on anti-colonial movements in passing remarks or footnotes.36 Often, these passing treatments produce and replicate inaccuracies about the members and general narrative of the LAI, a problem this volume seeks to remedy. The dearth of sustained scholarship on the League is partly due to the nature and availability of sources. When the Nazi authorities raided the League Secretariat in 1933, they destroyed much of its official archive.37 The existing archival sources from the LAI remain scattered all over the world in the personal papers of individual members, the records of European domestic and colonial intelligence agencies, and the Comintern files. Of these scattered sources, the most comprehensive are the Comintern sources, which became available to scholars only in the late 1990s and were digitized in the early twenty-first century. These, however, unsurprisingly tell the story largely from the vantage point of Moscow. The archives of European security agencies are also voluminous, but unless read together they give the perspective of only one state. Additionally, colonial archives must be read with care given their creators’ deeply antagonistic relationship with the League. The papers of individual participants, meanwhile, contain a wealth of information, but are located in archives scattered around the world. The fragmented and often highly focused nature of the sources means that most studies of the League thus far have been regionally or archivally confined, telling a small aspect of a much broader and global story of anti-imperialism between the world wars. Given the small amount of existing scholarship on the League, distortions of any kind have had a significant impact on how historians perceive it. For example, since the only comprehensive study of the League has been Fredrik Petersson’s study based on Comintern archives, the perspective of the Comintern and its leaders in his story of the League has marginalized others. As a consequence, the role of non-communists in the movement is minimized. An alternative distortion made by other scholars is the tendency to cite the League’s Brussels Congress as the birthplace of the third world project and the forerunner to the Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955.38 This reading, however, neglects the diversity of the anti-imperialist movement by marginalizing international communist involvement and exaggerating anti-colonial solidarities instead. It also reads the history of the League teleologically

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from the vantage point of 1955 and thus misses its significance in the context of its own time. Moreover, this type of distortion celebrates key events and conferences without situating them within the broader milieu and historical moments of the interwar and early Cold War years. A third type of distortion concerns factual errors that have been told and re-told in the historical literature. While most of these errors are relatively small— such as the belief that Sukarno of Indonesia and Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam attended the Brussels Congress, that Mohammad Hatta represented the Indonesian nationalist movement in 1927, or that Lamine Senghor died in a French prison after being arrested by French police for his involvement in the LAI—their consistent re-telling has mythologized aspects of the League even in academic scholarship.39 The essays assembled here view the League from different regional and temporal vantage points and do not always agree on the fine points regarding the relative importance of various individuals, the influence of the Comintern, or the long-term legacies in the larger story of the LAI. Collectively, they both expose and challenge historiographical distortions by bringing together, for the first time, scholars researching the League from a wide range of linguistic, geographic, and historical specialties. The narrative that emerges demonstrates that although the League’s antiimperialism was closely linked to international communism, particularly from 1930 to 1933, it also interfaced and overlapped with many noncommunist political and social movements across the world. Moreover, it argues that while some League participants went on to play key roles in Bandung and beyond, the historical importance of the League is best understood on its own terms and in the context of the interwar world. Indeed, we believe the story of the League necessitates a rethinking of the basic categories of historical analysis relevant to the interwar period. The League offered remarkably fluid and flexible solidarities that attracted a broad spectrum of activists and projects struggling for an ambiguously defined notion of political and social “freedom.” These collaborative interconnections, so central to the anti-imperialist movement more generally, have been neglected as historiographical fields have developed around nationalism, international communism, socialism, and pacifism as separate categories with distinctive trajectories after the Second World War. This volume demonstrates that we cannot fully understand the significance of anti-imperialist institutions and networks of the interwar world without engaging these multiple histories that overlap and intersect.

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The recovery of histories of League activists from the colonies who were engaged in local anti-colonial struggles is further complicated by a predominance of historical scholarship that seeks to either displace or transcend the nation entirely. This tendency has encouraged international and national histories to develop into distinct narratives that frequently do not speak to one another, making the intertwined stories of anticolonial nationalism and international anti-imperialism difficult to tell. This project attempts to tell such stories by building on the arguments made by Glenda Sluga that we cannot understand the twentieth century without internationalism, and that “we have forgotten the long, intimate, conceptual past shared by the national and the international as entangled ways of thinking about modernity, progress and politics.”40 By facilitating a dialogue between researchers specializing in different aspects of the antiimperialist movement, particularly those with expertise in the formerly colonized world, this volume seeks to create a space for a global and transnational framework that moves beyond the categories of colony, nation, and empire to comprehend more fully the transnational nature of the twentieth-century world. The League in Global Context While the League was certainly unique in some ways, it was also deeply shaped by the past and firmly grounded in its own time. Global events, transnational spaces, and new international ideologies helped to create the conditions for the formation not only of the League but also the many other international and trans-regional organizations that flourished in this period. Of the global events that helped to create the conditions for the internationalist moment, few were more important than the First World War. Indeed, although anticolonial internationalism was not new to the interwar period, the war years provided opportunities and issues that contributed to their rapid acceleration.41 For one thing, during the war years millions of colonial and semi-colonial subjects moved around the world to fight or to labour on the side of either the Central or Allied powers. As they moved, some experienced life in colonial metropoles and saw firsthand the contradictions inherent in the idea of European superiority as its denizens butchered each other and the land with abandon. Others had the chance to interact with colonial soldiers and labourers from other areas of the world, or simply to think deeply about the appropriate reward for such service once the war was over.42 Some colonial subjects saw the war as an opportunity to work with the enemies of the Allies to undermine colonial rule, which resulted in revolutionaries collaborating with German

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government agents in Europe, China, Siam, the United States, and the Dutch East Indies in order to wreak havoc in the colonies.43 In the immediate aftermath of the war, the failures of the Paris Peace Conference to recognize the desire of many colonial and semicolonial subjects for self-determination led many to turn away from the international state system dominated by the colonial powers and towards revolutionary anticolonialism.44 The institution of the Mandate system by the newly-created League of Nations rubbed salt in these wounds, as colonial subjects and residents of the region rightly saw it as colonialism by another name, this time with the stamp of approval of the international community as embodied in the League of Nations.45 It was in this context of disappointment, anger, and exasperation with the international system that many anticolonial activists devoted their energies to trans-regional or international movements such as the Khilafat Movement, pan-Asianism, or pan-Africanism.46 It is important to understand the development of the League Against Imperialism within this temporal context of both increased opportunity for interaction and intense frustration with the colonial powers. Indeed, its very name was meant to evoke this frustration: for its members the League Against Imperialism was self-consciously designed to remedy the deficiencies of that other League by focusing on the oppressed rather than the powerful. They considered themselves, as Michele Louro has argued, the “real” League of Nations.47 While the global events of the war contributed a great deal to the internationalist moment, it required spaces in which international movements could flourish and grow. Given the lack of freedoms afforded to most colonial subjects in the colonies and the strict supervision of those who entered and exited, these spaces were rarely in the colonies themselves. Rather, the spaces most conducive to the growth of international anticolonial movements tended to be in European or American cities, where even colonial subjects tended to have greater freedom to congregate, to organize, to move around, and to publish. Despite the fact that London and Paris were imperial metropoles, for example, they also afforded colonial subjects who travelled there an opportunity to meet and share stories with colonial subjects from other parts of the world and with European leftists opposed to imperialism.48 As a result, many colonial subjects developed and articulated their most vehement anticolonial views as a result of their experiences living abroad and interacting with other anticolonialists. Some cities provided an even greater opportunity for colonial subjects to come into contact with radical, leftist, anti-colonial ideas. Of these, Berlin—capital of the new Weimar Republic and location of the League’s

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International Secretariat—was one of the most important. Until the early 1930s, Berlin was a critical “contact zone” for radical anticolonial activists and leftist radicals—especially communists—from all over the world.49 And unlike in London and Paris, where government authorities were invested in curtailing anticolonial activity to the best of their abilities, in 1920s Germany the government had no such investment, as it had no colonies to protect and little reason to cooperate with British or French intelligence agencies. Indeed, during the latter half of the 1920s—precisely the period in which the League Against Imperialism was formed—the German government took a neutral approach to anticolonial work being undertaken in the state, “neither suppressing nor supporting” it.”50  

Fig. 13. The large German delegation at the Brussels Conference.

Layered into this potent combination in the 1920s was the rapid growth of a new ideology that gained a wide variety of leftist adherents following the war: international communism. When the Communist International (Comintern) was founded in 1919, its leaders did not initially pay much attention to the colonial world. But beginning in 1920, Vladimir Lenin argued that communists in the West should partner with communists in the colonies in order to damage the economic foundations of the capitalist powers.51 This “united front” policy, as we know, was meant to broaden the appeal of communism to a wide variety of left-leaning activists, including anticolonial revolutionaries, socialists, and trade unionists, in order to bring an end to colonial rule more quickly.52 And the radical potential of communism in the colonial and semi-colonial world did seem to be borne out by events of the 1920s and early 1930s, including two short-lived

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communist rebellions in Singapore and Java in 1926, and then a much more serious rebellion in Indochina from 1930–1931. Most important in terms of the “united front” policy was the formation of an alliance between the nationalist Guomindang Party and the Chinese Communist Party in China between 1923 and 1927. In 1923, Soviet authorities signed a formal deal with the Guomindang leader, Sun Yat-sen, in which his party would work with the Chinese Communist Party to achieve full sovereignty for China, thus wresting control from foreign interference and also the warlord dominance that was tearing the country apart. To aid in the success of this “united front,” hundreds of Soviet advisors poured into China after 1923, bringing tactical and organizational advice, technical expertise, and aid. Soviet assistance was pivotal in the establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy (1925), where Chinese students learned revolutionary tactics and communist propaganda, while other Chinese students were sent to Moscow to learn about communist theory and strategy at the revolutionary source.53 Although we know in hindsight the fate of the communist forces inside the Guomindang Party just after the League’s first Congress in 1927, for most of the 1920s the example of China convinced many anticolonialists from a variety of ideological backgrounds that the internationalism, anticolonialism, and antiracism of the Comintern could be a powerful partner in the struggle for independence. This, then, was the global and internationalist milieu in which the League Against Imperialism was created. Its delegates and leadership had witnessed the frustrations of the war years and their consequences for the colonial world; many of them were already involved with other international and trans-regional movements to improve colonial conditions; and most of them had spent considerable time in European cities that exposed them not only to other anticolonial activists but also to the internationalism and egalitarianism of international communism. Through the example of China, they also saw the “united front” policy—and its potential for a successful marriage between communist support and anti-imperialism— in action. So even though the League was unique in its size, membership, and holistic view of imperialism as a global problem, it was also deeply rooted in its time. Themes and Approaches One of the most important intentions of this volume is the retelling of the LAI’s history from what historians might consider “peripheries.” Most of the people who feature in its pages were anticolonial activists from

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colonial or semi-colonial locations. While some of them lived in Europe as students or exiles, they represented a wide range of places, including India, China, North and sub-Saharan Africa, the East Indies, Latin America, and the Levant. Without dismissing the significance of European actors and sites, this volume brings to light the importance of the colonial world to the making of interwar internationalism. While “provincializing Europe” has been a driving force of post-colonial scholarship, the histories of interwar internationalism lag behind in revealing the sources and perspectives outside Europe.54 This volume uses the LAI to tell a global story of interwar internationalism, in which Europe and the colonial world mutually constituted anti-imperialism. At the same time, anti-imperialist internationalism shaped the local histories of anticolonial resistance throughout the world. Our goal has been to be as inclusive as possible in highlighting the geographical diversity of League participants. Efforts to include every area of importance to the League’s history were only partially successful—important omissions include Indochina, the Caribbean, and the Philippines—but this volume brings into dialogue a wide range of people, places, and topics related to the League. And while each story is different, when read together it is clear that certain themes and approaches continually resurface. Of these, none stand out more than the “lives” and “afterlives,” for which the volume is subtitled. Many of the essays are not only about the “lives” or “afterlives” of the League members, but also view their stories using “lives” or “afterlives” as a methodological lens. It is important to note, in this context, that the League brought together several generations of activists. It convened an anti-imperialist generation that had fought against colonial invasions and aggression in the pre-war period. Some, such as M.P.T. Acharya and Maulana Barakatullah, had been part of earlier anarchist and Pan-Islamist movements. This generation joined forces with a “newer” generation, whose activism targeted a changed world order from the 1920s onwards. The global context of the interwar period provided the right conditions for these two generations to unite and work together under the banner of the League.55 Several League members of this second generation, along with younger colleagues who were still waiting in the wings, would wield a considerable amount of power as the first generation of post-colonial leaders after the Second World War. Essays by Carolien Stolte and Christopher Lee demonstrate the intellectual and personal connections between League members and later internationalisms in the early Cold War. It is no coincidence that Mark T. Berger would later see this group as different from the post-

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colonial leaders of the 1960s whose careers had not started in the interwar moment of internationalist optimism. To him, early post-colonial leaders for whom decolonization had been the crowning achievement of their careers were different political beings from the generation of leaders whose careers began after the Second World War.56 For this reason, the “afterlives” examined in this volume cover echoes of the League in the activism of those who were connected directly to the League or to its members. In the same vein, the final chapter by Jeff Byrne demonstrates that the extraordinary longevity of the League’s anti-imperialist blueprint had limitations among a new generation in a decolonized world. In terms of lives, six of the essays explore the stories of key figures who participated in the League, particularly Jawaharlal Nehru, V.K. Krishna Mennon, Mohammad Hatta, Lamine Senghor, Messali Hadj, and Willi Münzenberg. Two further essays, by Anna Belogurova and Sana TannouryKaram, explore several lesser-known individuals—at least outside their own region—who were involved in the League. Still another uses the life of the South African Alex la Guma to explore the intellectual legacies of the League on the post-Second World War period. The importance of individuals in these stories is testament to the usefulness, as Christopher Lee argues in this volume, “of biography for approaching broader global trends.” Indeed, many of the essays assembled here demonstrate just how much the League was about the power of experience, about building personal connections, and about learning from others. The first Congress in Brussels is a good example of this, since it was a moment that profoundly affected many who attended. Hearing messages of support from people like Gandhi and Einstein, seeing delegates from so many places in the world stand shoulder to shoulder with each other and with Europeans allies, and hearing again and again similarities of experience with imperialism regardless of the colonizing power or the region made for a deeply pedagogical experience. The orbit of the League was also a rare space in which anticolonial activists from the colonies forged real, personal, and sustained alliances with members of the European working classes. From that initial meeting and through later executive meetings of the leadership and the activities of regional chapters, members of the League built lasting contacts with many of the individuals who would go on to play critical roles in their own national independence movements or who would represent the European left. As Dónal Hassett argues in this volume regarding Algerian participants, “their involvement in the League provided them with the language, the practices, and the contacts, which they could

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use to develop their own networks of anti-imperial solidarity, sometimes within the orbit of the LAI, sometimes expressly outside it.” Even years later, when Mohammad Hatta of Indonesia spoke of the development of his relationship with Jawaharlal Nehru and Messali Hadj at the Congress, he recalled that “during all these years, I have treasured their memory in my heart.”57 And as scholars like Michele Louro have shown, these relationships and the global vision of anti-imperialism they engendered went on to influence the ideas of many of the delegates—like Nehru— who helped to pioneer their respective independence movements.58 One of the things the League demonstrates, then, is that lives were the essential building blocks of global anti-imperialist networks in the interwar period. A different kind of (after)life of the League consisted of inter-state networks built in response to it. Colonial authorities strengthened not only their own surveillance networks but also their cooperation with one another. The importance of the League to its members was mirrored in the threat it was perceived to pose to imperial powers. During the First World War, both British and French colonies had been the target of revolutionary conspiracies between anticolonial activists and German agents, which themselves led to the establishment of political intelligence agencies aimed at counter-insurgency.59 When the war ended, and with it the possibility of German collaboration with anticolonial activists, colonial counter-intelligence focused instead on international communism as a new, even more threatening, bogeyman. Now it appeared that a rapidly evolving great power had a specific, peace-time mission to undermine the established system of colonial rule all over the world. Instead of the threat of internal enemies opposed to colonial rule in specific colonies, colonial authorities now believed that the threat was coming from the outside, directly from Moscow. The same “united front” strategy in China that seemed so promising to anticolonial activists in the mid-1920s was, from the perspective of colonial states, intensely alarming. This was not limited to the desire of states like Britain and France to maintain control over the treaty ports and international concessions in China. Equally threatening was the potential effect of communist ideology on anti-colonial activists who were able to travel to China for training, and on the large overseas Chinese populations in Indochina, Malaya, the East Indies, and the Philippines, many of whom were already members of the Guomindang party. Colonial authorities feared that the integration of the Chinese Communist party into the Guomindang would encourage Chinese living in the colonies to become radicalized themselves, and that it would also encourage them to spread their anti-colonial, communist message among

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non-Chinese colonial subjects.60 The League was therefore founded during a time of extreme anxiety for the colonial states about the potential of communist influence from Moscow to undermine colonial and semicolonial rule both in China and around the world. The publication of the Labour and Socialist International report in 1927 discussed above, only further convinced European security forces that the League was a Communist front organization. In 1929, a long British report on the League summed up the opinion of colonial authorities when it concluded that “the League may be described as an International Organisation, inspired and financed by Moscow, with world-wide ramifications whose main object—euphemistically described as support of the struggle for freedom of the oppressed Colonial countries—is to stir up trouble in the Colonies and Dependencies of what it calls the Imperialist countries.”61 These beliefs inspired British and French intelligence networks to infiltrate the League’s membership, sending spies not only to the first Congress but also to regional meetings.62 Colonial authorities closely tracked League members and shared information with the other colonial states about their activities, movements, and publications.63 They were especially keen to prevent the movement of League members to the colonies themselves, and refused visas to known participants, as Daniel Brückenhaus’ essay in this volume shows.64 Indeed, the response of colonial authorities to the formation of the League speaks volumes about their fears of collaboration between anticolonialists and more powerful allies. To counter this threat they expanded political intelligence networks, increased their networks of spies, improved their methods of surveillance and investigation of people deemed “subversive,” and interfered in the movement of individuals around the world. They intensified their collaboration and information-sharing with other colonial states eager to minimize the international threat posed by the League. This “afterlife” of the League worked self-consciously to undermine the agenda of global anti-imperialist activism that the League participants were so keen to pursue. The colonial authorities’ determination to undermine global antiimperialism was hardly the only obstacle facing the League and its participants. Inherent in the structure but also the purpose of the League were tensions over race, gender, identity, and class that activists could not escape, even when they sought to overcome them. Many of these were particularly visible in the relationship between nationalism and internationalism. As many of the essays demonstrate, nationalism and internationalism were not necessarily oppositional. Yet much of the

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recent historiography on transnationalism, which transcends or displaces the nation, has neglected the strong ties that connected international and national movements. Within the LAI, as Dónal Hassett argues in the case of Algeria, “the complex blend of conflict and cooperation between the nascent Algerian nationalism and the early organisations of international anti-imperialism shaped the evolution of both movements.” A similar interplay, ebbing between conflict and cooperation, can be seen in essays ranging from India to South Africa, Indonesia, China, and the Levant. Overall, this volume demonstrates the significance, if not the necessity, of situating nationalism and internationalism within the same analytic frame of interwar anti-imperialism. Many essays also reveal the significance of anti-imperialism in amplifying certain anticolonial movements and creating spaces for alternatives to nationalism in the colonial world. For example, the League offered a platform for nationalists, Pan-Asianists, and Pan-Africanists to project their local messages on a global stage. In this way, the LAI shaped the possibilities and enhanced the reach of nationalist and regionalist messages and campaigns. Klaas Stutje most clearly demonstrates this in his exploration of the ways in which the LAI amplified the Indonesian student movement, which before 1927 had been a marginal organization in the Netherlands. The LAI ultimately shaped and was shaped by nascent nationalist or regional anti-colonial organizations. At the same time, the LAI reproduced many of the hierarchies of the interwar world. Often the activities and priorities of national sections in imperial metropoles trumped the voices and concerns of their colonial counterparts. At times, this was overlaid by assumptions about racial superiority and civilizing discourses. This is clearly demonstrated in the case of the French branch in relation to Algeria or Senghor’s “negro” groups. Even within the international secretariat, Münzenberg often privileged the leadership of European socialists and communists over that of colonial members. Equally clear were the gender hierarchies reproduced in the LAI. There is little doubt that the LAI imagined and worked within a homosocial world.65 Returning to the Brussels Congress, the chairman of the British Labour Party, George Lansbury, argued that the LAI’s chief goal was the “unity of the human race … united in the bonds of economic freedom, working to produce not for imperialist nations nor for capitalism, but for the service of all the children of men.”66 The Brussels Congress hosted a total of six women among its official delegates, all of whom were European and represented organizations in Britain, Germany, France,

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Figs. 14 and 15. Lamine Senghor delivers his speech, and George Lansbury shares a moment with GMD representative Liao Huanxing.

and the Netherlands.67 One notable exception was Madame Sun Yat-sen, widow of Chinese nationalist Sun Yat-sen, who could not attend but sent fraternal greetings and served on the honorary praesidium alongside other luminaries such as Mohandas Gandhi and Albert Einstein. Photographs of the Brussels Congress clearly demonstrate this overwhelmingly homosocial milieu.  This environment of the LAI stood in stark contrast to shifting gender relations in the 1920s that empowered women through suffrage and new social concepts of female leadership in movements for peace and national freedom. Women were not at all absent from interwar internationalism.68 But the anti-imperialist circles of the League reproduced rather than overturned the older order of gender hierarchy inherent in imperialism. As Stolte’s essay demonstrates, it was only after the Second World War that a larger-scale arrival of women to anti-imperialist internationalism unfolded in the era of rapid decolonization.69 Ultimately, we believe the League should be studied in its own right for its successes in bringing together so many leftists and anticolonial activists from so many parts of the world, and also for its initial ambitions to cross racial, cultural, and ideological boundaries to achieve its larger

the league against imperialism  43

Fig 16. Particularly the unstaged photographs of the Congress reveal its mostly male participation.

goals. In addition, the League should be studied because of the impact it had on leaders who went on to shape their own national independence movements, and because of the ways it triggered ever more sophisticated and collaborative networks of surveillance by the colonial powers. Finally, studying the League helps us to understand a dynamic internationalist moment in which people believed in the potential for organizing across borders to achieve complex social and political goals. Given the carnage

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Fig. 17. Brussels delegates in the palace courtyard during a break. Dutch poet Henriëtte Roland Holst is the only female delegate, second from the right.

of the Second World War and the markedly “national” independence movements that followed in its wake, this is something of which we have too often lost sight. Notes 1

For the example of Brockway and Liao, see Frederik Petersson, “‘We Are Neither Visionaries nor Utopian Dreamers’: Willi Münzenberg, the League Against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925–1933” (Åbo Akademi University: PhD Dissertation, 2013), 146. Petersson’s dissertation is by far the most extensive institutional history of the League, although his focus is on the Comintern papers and Willi Münzenberg’s role in the League’s creation. Liao is featured in Anna Belogurova’s essay in this volume.

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2

3

4

5

6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13

14

15

16

Though representing Puerto Rico, Vasconcelos was actually from Mexico. As Michael Goebel shows in this volume, this laid bare power dynamics that did not work in favor of Puerto Rico. International Institute for Social History (hereafter IISH), League Against Imperialism Archives (hereafter LAIA), Speech by Jose Vasconcelos representing Puerto Rico, 10 February 1927. Speech of J.T. Gumede, President of the ANC, at the International Congress Against Imperialism, 15 February 1927. http://www.anc.org.za/content/ speech-jt-gumede-president-anc-international-congress-against-imperialism. See also Christopher Lee in this volume. Michele Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 65. The sixteen resolutions not approved at the Congress itself were passed along to the Executive Committee for later approval. IISH, LAIA, Resolution Anglo-Indoue-Chinoise, 1927. Original in French. IISH, LAIA, Agenda, Brussels, 1927, 1. IISH, LAIA, Manifesto of the Brussels Congress Against Imperialism, 1927. IISH, LAIA, List of Organizations and Delegates Attending the Congress Against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism, 1927. The other secretaries at the International Secretariat included the British journalist and communist Clemens Dutt, the Czech communist and Comintern emissary Bohumil Smeral, and the Japanese-Danish communist Hans Thogerson. Petersson, “We are Neither Visionaries,” 35–6. Petersson, “We are Neither Visionaries,” 135. Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism, 77. See also Klaas Stutje and Michele Louro in this volume. Daniel Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal Imperialism and the Surveillance of Anticolonialists in Europe, 1905–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 139. See, among others: Ali Raza, Franziska Roy, and Benjamin Zachariah’s edited volume called The Internationalist Moment: South Asia, Worlds, and World Views, 1917–1939 (New Delhi: Sage, 2014). This volume views the moment extending until the start of the European phase of the war. Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont, Offizielles Protokoll des Kongresses gegen Koloniale Unterdrückung und Imperialismus, Brüssel, 10–15 Februar 1927 (Berlin: Neue Deutscher Verlag, 1927). It is unclear how active these branches were in this period. The LAI produced this list to promote its work. See IISH, LAIA, File 2.

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17

18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27

28 29 30

31 32

For his only biographical history, see N. K. Barooah, Chatto: The Life and Times of an Indian Anti-Imperialist in Europe (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004). Only one issue of the Anti-Imperialist Review was published in July 1928, while several more appeared later in 1931. Copies of all are available in the reading room of the IISH. For analyses of the writings in the Anti-Imperialist Review, see the essays in this volume by Louro, Stolte, and Karnad Jani. The official list of affiliated members is printed in the Anti-Imperialist Review, 94–6. P. C. Joshi Archives, New Delhi, League against Imperialism Papers, File 6: Chattopadhyaya to Nehru, 3 March 1929. For further details on the role of the Comintern in the League, see Petersson, “We are Neither Visionaries,” 142–3, and Petersson’s essay in this volume. Petersson, “We are Neither Visionaries,” 47. Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism, 53–4. Petersson, “We are Neither Visionaries,” 160. Ibid., 167. For a detailed exploration of the larger context of international socialism in this period, see Talbot Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism: European Socialists and International Politics, 1914–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). The two men most responsible for this report were Friedrich Adler, secretary of the LSI in Zurich, and William Gillies, secretary of the international department of Britain’s Labour Party. Petersson, “We are Neither Visionaries,” 190. Ibid., 200. IISH, LAIA, List of Affiliated, Associated, and Sympathizing Organizations, February 1929. For Meerut, see the special issue “The Meerut Conspiracy Case in Comparative and International Perspective,” edited by Michele Louro and Carolien Stolte, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 33:3 (2013). For the ‘anti-exposition,’ see Daniel Brückenhaus, “The Transnational Surveillance of Anti-Colonialist Movements in Western Europe, 1905–1945” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 161–164. For the Noulens Affair, see Heather Streets-Salter, “The Noulens Affair in East and Southeast Asia: International Communism in the Interwar Period,” Journal of American East-Asian Relations 21 (2014), 394–414: 406. See the contributions by Louro and Reeves in this volume. Hull History Centre, Bridgeman Papers, File DBN 25/2: League against Imperialism secretariat to members, May 7, 1937.

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33 34

35

36 37

38

39

The CIB closed in 1944, while the Comintern dissolved in May 1943. Jean Jones, The League Against Imperialism (London: Socialist History Society, 1996); Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. II, ed. by Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville (London: Macmillan Press, 1984), 40–49; Petersson, “We are Neither Visionaries.” Petersson has published several articles involving the League, including “Hub of the Anti-Imperialist Movement” in Interventions 16:1 (2014). Vijay Prashad devotes attention to the LAI in The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York: New Press, 2007), 16–30; Susan Pennybacker covers many of the key players in the LAI in From Scottsboro to Munich: Race and Political Culture in 1930s Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); Klaas Stutje elaborates on the Indonesian context in “To Maintain an Independent Course: Inter-War Indonesian Nationalism and International Communism on a Dutch-European Stage,” Dutch Crossings 39:3 (2015). For a short history of the LAI in Paris, see Michael Goebel’s AntiImperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Michele Louro’s Comrades Against Imperialism devotes several chapters to the League in the context of Jawaharlal Nehru’s development as an internationalist, while Daniel Brückenhaus devotes a chapter to it in the context of colonial surveillance in Policing Transnational Protest. Nearly all of the authors mentioned here except Prashad have been involved in this volume. For example, in Talbot Imlay’s The Practice of Socialist Internationalism. What remains has been preserved (and digitized) at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. One notable exception is the published official proceedings and images from the Brussels Congress printed by the international secretariat: Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont: offizielles Protokoll des Kongresses gegen koloniale Unterdrückung und Imperialismus, Brüssel, 10–15 Februar 1927 (Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 1927). President Sukarno of Indonesia himself made this case in his opening address at Bandung on April 18, 1955. See, Selected Documents of the Bandung Conference (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1955). See also Prashad, The Darker Nations. For the effects of mythologizing in the context of the Bandung conference, see Robert Vitalis, “The Midnight Ride of Kwame Nkrumah and Other Fables of Bandung (Ban-doong),” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitariansim, and Development 4:2 (2013). Klaas Stutje and David Murphy explore the myths mentioned here in their essays in this volume.

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40

41

42

43

Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 3. The argument that anticolonial nationalism for the colonized emerged in relation to internationalism has been advanced even earlier by Brent Hayes Edwards, “The Shadow of Shadows,” positions 11:1 (2003), 11–49. This is also a central theme in Louro, Comrades against Imperialism. There is a growing literature on international anticolonial revolutionary movements in the pre-war period, including those focused on European metropolitan cities like London, on Japan after the Russo-Japanese war, and on the United States. See 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 2:3 (2007); Shiraishi Masaya and Vinh Sinh (eds.), Phan Boi Chau and the Dong-Du Movement, Lac-Viet Series (New Haven, CT: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1988); 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). There is now a large literature about the experiences of colonial soldiers and laborers during the war, for example: Andrew Tait Jarboe and Richard Standish Fogarty, Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014); Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela (eds.), Empires at War, 1911–1923 (Oxford University Press, 2014); Jacques Frémeaux, Les Colonies dans la Grande Guerre: Combats et Éprouves des Peuples d’Outre-Mer (Paris: 14–18 Editions, 2006); Richard Standish Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013); Kimloan Hill, “Strangers in a Foreign Land: Vietnamese Soldiers and Workers in France during World War I,” in Nhung Tuyet Tran and Anthony Reid (eds.), Viet Nam: Borderless Histories (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006); Gajendra Singh, The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). The activities of Indian revolutionaries have been particularly well covered. See, in addition to Ramnath’s Haj to Utopia, also Kris Manjapra, “The Illusions of Encounter: Muslim ‘Minds’ and Hindu Revolutionaries in First World War Germany and After,” Journal of Global History 1:3 (2006); Maia Ramnath, “Two Revolutions: The Ghadar Movement and India’s Radical Diaspora, 1913–1918,” Radical History Review 92 (2005); A.C. Bose, “Activities of Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 1914–1918,” in A.C. Bose and Amitabha Mukherjee (eds.), Militant Nationalism in India, 1876–1947 (Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1995), and Heather Streets-Salter, World War

the league against imperialism  49

44

45

46

47 48

49

50 51 52

One in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). For anti-French revolutionaries during the war, see Christopher Goscha, Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution, 1885–1954 (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999), and Streets-Salter, World War One in Southeast Asia, chapters 5 and 6. Erez Manela gives an excellent account of the promise and the profound disappointments of the Paris Peace conference in The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). For a recent, thorough, and authoritative look at the establishment of the Mandates, see Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Both pan-Asianism and pan-Africanism emerged well before the interwar years, but enjoyed a resurgence in this period. See Hakim Adi, Pan-Africanism: A History (London: Bloomsbury, 2018); Carolien Stolte and Harald FischerTiné, “Imagining Asia in India: Nationalism and Internationalism (ca. 1905–1940),” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54:1 (2012), 65–92; 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). Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism, 55. Michael Goebel captures this dynamic environment ably in Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Petersson estimates that about 5,000 colonial subjects lived in Berlin during the interwar period. Petersson, “We are Neither Visionaries,” 8; for the “contact zone” language, Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest, 153. After 1933, David Motadel demonstrates that Berlin continued to provide a space for some radical anticolonial activists who preferred, or tolerated, authoritarianism. See Motadel, “The Global Authoritarian Moment and the Revolt Against Empire,” American Historical Review 124:3 (2019). Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest, 142. Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism, 39. Communist parties certainly proliferated in the colonial world during the 1920s, beginning with the Parti Komunis Indonesia, the Communist Party of Iran, and the establishment of the first Communist Party of India in Tashkent in 1920. These were followed by the Chinese and South African Communist Parties in 1921, the Egyptian Communist Party in 1923, the Palestinian Communist Party in 1924, and then in 1925 by the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of Korea, the Syrian and Lebanese

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53

54

55 56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63

Communist Party, and the South Seas Communist Party. By 1930, colonial communist parties included the Indochinese Communist Party, the Malayan Communist Party, and the Filipino Communist Party. Kevin McDermott, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 168–9; StreetsSalter, “The Noulens Affair in East and Southeast Asia,” 406. On “provincializing Europe,” see the foundational text by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Histories of interwar internationalism tend to focus on the League of Nations, told through the sources of Europeans and Americans. See for example, Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015); Daniel Laqua, ed. Internationalism Reconfigured: Transnational Ideas and Movements between the World Wars (New York: IB Tauris, 2011). This issue is confronted explicitly in the essays by Tannoury-Karam, Hassett, and Stutje. Mark T. Berger, “After the Third World? History, Destiny, and the Fate of Third Worldism,” Third World Quarterly, 25:1 (2004), 9–39. Quoted in Stutje, “To Maintain an Independent Course,” 199. This is one of Michele Louro’s central points about Jawaharlal Nehru in this volume and in Comrades Against Imperialism. Heather Streets-Salter’s recent World War One in Southeast Asia details a variety of these conspiracies in Southeast and East Asia. Ironically, given the fears of colonial authorities, C.F. Yong and R.B. McKenna argue that many Guomindang party members in Singapore and Malaya were anti-communist and did not support the United Front in the mid-1920s, even though British authorities believed otherwise. See Ching Fatt Yong and R.B. McKenna, “The Kuomintang Movement in Malaya and Singapore, 1912–1925,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12 (1981), 125. British Library (BL), India Office Records (IOR) L/PJ/12/280 File 1309(h)/25: R.T. Peel’s Memorandum on League Against Imperialism, 1929, 8. Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest, 142. Among hundreds of examples are the papers in the India Office Records of the British Library, L/PJ/12/267, file 1309/25: League Against Imperialism: Reports on Activities (1927). These files indicate that all members of the League were watched, and all had files on them by their various countries or colonial governments. These papers include the French Police files of L. Gibarti, Mme. Mathilde Duchene, Alexandre Roubakine, which were given

the league against imperialism  51

64

65

66

67

68

69

to the British. They also include Dutch files given to the British and viceversa. A high profile refusal was to Sun Yat-Sen’s widow, Soong Ching Ling, in June 1928. Officially her membership in the League Against Imperialism was not mentioned, but it was abundantly discussed in internal intelligence memos. BL, IOR, L/PJ/12/276: Madame Sun Yat Sen (Refusal of a Visa for India). One omission to this volume is an essay specifically dedicated to gender. We make this point in the introduction to note the possibilities for further research, although we were unable to locate a scholar who could offer a compelling analysis of the LAI and gender. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi: All-India Congress Committee Papers (AICC), File G29-1927: George Lansbury, Speech at the Brussels Congress. These named representatives included Helen Crawfurd (Britain), Helene Stocker (Germany), Madame Duschene (France), and Henriëtte RolandHolst (Netherlands). See, among others, Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). For movements with an anti-imperialist bent, see also Elisabeth Armstrong, “Before Bandung: The Anti-Imperialist Women’s Movement in Asia and the Women’s International Democratic Federation,” Signs 41:2 (2016); Sumita Mukherjee, Indian Suffragettes: Female Identities and Transnational Networks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). On new registers and demographics in anti-imperialist internationalism during decolonization, see the essays in the special issue edited by Su Lin Lewis and Carolien Stolte, “Other Bandungs: Afro-Asian Internationalisms in the Early Cold War,” Journal of World History 30:1–2 (2019).

Chapter 2

Forging a Proto-Third World? Latin America and the League Against Imperialism Michael Goebel Introduction Historians of Latin America often protest that their region is marginalized, or misunderstood, in the rising field of global history. The complaint has taken various forms: the best-known global historians do not devote sufficient attention to the region and, when they do, their treatment of it is superficial and prone to interpretive mistakes.1 Leading journals of global and world history do not publish enough articles specifically dedicated to Latin America.2 Or else, since Latin America had long been subjected to extra-continental influences, historiography of the region, too, has always been global in outlook, but English-language scholarship, owing to its linguistic narrow-mindedness, does not sufficiently recognize this.3 The consensus, however, if mainly among Latin Americanists themselves, seems to be that their region is not granted the attention that it deserves. There are several problems with such complaints. In light of the difficulty of demarcating a field that through its defining adjective “global” announces its expansionist scholarly potential, it is rarely clear what exactly global history is. As a consequence, it is not quite clear either from what exactly Latin America is being sidelined. Given the burgeoning historical literatures about overseas empires, Atlantic revolutions, and trans-oceanic migrations, the precise boundaries of Latin America—that is, the object of supposed marginalization—are rather blurred, too. Most importantly, however, the plaintiffs rarely clarify the criteria according to which an acceptable amount of attention to Latin America in global history should be determined.4 Rather they seem to operate on an implicit assumption: that the history of Latin America is integral to those historiographical quarters that in recent decades have embraced the mantle of global history most enthusiastically, such as the histories of modern empires and imperialism, of slavery, of resistance to all these, and of the eventual rise of the idea of the “Third World” or, more recently, the “Global South.” The assumption that Latin America should be seen as an essential part of these histories, of course, itself has a history. By exploring the role of Latin America in the Comintern-sponsored League Against Imperialism 53

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(1927–1937), this chapter provides a case study for illuminating the history of that assumption. Habituated as we now are to viewing Latin America as an intrinsic part of the “developing world,” the “Global South,” or “The Third World,” it is all too easily forgotten that things were not always so straightforward. When French demographer Alfred Sauvy first coined the term in 1952, his “Third World” did not yet comprise Latin America, since for him the concept still related more closely to contemporaneously decolonizing countries.5 Nor did Latin Americans take part in the Afro-Asian Conference held in Bandung in 1955, which Sukarno, then president of Indonesia, famously cast as a successor to the League Against Imperialism’s 1927 conference in Brussels’ Egmont Palace.6 It was only the Cuban Revolution and its “tricontinental” engagement during the 1960s that firmly established Latin America as part of the “Third World,” aligning the concept more closely with economic “underdevelopment” and relating it to more variegated forms of imperialism than the formal colonial control that was being unwound in the years after the Second World War.7 Revealing both the possibilities and the limits of a tricontinental, anti-imperialist imagination that included Latin America by the late 1920s is the aim of this chapter. Latin America’s role in the League Against Imperialism (LAI) is a suitable topic for this purpose, for two reasons. First, much like Sukarno, historians have often cast the LAI’s inaugural conference of 1927 as a precursor to Bandung and Third Worldism.8 Second, and more importantly, the foundation of the LAI in 1927 was one of the few historical moments prior to the 1960s in which a powerful organization, the Comintern, seriously attempted to formulate a global solidarity of “oppressed nations,” as the jargon of the time had it, which comprised Latin America. To be sure, the Latin American share among the approximately 175 delegates present in Brussels (roughly 8.5 per cent) was even less than the percentage of articles devoted to Latin America in the Journal of Global History between 2006 and 2016 (9 per cent).9 Yet, both on the Latin American side and among representatives from other world regions, the LAI’s initial years brought together prominent personalities who would later play important roles in the elaboration of a Third World imaginary. As a US delegate put it, the conference at Brussels’ Egmont Palace, which today ironically houses the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was a “star-studded affair.”10 It also offers a good touchstone for gauging both the prospects and the limits of a tricontinental Third Worldism avant la lettre. Exploring such a proto-Third Worldism from the vantage point of Latin America implies engaging with two distinct strands of scholarship.

forging a proto-third world?  55

The first of these is the historiography of anti-imperialism and leftwing politics in Latin America, which has conventionally focused on ideological disputes within Marxism, the relationship between socialism and populism, and the prospects of social revolution in Latin America. Perhaps unsurprisingly in light of Moscow’s comparatively weak interest in the region, communist parties and the Comintern have played a secondary role in this literature, which instead has for the most part focused on supposedly more interesting heterodox thinkers.11 The standard history of the Comintern in Latin America, in turn, dealt mainly with the relationship between Soviet emissaries and local politics, mentioning the LAI only in passing.12 Querying the role that the LAI played for Latin American anti-imperialists of the 1920s thus allows us not only to bring together several discrete strands of scholarship, but also to re-assess the importance of transnational and global imaginaries in the formation of left-wing politics within Latin America. The second strand of scholarship concerns the LAI and interwar anti-imperialism globally. Recent attention to the LAI has largely been a product of the rise of transnational and global history, as well as post-colonial studies, all of which grew at a time when interest in the history of communism was in steep decline. Even though the Comintern was a global organization par excellence, the result of this disjuncture has been that recent historiography of the LAI—as opposed to the pre-1989 historiography produced in socialist countries, which was often well-researched but ideologically tinged—has tended to downplay the League’s relationship with the Comintern.13 It has also had little to say about Latin American participation in the LAI, which is surprising considering that, because of the low proportion of committed communists among them, their participation in Brussels would have made for a particularly convincing case of the LAI’s ideological heterogeneity, and alleged distance to communism, during its early years.14 Foregrounding the presence of these Latin Americans and the problems with which it presented the League sheds new light on interwar understandings of anti-imperialism, and their relationship with communism more broadly. Two central questions, then, run through this chapter. First, what does the history of the LAI tell us about Latin American anti-imperialism in the 1920s? Second, what can Latin American participation in the LAI tell us about the League and, more broadly, about global anti-imperialism during the 1920s? Here, the chapter focuses on the multiple mismatches between anti-imperialism in world regions still subject to formal colonialism and

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in Latin America, where nominal political independence had mostly been achieved a century prior to the foundation of the League. The Comintern, Latin America, and Theories of Imperialism Discussion of the importance of communism for the LAI has focused on the years before 1928, after which the Guomindang-communist split in China and the Comintern’s abandonment of alliances with “bourgeois nationalists” rendered the League’s communist orientation more obvious. Within these early years of ideological fluidity, assessments based on Comintern archives have unsurprisingly found greater communist involvement than those following some of its early players, such as Jawaharlal Nehru.15 With a view to Latin America, both perspectives matter: the League’s character as a Comintern organization, though willfully disguised by its chief organizers in the first years, was the entry ticket to the LAI for the mostly non-communist Latin Americans to begin with. This communist character proved ironic, since it also provided the source of subsequent friction and, once Comintern policies towards noncommunist allies became more implacable, the reason for the exit of the League’s most prominent Latin American members. From a Latin American point of view, the organization’s communist background was important not so much as a pole of ideological attraction in itself, but rather in that it furnished the materialist rationale for including Latin American countries as victims of imperialism in the first place. Latin American anti-imperialists, who of course existed prior to 1927, needed no further persuasion that theirs were indeed nations oppressed by imperialism.16 Yet, from a global angle, in order to include Latin America as a region subjected to imperialism, a theory of imperialism was required that went beyond the customary understanding of formal colonial political control, which after all had expired in most of Latin America around 1820. Lenin’s 1917 treatise about imperialism provided such a theory. In wedding the concept of imperialism to the global expansion of finance capital, explicitly treating Argentina as an example of a “semi-colony,” Lenin had officially sanctioned the treatment of Latin America as a victim of imperialism, which consequently necessitated being addressed under a single analytical and organizational roof.17 The point was not that the text necessarily converted Latin Americans to communism. Nor that Lenin’s was the only available theory of imperialism that potentially made room for Latin America.18 Rather, given the Comintern’s doctrinal adherence to Leninism, it furnished an incentive for an organizational practice that incorporated Latin America. 

forging a proto-third world?  57

Fig. 18. Drawing by Diego Rivera on the Front Page of El Libertador, no. 18, June 1928, depicting Nicaragua as assassinated by the United States.

The minority of Latin American anti-imperialist groups that self-identified as communist unsurprisingly subscribed to Lenin’s understanding of imperialism as an expression of finance capitalism. El Libertador, the organ of the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas (LADLA), a Cominternaffiliated group of intellectuals from various Latin American countries founded in Mexico City in 1925, clarified as much from its very first issue. In explicit opposition to earlier Latin American anti-imperialists who had a more culturalist view of imperialism, the paper defined the “yoke of imperialism” as “Yankee capital,” so that “any strike on a plantation or in a mine … is always a strike against the foreign master.”19 In a similar vein, the cartoons that appeared on the pages of subsequent issues, some of them drawn by the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera, characteristically included dollar signs and showed high rises representing Wall Street (see figure 1), while countless articles listed the land holdings, refineries, and mines owned by American companies.20 Use of the words “dollar” and “dollar imperialism” was likewise the leitmotiv of the speech in Brussels of Charles Philip, who under the pseudonym Manuel Gómez represented the LADLA’s US section.21 Its interpretation of imperialism dovetailing with that of the Comintern, the LADLA also became the Latin American association most closely linked to the LAI in the entire period from 1926 until 1930. But highlighting the economics of imperialism was not an exclusive domain of communists, as the case of the most prominent Latin American participant at Egmont Palace, the former Mexican education minister José Vasconcelos, shows. Vasconcelos’s Latin America-wide fame was largely

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based on a book he had published in Paris in 1925 entitled La raza cósmica, which was a cultural celebration of mestizaje (racial mixing) rather than a materialist indictment of capitalism.22 In fact, Vasconcelos, who later flirted with fascism, had no Marxist, let alone Leninist, predilections, as he expressly underlined in his speech in Brussels. His harping on the dangers of American capital investment in Mexico in that same speech thus did not stem from his adherence to, or even familiarity with, Lenin’s reading of imperialism, but rather from the fact that a focus on finance was simply the surest way to grant Latin America a seat at the global table of victims of imperialism.23 Ideologically, then, the LAI’s communism opened the door to the involvement of non-communist Latin American anti-imperialists. This inroad matched the Comintern’s policy before 1928, which recommended “united fronts” between communist cadres and “bourgeois nationalists.” It also served the aims of the LAI’s mastermind, the German communist Reichstag deputy and media baron, Willi Münzenberg, who conceived of the Brussels conference as a vehicle to lure “fellow travelers,” as he called them, into the Comintern’s orbit.24 Whereas in formally colonial settings the recruitment of non-communist participants for the Egmont Palace meeting was left to the communist parties of imperial countries, in the case of Latin America the task fell to Münzenberg’s Hungarian adjutant, Louis Gibarti (born László Dobos), who soon approached the LADLA in Mexico, the exiled Peruvian student leader, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre (who by then was in London), and his recently founded American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), as well as Latin American antiimperialist students in Paris.25 With the exception of LADLA members, such as the Cuban Julio Antonio Mella, the conference organizers thus expressly sought out non-communist participants with an anti-imperialist agenda—a category of people not difficult to find among Latin American exiles and intellectuals in cities such as Mexico City and Paris. Haya de la Torre and his APRA were a case in point of how the global reach and boilerplate policies of the Comintern, through the Brussels Conference, indirectly promoted the emergence of a non-communist anti-imperialist leader and organization. The APRA’s later importance for Peruvian national politics has overshadowed these transnational origins.26 The decisive boost that Haya’s career and the APRA received from the LAI has also been forgotten because shortly after (and partly owing to) the Brussels Conference Haya became known for his “populist” version of anti-imperialism, distancing himself from the official Comintern line toed by his compatriot José Carlos Mariátegui and by the Cuban Julio

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Antonio Mella, a prominent LADLA member and another speaker in Brussels. The fault line in this dispute—a typical local product of the global schism arising in the wake of the Guomindang-communist split in China—seemingly mapped onto the standard ideological divide of the moment: whereas Haya stressed the role of the “national bourgeoisie” for anti-imperialist revolutions, Mariátegui and Mella championed a socialist revolution from the beginning, without bourgeois participation, as the most promising strategy—matching the Comintern line adopted in 1928.27 But these realignments of 1928 obscured how, only one year earlier, Egmont Palace had been a stepping-stone for Haya and the APRA: although Haya later mythologized a 1924 meeting in Mexico City as APRA’s moment of foundation, the group really became known in the run-up to the LAI Conference. It was in anticipation of this event that APRA branches were opened in Paris and Buenos Aires. The conference permitted Haya to advertise his hitherto largely nominal group, for example in a piece he wrote for the British Labour Monthly of October 1926. Though Haya hedged his bets against a possible future Comintern takeover of his group by emphasizing that the APRA was “completely Latin American, without foreign interventions or influences,” the entire article was pitched to offer Haya’s services to the Comintern. It therefore stressed APRA’s nature as a “‘unique front’ anti-imperialist party,” which twisted the communist phrase of “united fronts,” but essentially corresponded to what Münzenberg was looking for when drafting speakers for Brussels. Underlining the link between capitalism and imperialism and entrusting the future revolution to workers and peasants, Haya’s programme as of late 1926 fitted Leninist ideas.28 The LAI thus promoted the rise of a political organization designed to serve as a non-communist Comintern ally in Latin America. Haya’s strategy found an expression in his characterization of the APRA as the “Guomindang of Latin America,” a formula that he first employed in late 1926, in a series of interviews with Chinese journalists in Europe.29 Since Haya occasionally met with Chinese activists in Europe in 1926, his appraisal of the Guomindang may well have been genuine.30 Yet it also served two other purposes. First, the analogy with China, the country that furnished by far the largest single contingent of speakers at Egmont Palace, firmly placed Latin America within a global imaginary of colonial and “semi-colonial” countries. Second, the parallel with the Guomindang positioned the APRA as an ally for communists, so as to earn Haya a ticket to Brussels. Eudocio Ravines, who headed the Parisian APRA section

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and also took part in the congress, later recalled that Haya’s “cunning” worked well at Egmont Palace: the Italian-Argentine communist Vittorio Codovilla and other communist congress participants courted Haya and skirted his later adversary, the Cuban communist Mella. Haya in turn availed himself of the congress to demarcate his independence from the Comintern and thus raise the APRA’s profile by ostentatiously signing the congress’ resolution on Latin America only “with reservations”; a manoeuvre that led not only to a split between Haya and the communist Mella, but also to a fracture of the APRA itself, some of whose members (for instance, Ravines) preferred to follow the Comintern and Mella.31 As the history of these communist former apristas suggests, the dispute between the APRA and the communists cannot exclusively be attributed to a fundamental ideological incompatibility. In fact, the reason that Haya gave as a pretext for his “reservations” regarding the congress resolution was the exact opposite of the argument he subsequently made in his disputes with Mariátegui and Mella: good anti-imperialists should oppose an “unconditional front with the [national] bourgeoisies,” he maintained in Brussels—the exact same point voiced one year later by Marxists such as Mariátegui and Mella, to which Haya then responded with a volte-face that celebrated the national bourgeoisie as the spearhead of anti-imperialism. Haya’s manoeuvre in Brussels, in short, served solely the tactical purpose of touting the APRA’s autonomous existence through staging a widely advertised break with the Comintern, which consequently switched its support to the more reliable Mella.32 The LAI’s communism, then, was a key vehicle for the inclusion of Latin Americans—including anti-communists—in an anti-imperialist international. Ideologically, Lenin’s definition of imperialism provided a blueprint for the admittance of very different countries under the broad umbrella of “colonial and semi-colonial.” Translated into an organizational practice that was based on such a wide purview and at the same time encouraged the participation of non-communists, the Brussels Congress became a stage for Latin American anti-imperialists, boosting some long political careers such as that of Haya de la Torre and his APRA. But the Latin American presence would also reveal the difficulties and limits of proto-Third Worldism. The Global Geography of Imperialism Ironically, whereas Lenin’s broad definition of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism admitted Latin Americans to take a seat at the table of “oppressed nations,” the LAI’s chief organizers remained wedded to

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another understanding of imperialism, which tended to narrow the term to formal colonial control. A reduction of imperialism to de jure colonialism inevitably made the inclusion of Latin America more questionable. As Münzenberg strove to include Indian anticolonialists in the course of 1926, the League’s definition of imperialism increasingly shifted towards formal colonial control—so much so that the League’s first official name was League against Colonial Oppression.33 The importance of colonialism was also reflected in the League’s eventual name in French and German after 1927 (Ligue contre l’impérialisme et l’oppression coloniale/Liga gegen Imperialismus und koloniale Unterdrückung). The full English name after the Brussels Congress, in turn, contained a crucial addendum referring to the aim of national sovereignty (“League Against Imperialism and for National Independence” [my emphasis]); a point that, like colonialism, looked less relevant for the majority of formally independent countries of Latin America than it was for colonial domains. The name betrayed an ongoing insistence on the nation-state in the League’s endeavours. Nowhere was this focus clearer than in the inordinately conspicuous role awarded to Puerto Rico, the only formally colonial domain in Latin America, when it came to showcasing the region’s subjection to imperialism. The outsized involvement of Puerto Rico at the Brussels Conference initially stemmed from the attempts of US communists to infiltrate the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico via a local branch of the LADLA, which had its headquarters in Mexico City.34 But the matter took on a dynamic of its own, as the leaders of the Nationalist Party mistrusted the LADLA’s advances and instead enlisted two prominent non-communist anti-imperialists to represent them in Brussels: the Mexican Vasconcelos and the Argentine Manuel Ugarte.35 Even though the Nationalist Party—which later became known for its Catholicism, admiration of Spanish colonialism, and flirtation with fascism—was an unlikely ally for the Comintern, foregrounding Puerto Rico in Brussels had the benefit of harmonizing the case of Latin America with demands for national independence elsewhere, particularly by establishing a parallel between Puerto Rico and the Philippines.36 The problem was not that Latin American anti-imperialists were, for any specific reason, disinclined to sympathize with Puerto Rican nationalism, but merely that it was low on their list of priorities. Vasconcelos’ Brussels speech on behalf of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico failed even to mention the island.37 Instead, by the time of the conference, Latin Americans campaigned primarily against the presence of American marines in Nicaragua, who ostensibly supported

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the Nicaraguan government to fight a rebellion led by Augusto César Sandino. Promoted by LADLA in Mexico City as well as Latin American student groups in Paris around the Uruguayan activist Carlos Quijano, another speaker in Brussels, the pro-Sandino campaign developed into a global cause célèbre during 1927.38 The focus on Puerto Rico in Brussels was thus rather unusual for mainstream anti-imperialist movements in Latin America at the time and can be seen as an attempt globally to align anti-imperialisms to the demand for national sovereignty. The greater resonance of the Nicaraguan cause revealed, and reinforced, a crucial aspect of Latin Americans’ notions of imperialism. It showed that they did not necessarily equate imperialism with the kind of de jure political control exerted by the United States in Puerto Rico or by European colonial empires elsewhere. Watchwords like “sovereignty” and patria were admittedly cornerstones of Sandino’s rhetoric. But as Alan McPherson has argued, among the several countries best eligible for anti-imperialist campaigning in the 1920s—including the Dominican Republic and Haiti—Nicaragua was in fact the one in which national sovereignty was least obviously threatened or curtailed, as US Marines had arrived by fiat of the national government and operated more locally.39 The reasons for Nicaragua’s eminence were manifold, some of them mundane: Sandino’s fighters possessed excellent transnational solidarity networks in the places that mattered most, such as Mexico City and San José, where the intellectual magazine Repertorio Americano helped to create a continent-wide anti-imperialist public sphere.40 With Sandino the struggle also had a single heroic figure that the other movements of resistance to US occupation lacked. Other reasons, in turn, were indicative of the broader ideological forces that drove Latin American anti-imperialism in the 1920s: Sandino’s framing of his rebellion as a defence of the “Indo-Hispanic race” against “Yankee invaders” echoed the indigenista elements of the anti-imperialist idiom of the time—evident, for instance, in Haya de la Torre’s talk of indoamericanismo.41 Continental opposition to US meddling in Nicaragua could moreover build on the precedent of a hemispheric intellectual campaign against the filibuster invasion of the 1850s; a movement that had midwifed the very term “Latin America.”42 As a long-standing cornerstone of a Latin America under threat, Nicaragua was thus perceived as deserving of a continentwide solidarity campaign in its defence. The ideal of Latin American unity, an essential part of anti-imperialism in Latin America long before the Brussels Conference, was equally central to the views of the Latin American participants in the LAI. The Parisian

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student group of one speaker in Brussels, the Uruguayan Carlos Quijano, was a case in point: its roughly 250 members in 1927 hailed from virtually all Latin American countries, but characteristically excluded Brazil.43 The group’s activities rested, first, on opposition to US imperialism and, second, its official aim of “abolishing nationality” within Latin America, so that “everybody will be equally Latin American.”44 A Parisian demonstration that the group organized one month after the LAI conference thus “protest[ed] against the U.S. intervention in Nicaragua” and called the event “a demonstration of Latin solidarity.”45 Other European-based antiimperialist organizations whose leaders were present in Brussels, such as the French cell of Haya de la Torre’s APRA and Mella’s Association of New Cuban Revolutionary Emigrants, were equally transnationally Latin American (excluding Brazil), both in their social composition and in their avowed political aims.46 Latin American anti-imperialism thus rested on Spanish American transnational networks, which clustered in cities with a large number of Spanish American exiles and intellectuals from various countries—notably Mexico City, Paris, and Buenos Aires. The LAI and the Comintern, which were both increasingly comfortable with using the designation of “Latin America,” further fomented such networks of exchange. At the Egmont Palace, the Uruguayan Quijano thus represented the Venezuelan Revolutionary Party, the Peruvian Haya de la Torre spoke for the Nicaraguan and Panamanian sections of the LADLA, while the Cuban Mella served as a delegate of the LADLA’s Mexico headquarters as well as the Mexican National Peasants League. Since Puerto Ricans were hard to find anywhere near Brussels, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico appeared on the official programme with four speakers of whom none was Puerto Rican.47 Back in Puerto Rico, the Nationalist Party’s weekly frantically eulogized its (Mexican, Peruvian, and Cuban-French) representatives in Brussels as “our noble and knightly brothers of race and most beloved fellows in the holy struggle for the independence of Puerto Rico.”48 Possibly a spin-off of the conference, the paper reported more on other Latin American countries than usual in the weeks surrounding the event. The LAI conference, in short, reinforced Latin American regionalism on the basis of a shared anti-imperialism. In the long run, this latinoamericanismo became a linchpin in Latin America’s incorporation into visions of the Third World. It allowed for perceiving individual instances of resistance to imperialism as part of a wider regionalism or pan-nationalism of equally oppressed “brother peoples.” No less important, the reciprocity between what in Spanish

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America became known as patria chica and patria grande (i.e. Latin America) was a general parallel to many anti-imperial nationalisms in Asia and Africa that cast their nations as part of a larger pan-African or panArab whole.49 Later Third World nationalisms, whether in Latin America or elsewhere, were partly construed on the back of these pan-visions. The Limits of Worldwide Solidarity In the shorter term, however, while latinoamericanismo clearly fuelled Latin American anti-imperialism, the underlying connotation of latinité simultaneously marked imaginary boundaries between Latin Americans and anti-imperial activists from Asia and Africa—especially of a racial kind. These boundaries interacted with two other issues that undercut a tricontinental imagination comprising Latin America: first, the fact that Latin Americans had in mind a different imperial power (the United States) compared to Asians and Africans; second, the limited clout of communism in Latin America, which crippled Latin American participation in the LAI once the Comintern adopted more rigid policies in 1928. In other words, the very features that for a brief moment in 1927 enabled a proto-Third Worldism including Latin America—a strong regional identity expressed in latinoamericanismo, shared opposition to the expansion of US imperial interests, and communism—also undermined such an imagination. The role of race becomes clearer if we bear in mind that Latin America was not categorically distinct from all the other “oppressed nations” represented in Brussels on a variety of counts. Like most Latin American countries, China, the country from which the largest single contingent of delegates in Brussels hailed, was also formally independent; albeit no less “semi-colonial” than Argentina, in Lenin’s dictum. China’s long history of independence never imperilled its central importance within the LAI. In fact, the League’s origins harked back to Münzenberg’s 1925 contacts with Chinese students in Berlin (see Petersson in this volume).50 The breadth of the portfolio of imperial powers to which LAI members—including Japan, for instance—objected moreover made the Latin Americans’ focus on the US look less unusual from a global perspective. Race, by contrast, was more of a dividing line. As Michel Gobat has argued, latinoamericanismo was not only baked into opposition to US meddling in Nicaragua during the 1850s, but the very concept of Latin America, in seeking to distinguish one (“Latin”) from another (“AngloSaxon”) America, inherently laid claim to whiteness and to a sort of brotherhood with “Latin” Europe.51 The socio-demographic and racial composition of early-twentieth-century Latin American anti-imperialists

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may have reinforced their affinities with the notion of latinité. The majority of the student activists and intellectuals who populated the ranks of the LAI, the LADLA, the APRA, and Quijano’s Parisian student group, were urban, white, and wealthy.52 Hailing from formally independent nationstates, they moreover had partial access to lavishly funded diplomatic apparatuses in Paris and Geneva, which in the Mexican case helped to finance their activities as well as the LAI itself.53 The association of Latin America with whiteness, to be sure, was blurred and incomplete. As Sandino’s evocations of the “Indo-Hispanic race” and Haya’s watchword of indoamericanismo implied, the interwar years saw an increasing appreciation of Latin America’s indigenous heritage. Though clouded in assimilationist ideals, Vasconcelos’s 1925 book La raza cósmica was one of the most famous expressions of this tendency.54 Nor did critics of imperialism from Asia and Africa necessarily see Latin Americans as exclusively white. Regarding the racial classification of groups, Nehru’s report of the Brussels conference noted that the event’s Latin American participants were “dark as the Northern Indian.”55 The influential Indian Comintern thinker, M.N. Roy, who had spent two formative years in revolutionary Mexico from 1917 to 1919, drew racial analogies between India and indigenous Latin Americans on the basis of the etymology of the Spanish word indio.56 Although the region’s African heritage remained comparatively more marginal to Latin American identity constructions, it was nonetheless incorporated to a greater degree than prior to the First World War. Young Cuban writers and artists in 1920s Paris, where they frequented the entertainment venues of the so-called vogue noir, revalorized their country’s African traditions and embraced them as an integral part of cubanidad.57 Whereas in 1912 another Paris resident, the conservative Peruvian anti-imperialist Francisco García Calderón, had still disparaged Haiti’s history as evidence of “the political incapacity of that race,” which he maligned as “primitive, impetuous … idle, and servile,”58 by the time of the Brussels Congress Haiti was coopted into the Latin American family of nations on account of being yet another independent American state whose sovereignty was militarily threatened by the United States. In line with treating Haiti as a Latin American republic, the Brussels speaker on behalf of the Haitian Union Patriotique, a loose association opposing the US occupation of 1915–1934, was a Paris-based Uruguayan journalist and ally of Quijano, Carlos Deambrosis Martins.59 Quijano and his AGELA thereafter kept indignation over the US occupation of Haiti alive among

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Latin American students in Europe, who in late 1929 protested against the “measures taken by the invader against the Latin culture [of Haiti].”60 As this very formulation suggests, however, the embrace of Haiti was itself premised on the imputation of the country’s “Latinity”—the same move that in 1930 allowed the far-right Action Française to praise the nationalist Haitian government of Sténio Vincent, a one-time activist of the very same Union Patriotique, and to decry American “imperialist abuses.”61 Haitian anti-imperialists in search of Latin American allies in the late 1920s had to contend with their potential interlocutors’ widespread racism, which more broadly undermined the emergence of a continentwide campaign in support of Haiti, even as the country’s sovereignty was in fact much more thoroughly and overtly curtailed than Nicaragua’s.62 It did not help the matter that denial of that racism became something of a distinctive hallmark of Latin American anti-imperialism, which in the hands of writers like Vasconcelos was in good part construed upon a contrast between the racist US and a supposedly racially tolerant Latin America. As a consequence either of Latin American lobbying or of black activists’ romanticized view of the region, the Brussels Conference’s “Joint Resolution on the Negro Question” flat out asserted that “in Latin America, the Negroes do not have to lament any race prejudice,” given “the political equality and the cordial relations that reign between the various races of these countries.” The same resolution treated the US occupation of Haiti, alongside those of Cuba and Santo Domingo, purely as a matter of state sovereignty, distinguishable from “the Caribbean colonies [in which] the Negroes are plagued by the various forms of imperialism.”63 The official verdict that the so-called “Negro question” did not apply to Latin America in some ways confirmed how the Comintern handled matters of race organizationally. In 1922 the Comintern had created a “Negro Bureau” aimed at the United States—later extended to include Africa and the Caribbean—in a tacit recognition that independent statehood might not be the magical solution to all forms of imperial or colonial oppression, even as Moscow continued to tout precisely that solution even for African Americans. In spite of Latin America’s large African-descended population, as well as efforts by the Trinidadian panAfricanist and Comintern organizer George Padmore to cooperate with the “Latin-American and South American” sections of the Profintern around 1930, such integration never truly bore fruit.64 In Brussels, too, representatives of “the Negro struggle for freedom,” though including the Uruguayan Deambrosis Martins, were corralled into a separate session with little organizational or rhetorical overlap with Latin America. On the

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basis of precisely this separation, Quijano, who represented his Parisian group of Latin American students, berated an earlier speaker of the “Negro race” (probably the Guadeloupean Max Clainville-Bloncourt) for having failed to mention that the “Yankee troops of occupation in Santo Domingo and Haiti … massacred more than 3,500 Negro inhabitants of these areas;”65 in other words, for failing to view US imperialism as the most serious problem. If race subtly demarcated Latin America, other identity markers, such as language, further diminished the communicability of Latin American anti-imperialism. In his speech in Brussels, Vasconcelos complained that he had been encouraged to deliver his speech in English (in which he was fluent because he had spent part of his youth in Texas), professing that he was “one of those ardent defenders of the Spanish language as the main link of our race.”66 The Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, for which Vasconcelos spoke officially on this occasion, promoted a Catholic hispanista version of the island’s identity and past, full of praise for the “civilizational” mission accomplished by Spanish colonialism.67 Quijano’s more left-leaning Parisian student group (AGELA) was equally illustrative of the affinities that Latin American anti-imperialism entertained with Hispanism. A 1925 meeting to protest at the heavy-handed rhetoric by the American Secretary of State, Frank B. Kellogg, towards Mexico— “the Great Anti-Imperialist Manifestation,” as it was called—brought together not only some of the main Latin American speakers who re-met in Brussels, but also the leading Spanish intellectuals Eduardo Ortega y Gasset and Miguel de Unamuno, who hailed Latin Americans and Spaniards as “brothers … because language is the blood of the spirit,” united against the “colossus of the North.”68 Brazil’s marginality further revealed the importance of language as a unifying, yet also exclusivist, identity marker. Tellingly, neither AGELA nor the Mexico City-based LADLA had any Brazilian members worth mentioning. In well over 200 pages’ worth of published speeches, resolutions, and declarations emanating from the Brussels Conference, Brazil was mentioned a single time as one of four regions of Latin America; followed by the offhand dismissal that in contrast to the other three “it shows very particular economic, political, and social conditions,” which apparently made it unworthy of further treatment.69 The sidelining of Brazil not only reduced Latin America’s cultural diversity and its potential connectivity to the so-called “Negro question,” but also confirmed more broadly historian Leslie Bethell’s argument that prior to the Second World War Brazil was barely imagined as a part of Latin America at all, owing to

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linguistic fault lines affecting intellectual exchange, but also owing to the relatively low intensity of anti-imperialist feelings among Brazilian elites.70 The same double exclusion affected the Caribbean: if Haiti, a conceivably “Latin” country threatened by US imperialism, could be construed as part of Latin America, the English-speaking Caribbean clearly could not. The more important point is that latinoamericanismo and antiimperialism (directed against the United States) were intimately linked and reinforced each other. That one was not possible without the other lent Latin American anti-imperialism a distinctly culturalist dimension, which it had characteristically acquired well before the Russian Revolution. One of its most lasting imprints came from an essay entitled Ariel, written by the Uruguayan author José Enrique Rodó as a reaction to the Spanish-American War of 1898, which contrasted “Latin” spirituality with “Anglo-Saxon” materialism and utilitarianism.71 The text inspired a whole generation of so-called arielistas, including people like Quijano and Haya de la Torre, who frequently reread Ariel and exchanged their views about the book.72 In addition to their implicit, and sometimes explicit, claims to whiteness, appraisals of latinité not only paved the way for a new-found appreciation of the Spanish colonial legacy, but also entailed esteem for an important colonial power by the early twentieth century, France—a predilection that the French state had assiduously cultivated since the 1860s. At the 1925 anti-imperialist meeting in Paris, according to a police report, the attendants championed “an intimate union of all the peoples of Latin America so as to fight victoriously against the despotism of the United States,” but also “vibrantly eulogize[d] France and Paris.”73 A 1929 poster by another Paris-based anti-imperialist student group, which protested against the assassination of the Cuban communist Mella in Mexico City, addressed “the French people” and declared that “the Latin Americans are your brothers. From their birth, they have heard the great voice of your revolution, they have enriched it with their echoes.”74 Haya de la Torre’s APRA even adopted the Marseillaise as its party anthem.75 The Nice-based Argentine anti-imperialist, Manuel Ugarte, who alongside Vasconcelos was scheduled to represent the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico at Egmont Palace, even received the French Légion d’Honneur in early 1927, which may explain why he cancelled his trip to the LAI conference at the last minute.76 Inasmuch as “Latinity” was an integral part of Latin American anti-imperialism, it also diminished the appeal of that anti-imperialism beyond Latin America.

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If this was not enough to undermine the emergence of a stable tricontinentalism in the 1920s, two seemingly more mundane factors further weakened it. The first of these was Latin Americans’ exclusive focus on the United States as an imperialist power. Although the Brussels Conference addressed a variety of imperial powers, the Latin American speakers appeared to be uniquely compelled to persuade others of the United States’ imperialist nature—in a way that Indian or Senegalese delegates did not feel was necessary when it came to describing their colonial powers. Vasconcelos thus complained about fellow delegates at the conference who failed to realize that the United States was “the most terrible empire … that history has ever known.”77 The assumption that anticolonialists from the British and French Empires required special persuasion on this point was probably not mistaken, since only eight years prior to the LAI conference they had pinned their hopes on American president Woodrow Wilson’s promise of self-determination.78 Although by 1927 their belief in the United States as an anticolonial power had been bitterly shattered, they were not for that reason ready to see the US as a colonial power analogous to Britain or France. Quijano’s speech in Brussels tellingly summed up both the promise and the limits of tricontinental solidarity of the moment. Trying to argue for cross-continental communality, he opened by saying, “We are aware … that our action is only part of the international action against international imperialism. The struggles of the Chinese, the Indians, the Egyptians, are also our struggles.” But soon enough he arrived at the differences: “our struggle is primarily directed against American imperialism.” He then devoted the bulk of his speech to an attempt to convince the audience that, contrary to earlier African and Asian enthusiasm for Wilson’s rhetoric, the United States was indeed an empire. His reminder that “Yankee troops … in Santo Domingo and Haiti … massacred more than 3,500 Negro inhabitants of these areas” was followed up by the specification that this had happened precisely “at the moment when president Wilson won over Europe [to embrace the principle of self-determination].”79 Just like the relationship between Latin America and the LAI on the whole, Quijano’s Brussels speech thus moved from the promise of a global tricontinental solidarity to demarcating the differences between Latin America and its putative brothers in arms. The second, and final, factor unravelling Latin America’s role within the LAI was communism. Although a Leninist definition of imperialism as wedded to capitalist exploitation, rather than formal political control alone, had initially been a vehicle for the inclusion of Latin America, the

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LAI’s growing communist rigidity from 1928 onwards harmed Latin American participation. When the Guomindang-communist alliance split up two months after the Brussels Conference, heralding the Chinese Civil War, and the Comintern abandoned its policy of “united fronts” with “bourgeois nationalists” in 1928, the LAI was laid bare as a communist organization. Even though these changes may have entailed greater discipline and tighter organization, they naturally alienated the League’s many non-communist members, who in 1927 had been among the most prominent.80 These problems were not specifically Latin American, but they affected the participation of Latin Americans more negatively than that of others. In Latin America, anti-imperialism preceded both the First World War and the Russian Revolution, which both left less of an indelible mark than they did in other world regions. Communists were never more than a small minority among Latin American anti-imperialists, even at the LAI Congress of 1927. With the exception of Mella, the prominent attendants at Egmont Palace were all non-communists: Haya used the conference only to stage a break with the Comintern. Quijano had briefly sympathized with the French Communist Party in the mid-1920s, but his association was superficial and ephemeral.81 Vasconcelos, meanwhile, stressed his dislike of communism both in his Egmont Palace speech and in a subsequent letter to Ugarte summarizing his experience in Brussels.82 Viewed from Moscow, Latin America at any rate appeared far away, geostrategically unimportant, and, because of all of the above, distinctly unpromising. As a result, the LAI’s closer oversight by Moscow from 1928 onwards tended to reduce the organization’s attention to Latin America. By the time of the League’s second conference, held in Frankfurt in 1929, the only significant remaining Latin American organization affiliated with the LAI was the LADLA, itself a crumbling organization by then.83 All told, between 1927 and 1929 the “star-studded affair” of Brussels was reduced to the appearance of the Mexican artist Diego Rivera on the Frankfurt programme, although not at the event itself. Shortly thereafter, Rivera, too, fell out with the LAI.84 Conclusion If there was an effort to imagine Latin America as a part of a Third World avant la lettre prior to revolutionary Cuba’s official tricontinentalism of the 1960s, surely it was at the LAI’s inaugural conference in February 1927. With a Latin American contingent numbering just below 10 per cent of the total of delegates, the region was not exactly over-represented at

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the event, but contrary to the more famous Bandung Conference of 1955 it did have a discernible presence. Latin America’s involvement with global anti-imperialism in the interwar period, however, is best understood as a short-lived moment, which may have provided a precedent that future generations could draw upon, but which also died down after the flourishing of 1925–1928. What, then, explains the arrival of this moment and its subsequent closure? Ironically, communism both opened and closed the door to Latin America’s inclusion. To view the region as subjected to imperialism required a capacious understanding of that term (like Lenin’s) and a powerful organization with global aspirations to act upon it (the Comintern). Moscow’s openness to non-communist anti-imperialists prior to 1928 also favoured Latin American participation. But the LAI’s increasing subordination to the Comintern reduced this participation once Moscow began categorically to oppose all collaboration with noncommunists during the so-called Third Period, beginning in 1928. The LAI thus failed to overcome a number of structural obstacles to tricontinental solidarity in the 1920s. Latin American anti-imperialists, contrary to many other attendants of the Brussels Congress, were not colonial subjects. Racial or religious discrimination at home, or consequent demands for civil rights, were not their primary concerns. Mostly white, wealthy, and from independent nation-states, their grievances concerned strong states bullying weaker ones, whether militarily, politically, or in relation to foreign investment. Often couching their resentment in a culturalist idiom of latinité, some of them embraced Spanish colonialism in opposition to all things “Anglo-Saxon”; a framing of the problem of imperialism that further distanced them from their African and Asian peers. The most fundamental difference lay in Latin America’s divergent histories of colonialism and decolonization, followed by informal imperialism from the mid-nineteenth century. With the exception of Puerto Rico, US meddling in Latin America for the most part undermined existing, and formally recognized, national sovereignties without expressly threatening their basic legitimacy; a role that was distinct from that of European colonial powers in Africa and Asia explicitly denying the right to national independence of subject peoples. The LAI’s official full name—League Against Imperialism and for National Independence— reflected the Comintern’s boilerplate demand of statehood for all nations outside the Soviet Union, but it also made it instantly plain that the entire enterprise was in fact ill-suited to the grievances of the spokesmen of

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nations that for the most part had achieved independence a full century earlier. Foregrounding Puerto Rico in Brussels failed to paper over this difference. The question of the limits to imagining Latin America as a part of the Third World can also be turned on its head: what had to change to make room for the rise of a tricontinentalism with global resonance? As Jason Parker has argued, the Cold War as well as discourses regarding poverty and “underdevelopment” were important cornerstones of a tricontinental Third Worldism.85 Yet at the same time, in some ways Africa and Asia, now consisting chiefly of formally independent countries, came to occupy geopolitical roles that were more similar to Latin America’s. It might be possible to say that Latin America became a part of the Third World once Ho Chi Minh ceased to see France, but rather the United States, as his nemesis and the world’s main imperialist power. In other words, two conditions had to be fulfilled: first, the former colonies in Africa and Asia had to become independent nation-states, which shifted discussions of imperialism from the narrow terrain of de jure colonialism to the wider field of unequal international relations. Second, the Cold War had to globalize the United States’ role as a superpower. Both these changes made Vietnam in the 1960s look a little bit more akin to Cuba than would have been the case in the 1920s. Post-Second World War decolonization and the Cold War were thus the unsurprising conditions for Che Guevara’s famous demand to create “two, three, or many Vietnams” in his 1967 message to the Tricontinental.86 Notes 1 2

3

4

See esp. Matthew Brown, “The Global History of Latin America,” Journal of Global History 10:3 (2015), 365–386. Carlos Riojas López, “América Latina entre narrativas influyentes y tiempos de historia global,” América Latina en la Historia Económica 25:3 (2018), 7–39. Rafael Marquese and João Paulo Pimenta, “Latin America and the Caribbean: Traditions of Global History,” in Sven Beckert and Dominic Sachsenmaier (eds.), Global History, Globally: Research and Practice Around the World (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 67–82. Riojas López, “América Latina,” for instance, calculates the percentage of articles devoted to Latin America in the Journal of Global History and the Journal of World History, but does not quite explain according to what benchmarks this constitutes an under-representation.

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5 6 7

8

9

10

11

Alfred Sauvy, “Trois mondes, une planète,” L’Observateur 118, 14 August 1952, 14. George McTurnan Kahin, The Asian-African Conference: Bandung, Indonesia, 1955 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1956), 39–40. Jason C. Parker, “‘An Assembly of Peoples in Struggle’: How the Cold War Made Latin America Part of the ‘Third World,’” in Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and José Pedro Monteiro (eds.), Internationalism, Imperialism, and the Formation of the Contemporary World: The Pasts of the Present (New York: Palgrave, 2018), 307–326; Mark T. Berger, “After the Third World? History, Destiny, and the Fate of Third Worldism,” Third World Quarterly 25:1 (2004), 9–39; Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 158–206; Christoph Kalter, The Discovery of the Third World: Decolonization and the Rise of the New Left in France, c. 1950–1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), esp. 266–271. Among these, Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York: New Press, 2007), 16–30, is least afraid of teleology. In more hedged terms: Christopher J. Lee, “Between a Moment and an Era: The Origins and Afterlives of Bandung,” in Christopher Lee (ed.), Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010), 1–43; Fredrik Petersson, “Anti-Imperialism and Nostalgia: A Re-Assessment of the History and Historiography of the League against Imperialism,” in Holger Weiss (ed.), International Communism and Transnational Solidarity (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 191–255. Riojas López, “América Latina,” 18, for the journal percentage. The LAI figure is calculated on the basis of the list of participants in Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont (Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 1927), 229–240. However, this list includes people who were invited but never came, and probably excludes others who did come. The same is true of most police sources, which were usually elaborated on the basis of material distributed at the conference itself, thus reproducing the same mistakes. Charles Shipman, It Had to Be Revolution: Memoirs of an American Radical (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 162. Charles Shipman was a pseudonym of Charles Philips, who in Brussels spoke under yet another pseudonym (Manuel Gómez). E.g. José Aricó (ed.), Mariátegui y los orígenes del marxismo latinoamericano (Mexico City: Pasado y Presente, 1980) and Michael Löwy (ed.), Marxism in Latin America from 1909 to the Present (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanity Books, 1992).

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12 13

14 15

16

17 18

19

20 21 22 23

Manuel Caballero, Latin America and the Comintern, 1919–1943 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). This is true of Prashad, The Darker Nations, 16–30, and to a lesser extent of Daniel Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal Imperialism and the Surveillance of Anticolonialists in Europe, 1905–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 139–168. A good example of the pre-1989 historiography is the GDR-produced volume edited by Hans Piazza: Hans Piazza (ed.), Die Liga gegen Imperialismus und für nationale Unabhängigkeit (Leipzig: Karl Marx Universität, 1987). E.g. Prashad, The Darker Nations, 16–30, Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest, 139–168. Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, is an example of the former; Michele Louro, Comrades against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) For useful short overviews of the intellectual history of early-twentiethcentury anti-imperialism in Latin America, see Nicola Miller, In the Shadow of the State: Intellectuals and Quest for National Identity in Twentieth-Century Spanish America (London: Verso, 1999), 174–209, and Greg Grandin, “Your Americanism and Mine: Americanism and Anti-Americanism in the Americas,” The American Historical Review 111:4 (2006), 1042–1066. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (London: Penguin, 2015 [1916]), 98. As is well known, Lenin borrowed heavily from J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (New York, 2005 [1902]), whose interest in Latin America, however, was mostly limited to France’s ill-fated imperialism in Mexico in the 1860s. “El peligro, las posibilidades, el propósito,” El Libertador, no. 1, March 1925, 2. Generally on the LADLA, see Daniel Kersffeld, “La Liga Antiimperialista de las Américas: una construcción política entre el marxismo y el latinoamericanismo,” in Elvira Concheiro, Massimo Modonesi, and Horacio Crespo (eds.), El comunismo: otras miradas desde América Latina (Mexico City: UNAM, 2007), 151–168, and Ricardo Melgar Bao, “The AntiImperialist League of the Americas Between the East and Latin America,” Latin American Perspectives 35:2 (2008), 9–24. E.g. El Libertador, no. 18, June 1928, 1. Liga gegen Imperialismus, Das Flammenzeichen, 70–76. José Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica (Paris, 1925). International Institute of Social History (IISH), League Against Imperialism Archive (LAIA), File 39: “Speech of Vasconcelias [sic], Congress-Meeting of February 10th 1927.”

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24 25

26

27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34

35 36 37

Sean McMeekin, The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 194–203. Traces of these recruitment processes in: Archives Départementales de SeineSt.-Denis, 3MI6/25, sequence 172: Minutes of the meetings of the colonial commission of the French Communist Party, 4 September 1926; Archivo General de la Nación, Argentina [AGNA], Fondo Ugarte, vol. 5 bundle 2219, sheets 75–7: Louis Gibarti to Federico Acosta Velarde, 5 July 1926; Max Zeuske, “Haya de la Torre, die APRA und der Brüsseler Weltkongreß der Antiimperialistischen Liga,” in Die Liga gegen Imperialismus, 151–7; Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 201–2. Standard histories include Robert Alexander (ed.), Aprismo: The Ideas and Doctrines of Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1973) and Carol Graham, Peru’s APRA: Parties, Politics, and the Elusive Quest for Democracy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992). E.g. Aricó, Mariátegui, 1–51; Löwy, Marxism in Latin America, xix–xx. “What is the A.P.R.A.?,” The Labour Monthly 8:12 (December 1926), 756– 759. Later reproduced as: “Declaraciones de Haya de la Torre a la Tribuna de Cantón,” Repertorio Americano, 14:22, 11 June 1927, 344. Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 207–208. Eudocio Ravines, La gran estafa (Mexico City: Libros y Revistas SA, 1952), 103–105. A similar interpretation can be found in Daniel Kersffeld, “Latinoamericanos en el Congreso Antiimperialista de 1927: Afinidades, disensos y rupturas,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 16:2 (2010), 151–163, and Zeuske, “Haya de la Torre.” Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest, 139–147, and Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism, 31–32. Sandra Pujals, “!Embarcados! James Sager, la Sección Puertorriqueña de la Liga Anti-Imperialista de las Américas y el Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico, 1925–1927,” Revista del Centro de Investigaciones Históricas de la Universidad de Puerto Rico 22 (2013), 105–139. Unfortunately, I failed to read this article prior to writing Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 204, which would have prevented my earlier misinterpretation. AGNA, Fondo Ugarte, vol. 4, bundle 2219: Resolution of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, 27 September 1926, 97–98. IISH, LAIA, File 41: “Erklärung der Delegation aller amerikanischer Länder…,”. IISH, LAIA, File 39: “Speech of Vasconcelias [sic].”

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38

39 40 41

42

43

44 45 46 47

48 49 50

Generally, Barry Carr, “Pioneering Transnational Solidarity in the Americas: The Movement in Support of Augusto C. Sandino, 1927–1934,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 20:2 (2014), 141–152. On Paris: “Latin Americans Protest in Paris,” The New York Times, January 14, 1927, 2; and the APRA flyer of January 1927 and unnamed report, January 14, 1927, both in the Archives Nationales, Paris (AN), F7/13435. Alan McPherson, The Invaded: How Latin Americans and Their Allies Fought and Ended U.S. Occupations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). McPherson, The Invaded, 213–237. Michael J. Schroeder, “The Sandino Rebellion Revisited: Civil War, Imperialism, Popular Nationalism, and State Formation Muddied Up Together in the Segovias of Nicaragua, 1926–1934,” in Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. Legrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore (eds.), Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.–Latin American Relations (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 208–268, here 228–229. Michel Gobat, “The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race,” The American Historical Review 118:5 (2013), 1345–1375. Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris [henceforth APPP], BA 2143 (57850): Renseignements Généraux to police prefect, 26 June 1929; and Renseignements Généraux to police prefect, 20 June 1932. See generally on this group (called General Association of Latin American Students, or AGELA): Michael Goebel, “Una sucursal francesa de la Reforma Universitaria: jóvenes latinoamericanos y antiimperialismo en la París de entreguerras,” in Martín Bergel (ed.), Los viajes latinoamericanos de la Reforma Universitaria (Rosario: hay Ediciones, 2018), 177–199. Miguel Angel Asturias, París 1924–1933: periodismo y creación literaria (Nanterre: Centre de Recherches Latino-Américaines, 1988), 526. Archivo General de la Nación, Uruguay [AGNU], Fondo Quijano, Folder 11 Box 1: “Grande Conférence Publique.” Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 133–135 and 268. Das Flammenzeichen, 236–237. Vasconcelos was Mexican, Ugarte (who did not come to Brussels) Argentine, César Falcón Peruvian, and Luis Casabona French-Cuban. “Al margen del congreso anti-imperialista de Bruselas,” El Nacionalista, 5 February 1927, 5. See generally Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 261–269. See Hans Piazza, “The Anti-Imperialist League and the Chinese Revolution,” in Mechthild Leutner et al. (eds.), The Chinese Revolution in the 1920s: Between Triumph and Disaster (London: Routledge, 2002), 166–176.

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51 52

53

54 55

56

57 58 59 60 61 62

63

64

65 66 67 68 69

Gobat, “The Invention.” For a comparative social profile, based on Paris, see Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, esp. 21–55, and Jens Streckert, Die Hauptstadt Lateinamerikas (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2013). Münzenberg’s widow Babette Gross thus remembers the Mexican minister in Berlin, Ramón de Negri, as “one of the league’s most eager sponsors” in her Willi Münzenberg: Eine politische Biographie (Stuttgart, 1967), 203. Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica. Jawaharlal Nehru, “Report on the Brussels Congress,” Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, S. Gopal (ed.), (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972), Vol. 2, 277-295, here 280. See Michael Goebel, “Geopolitics, Transnational Solidarity, or Diaspora Nationalism? The Global Career of M.N. Roy, 1915–1930,” European Review of History 21:4 (2015), 486–499. Jason Weiss, The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris (New York: Routledge, 2003), 23–5. Francisco García Calderón, Las democracias latinas de América: la creación de un continente (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1979), 196–197. Das Flammenzeichen, 119–123. Because of his speech for the Union Patriotique, Deambrosis Martins is often misidentified as Haitian in the literature. AGNU, Fondo Quijano, folder 11, box 1: José Chelala Aguilera, secretary general of AGELA, n.d. “L’indépendance d’Haïti,” L’Action Française, March 14, 1930. Alan McPherson, “Joseph Jolibois Fils and the Flaws of Haitian Resistance to U.S. Occupation,” The Journal of Haitian Studies 16:2 (2010), 120–147. For the broader comparison, see McPherson, The Invaded. Liga gegen Imperialismus, Das Flammenzeichen, 129. The phrasing of the French version is remarkably different. See ISH, LAIA, File 54: “Résolutions communes sur la question nègre.” Holger Weiss, Framing a Radical African Atlantic: African American Agency, West African Intellectuals and the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 314–318. Das Flammenzeichen, 68. IISH, LAIA, File 39: “Speech of Vasconcelias [sic].” César J. Ayala and Rafael Bernabe, Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 95–135. Armando Maribona, “La gran manifestación antiimperialista de Latinoamérica celebrada en París,” El Imparcial, 26 September 1925. Das Flammenzeichen, 78.

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70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80

81

82 83 84

85 86

Leslie Bethell, “Brazil and ‘Latin America,’” Journal of Latin American Studies 42:3 (2010), 457–485. For a good overview of Rodó’s ideas see Nicola Miller, Reinventing Modernity in Latin America: Intellectuals Imagine the Future, 1900–1930 (New York: Palgrave, 2008), 23–70. AGNU, Fondo Quijano, Folder 5 Box 24: Haya de la Torre (Lima) to Quijano (Montevideo), 30 August 1922. AN, F7/13435: Unnamed report, 7 January 1926. APPP, BA 2143 (57850): “Groupe Libre d’Intellectuels Latino-Américains,” 1929. Sánchez, Apuntes, vol. 1, 193. He officially cited health reasons. Manuel Ugarte to Federico Acosta Velarde, 11 February 1927, El Nacionalista, 12 March 1927, 1. IISH, LAIA, File 39: “Speech of Vasconcelias [sic].” Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). Das Flammenzeichen, 68. For an excellent account of the conflict between Nehru and the LAI (and the league’s weakening in India), see Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism, 140–178. Gerardo Caetano and José Pedro Rilla, El joven Quijano 1900–1933: izquierda nacional y conciencia crítica (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1986). IISH, LAIA, File 39: “Speech of Vasconcelias [sic];” AGNA, Fondo Ugarte, vol. 4, bundle 2219: Vasconcelos to Ugarte, February 23, 1927, 147. IISH, LAIA, File 67: “List of affiliated, associated and sympathising organisations,” 1929. Fredrik Petersson, “Hub of the Anti-Imperialist Movement: The League against Imperialism and Berlin, 1927–1933,” Interventions 16:1 (2014), 49–71: 59–60. Parker, “‘An Assembly.’” Robert H. Holden and Eric Zolov (eds.), Latin America and the United States: A Documentary History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 251–253.

Chapter 3

An Independent Path: Algerian Nationalists and the League Against Imperialism Dónal Hassett From the very outset, Algerian nationalists’ enthusiasm for global antiimperialism was tempered with a healthy scepticism. On his arrival at the 1927 Anti-Imperialist Congress, the young Algerian nationalist Messali Hadj expressed consternation at the opulent surroundings in which the leading lights of anticolonialism would be debating the deprivation and oppression of their peoples. For Messali, a committed street activist deeply embedded in the proletarian Algerian migrant community of Paris, the “beautiful, monumental” Palais d’Egmont, with its “multi-coloured marble,” “did not fit with the modesty of Communists and revolutionaries.”1 Messali and the movement he would come to lead may have been ardent partisans of the message of global anticolonial revolution, but their embrace of the Communist-sponsored organizations of anti-imperialist struggle, including the League Against Imperialism (LAI), would take place only on their terms. In their struggle for the independence of their homeland, they would also seek to forge an independent international anti-imperialism whose relationship to “sympathising organisations” such as the LAI2 was neither subservient nor openly hostile, but rather completely dependent on the political interests and strategy of the Algerian nationalist movement. Contrary to the ambitions of the Comintern and the wildest fears of the French security services, the LAI did not become the vehicle for Communist control of Algerian nationalism and the broader anticolonial movement in Paris in which it was the dominant force. Rather, this article contends that the often contentious relationship between Algerian nationalists and the Comintern-supported anti-imperialist movement in Paris explains, in part, both the relative weakness of the French branch of the LAI and the emergence of a kind of “homegrown” anti-imperial solidarity within Algerian nationalism. It further argues that the complex blend of conflict and cooperation between the nascent Algerian nationalism and the early organizations of international anti-imperialism shaped the evolution of both movements in the longue durée.

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A Movement Born of International Anti-Imperialism While historians of Algeria have vigorously debated the intellectual origins of modern nationalism in the country, they are united in the belief that the political impetus for the first mass nationalist movement emerged from radicals among the migrant population in metropolitan France. These men, and they were almost always men, would be the driving force behind this new form of political contestation, but they lacked the experience, the resources, and the knowledge to mobilize and organize their compatriots under the flag of Algerian nationalism. In the early 1920s they turned to two key interrelated organizations, the newly founded French Communist Party (PCF) and the Union Intercoloniale, to advance their cause. Algerian nationalism was thus, from the outset, a movement born of international anti-imperialism. From its very origins, the French Communist Party was, at least nominally, committed to a radical form of anticolonialism. By adopting Lenin’s Twenty-One Conditions wholesale, the party committed itself to active opposition to imperialism, including practical support for “all movements of liberation” for the “expulsion of its own imperialists from such colonies.”3 In the metropole, this translated into a campaign to recruit and support anticolonial activists, some of whom, like a young Ho Chi Minh, were already prominent figures in the PCF in their own right.4 The Party set up a Committee for Colonial Studies in spring 1921 and undertook some limited propaganda in the colonies and especially among the migrant population in Paris.5 It published a series of pamphlets in Arabic and French denouncing French imperialism and launched newspapers targeting Algerian factory workers and conscripts in the French Army.6 Even though these efforts mobilized only a small minority of the ever-increasing population of Algerians in France, they laid the foundations for the subsequent success of the nationalist movement in the metropole. The Communists’ campaigns may have been more symbolic than practical, but they did offer a form of apprenticeship in politics to a new generation of radicalized Algerian migrants. For most early Algerian nationalist activists, their primary engagement with anti-imperialist solidarity came not in the ranks of the PCF but rather in the Union Intercoloniale. While the Union was closely linked to the PCF and the vast majority of its Algerian activists were committed Communists, the organization was neither a creation of the Party nor a front for its activities. Its origins lie in the mutual aid associations founded by various colonial nationalities in Paris at the beginning of the 1920s.7 The Communists subsequently bankrolled the organization, encouraging

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its members to support revolutionary anti-imperialism but also seeking to build alliances with more moderate opponents of colonial rule.8 It thus foreshadowed the approach of the League Against Imperialism in the late 1920s by blending the radical language of Communist anti-imperialism with more moderate appeals for Wilsonian self-determination and even for the naturalization of colonial subjects as citizens of France. The Union served as a forum for a range of different, often contradictory, ideas about how the imperial polity could be reformed, remade, or destroyed. As the other essays in this volume also note, it brought together colonial subjects and citizens from a variety of geographical, class, and ideological backgrounds and rallied them behind a unifying, if vague, anti-imperialist credo. For the Algerians in its ranks the Union provided their first contact with anticolonial activists beyond North Africa, initiating them into the emergent global movement of anti-imperialism. Their encounters with fellow Union members, from genteel Antillean lawyers to fervent revolutionaries from Indochina, shaped their understanding of both Algeria’s place in the global colonial system and their movement’s place on the ideological spectrum. In his memoirs, Messali Hadj wistfully recalls meeting “Asian and African activists who would later go on to be great leaders in their countries,” noting that they “spoke little, read a lot and seemed to trust nobody.”9 As Messali’s comments suggest, these interactions were not without tensions. Michael Goebel assertion that “one should not confuse intercolonialism for harmony” rings true here.10 As Algerian activists grew in number and confidence, they, with the support of the PCF, came to dominate the Union, pushing an agenda that was more Communist-friendly and focused on the Arab world.11 This led to some unrest among the Indochinese and West Africans, who resented the new-found hegemony of the Algerians,12 eventually leading to the collapse of the Union in late 1926/early 1927.13 Empowered by the apprenticeship in politics provided by both the PCF and the Union and reinforced by the demographic dominance of their compatriots among the colonial migrant community, the Algerian nationalists would soon become the driving force in anticolonial politics in France. All future efforts to mobilize the colonial subjects of France behind the cause of anti-imperialism would have to contend with the dominance of Algerian nationalists. In the months prior to the fateful LAI Congress in Brussels, anticolonial activism in Paris was undergoing a dramatic organizational change that would have major implications for the Algerian nationalist movement and its relationship to global anti-imperialism. Activists from different

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colonial territories began to assert their own autonomy from both the PCF and the Union Intercoloniale, organizing independently along national lines and developing individual policies better tailored to their specific target audiences.14 Faced with the reality of restive activists and a fractured movement, the PCF recognized the necessity, if not the inevitability, of specific national movements for the major groups among the colonial migrant population. Thus, in March 1926, with the tacit support of the PCF, a group of Algerian activists founded the first mass nationalist movement in the history of their country, the Etoile Nord-Africaine (North African Star, ENA).15 The party’s foundational document declared that its “fundamental aim” was the “independence and unity of North Africa,” even if its initial focus was on more immediate and achievable demands.16 The driving force behind the ENA was Hadj Ali Abdelkader, a one-time PCF candidate for Parliament and a leading figure in the Union Intercoloniale.17 His influence and that of his acolyte, the party’s 28-yearold secretary general and rising star, Messali Hadj, ensured that its origins in the radical anti-imperialism of the early 1920s would not be forgotten. As its attendance at the Brussels Congress would illustrate, the ENA’s nationalism remained rooted in the broader ideology of the proletarian global struggle against imperialism. The Brussels Congress: Foundational Moment for Algerian Internationalist Anti-Imperialism? The First Anti-Imperialist Congress in February 1927 offered a unique opportunity to the newly founded Etoile Nord-Africaine to project its message on a global scale. The party sent three delegates to Brussels, Hadj Ali Abdelkader, Messali Hadj, and Chadly Khairallah (also known as Chadly Ben Mustapha), a Tunisian intellectual who served as the ENA’s President.18 Global histories of the Congress have tended to overlook the ENA’s involvement, focusing instead on the contributions of more internationally renowned actors such as Nehru and mentioning figures like Messali only in passing, if at all.19 Thus Algeria, which occupies such a central position in the subsequent evolution of global anti-imperialism, has been almost completely omitted from histories of its earliest iterations. Conversely, for historians of Algerian nationalism the Brussels Congress is an “essential date”20 in the history of the movement, marking its “first participation”21 in international politics and playing a crucial role in propelling Messali Hadj to a position of uncontested leadership.22 However, their narratives are resolutely focused on the internal politics of the emergent nationalist movement, paying little attention to how the

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Congress shaped the party’s understanding of global anti-imperialism and its relationship with the Congress’ successor organization, the League Against Imperialism. The Congress has been studied extensively as a foundational moment for both the international anti-imperialist movement and the Algerian nationalist movement, but not as the birthplace of an Algerian internationalist anti-imperialism. And yet, the characteristics that would define Algeria’s subsequent relationship with international anti-imperialism—such as staunch independence from global powers, radical leftist rhetoric and policy and a particular sympathy for African and Arab struggles—were evident in these early interactions. The Brussels Congress may be remembered in Algeria for the call for national independence, but it also played a key role in shaping the ENA’s claim for organizational independence. Hadj Ali had long been critical of the Party’s failure to grant colonial subjects the leading role in the formation of anti-imperialist policy; he was eager for the ENA to act independently of but in close alliance with the PCF.23 Prior to the conference, the movement’s strategy for its first international outing had been a source of conflict between the ENA leadership, who wanted to emphasize more immediate and achievable demands, and the PCF’s colonial commission, who pushed for total focus on the campaign for independence.24 While the PCF’s argument eventually won out, the heated debate showed that the ENA leaders were not slavish Party apparatchiks. The ENA attended the conference as part of a larger French Delegation dominated by the PCF, and the Algerians worked closely with delegates who were party members and sympathizers. However, according to Messali Hadj’s memoirs, there was more than a little tension between the ENA leaders and their fellow French delegates. Messali alleges that the Algerians’ documentation, including their speeches, was stolen, strongly implying that this was an act of sabotage by the Communist leadership.25 This anecdote should be treated with some scepticism, given the lack of corroborating evidence26 and the fact that, by the time he wrote his memoirs, Messali had a long history of bitter conflict with the Communists behind him. Apocryphal or not, the story does speak to the mutual suspicion and even hostility that was seeping into and would subsequently come to define the relationship between Algerian nationalists and the PCF. The Congress came at the very moment when the Algerian nationalists were beginning to break free from the dominating influence of the Communist Party.27 Their growing desire for a fully independent movement with which to wage a campaign for national independence coincided with their first embrace of a global form of anticolonial action. Henceforth, Algerian nationalism would

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jealousy guard its independence in all aspects of its policies, including its vision of international anti-imperialism. This tension with the Communist Party did not, however, diminish the radicalism of the vision of international anti-imperialism that the ENA embraced at and in the wake of the Brussels Congress. Although it was the PCF’s colonial committee that initially pushed the ENA to endorse the cause of independence at the Congress, the rabble-rousing speech given by Messali Hadj did not betray any reluctance on his part to call for an end to imperial rule. It was a searing critique that denounced the brutality of French imperialism, attacked France’s so-called “civilizing mission” and openly advocated the “withdrawal of French occupation forces and the independence of Algeria.”28 The ENA, he asserted, represented the interests of the “labouring classes of North Africa” and thus had the right to speak for “all Algerians.” It demanded not only political freedom for the population but also economic and social liberation through the “confiscation of the large agricultural properties stolen by the feudal agents of imperialism, the settlers and private capitalist enterprises.”29 While Messali did follow his calls for these “essential demands” to be met with a less ambitious list of possible reforms within the imperial polity, the programme he presented underlined the ENA’s commitment to revolutionary politics. In its first foray onto the international anticolonial scene at the Brussels Congress, the Algerian nationalist movement advocated a radical transformation of the colonial order, pre-figuring post-colonial Algeria’s subsequent position as a, if not the, leading defender of radical Third Worldist anti-imperialist politics. Nevertheless, at this stage the Algerians were still relatively peripheral figures in the broader global anti-imperialist struggle. As Sana TannouryKaram points out in her essay, the contributions of North African Arabs to the Brussels Congress left few, if any, traces in the LAI archives. They are absent from, or at least not prominent in, any of the iconic photographs that were taken at the Congress. There are multiple possible explanations for this marginalization of the Algerian delegation. Firstly, the tensions between the Algerian delegates, especially Messali, and the leaders of the French Communist Party may have contributed to their relegation to a secondary position. Secondly, the movement they represented, the ENA, was only just emerging. Although it had grown rapidly among migrants in France, it had not yet made any significant inroads in Algeria itself.30 The Algerians were by no means alone in not having a significant base in their territory of origin. As Klaas Stutje’s essay in this collection shows, even as prominent a figure at the Brussels Congress as Mohammed Hatta had no

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clear popular support in his home country of Indonesia. However, Hatta and other leaders who could not boast of the kind of mass movement that supported Nehru could point to recent instances of anticolonial revolts and resistance in their countries to legitimize their leadership.31 Algeria, an integral part of the French Republic and home to hundreds of thousands of European settlers, had not seen significant violent resistance since 1916. The indigenous political class of Algeria was committed to pushing for reform within the framework of the French Empire and radical antiimperialist ideas had little resonance in the colony itself.32 Finally, the Algerian delegates had limited connections with anticolonial activists outside the radical Parisian scene. Unlike other delegates, including those from the French Empire such as Lamine Senghor, who is examined in Murphy’s chapter, the Algerian activists from the Parisian migrant community had no real history of organizing or even exchanging ideas in broader networks of regional, religious, or racial solidarity beyond French colonial territories. The Brussels Congress would mark their initiation into the global anti-imperialist movement. It functioned as a pedagogical space where Algerians could embrace the rhetoric of, foster connections with, and even adopt the practices of their peers in the anticolonial struggle. The impact of the Brussels Congress was immediately visible in the rhetoric of the Algerian nationalist movement. Messali Hadj’s speech may have been heavy on the radical rhetoric and policy positions but it made little reference to Algeria’s place in the broader anti-imperialist struggle. It was only in the wake of the Brussels Congress that the ENA would reframe its campaign as part of a wider global anti-imperialist movement. The delegates’ account of their participation in the conference, published in its paper L’Ikdam Nord-Africain (“The North African Spark”), marked a significant shift in rhetoric. It largely abandoned the specifics of the North African case in favour of a discourse grounded in the language of a shared international anti-imperial struggle. The delegates’ report affirmed that the contributions “of all the different delegations of the oppressed peoples recognised the truth” that each colonial population is faced with “the same enemy who, to varying degrees, places them in the same situation.”33 This common system of oppression necessitated a united response, “waging the struggle on the same terrain with the same methods,” albeit adapted to the particular needs “of each people.” The author claimed that the history of colonialism has shown that the “oppressed and dispossessed” have always “responded to the exploitation and attacks” with “sudden actions,” arguing that the Brussels Congress was the “most dramatic” of these. Thus, the Congress marked a new

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stage in the struggle of the oppressed peoples, including “the North African peoples,” who now “entered an acute period in their action in the arena of revolutionary ideology.”34 The Algerian nationalist movement was now explicitly framing its campaign for independence in terms of a much broader global struggle against the forces of Western imperialism. International anti-imperialism had entered Algerian nationalist politics and was here to stay. The Brussels Congress also offered the Algerian nationalist representatives a unique opportunity to integrate into the nascent network of international anti-imperialism. The delegates from the Etoile Nord-Africaine were impressed with the variety and quality of the speakers, paying tribute to the eloquence of representatives “from the four corners of the world.”35 Although the Algerians mixed with and spoke to delegates from across the globe, they expressed a particular affinity with the Africans, the Arabs, and other Muslims. Their prioritization of these groups is clear in Messali Hadj’s recollection of the warm response his speech received from his “compatriots and coreligionists from Syria, Indonesia, India, Egypt and Tunisia, as well as from other non-Arab and non-Muslim delegates.”36 The ENA delegates worked closely with Lamine Senghor from Senegal, a prominent activist on the Parisian anticolonial scene who had been a leading figure in the Union Intercoloniale and was one of the “stars of the show” at Brussels.37 According to Messali, the fact that Senghor shared both a common oppressor and a common faith with the Algerians earned him the ENA delegation’s respect and friendship.38 They were particularly outraged when Senghor was denied access to a hotel room in Brussels because of his race, an experience they were all too familiar with in Paris.39 The delegation also sought to build relationships with representatives from further afield in the Islamic world. The Indonesian nationalist Mohammad Hatta invited the Algerians to tea, along with the Syrian representative El Bakri,40 “to exchange ideas” on the anti-imperialist struggle.41 These interactions expanded on the extensive experience that the Algerians had of intercolonial solidarity in Paris and allowed them to look beyond the bounds of the French Empire. Unsurprisingly, they would focus most of their efforts on contacts in Africa and especially the Islamic world, building connections with groups who shared common political and religious cultures. This commitment to establishing relationships of solidarity with other colonized peoples, especially in African and Islamic contexts, would continue both under the aegis of and outside the control of the LAI for the rest of the interwar period.

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The Brussels Congress saw the induction of the Algerian nationalist movement into the emerging world of global anti-imperialism, the starting point of a relationship which would endure through much of the twentieth century. Contrary to the assertions of leading historians of Algeria, its significance is not that it was the venue for the public declaration of the nationalist movement’s commitment to the independence of Algeria.42 After all, as James McDougall has pointed out, earlier, albeit more marginal, political figures had issued calls for independence from political platforms outside North Africa.43 Rather, the Brussels Congress is best understood as the moment when Algerian nationalists embraced a broader anti-imperialist critique that looked beyond the confines of North Africa and the French Empire to the wider colonial world. While this critique was largely “of a piece with the anti-imperialist line of the Third International,”44 the Algerian nationalists were never the simple pawns of Moscow. They used Brussels as an opportunity to develop links with other movements around the world, to deepen their understanding of the structures and ideologies underpinning global imperialism, and to establish an independent profile for their party as the voice of the Algerian people. In doing so, they laid the foundations for an independent and radical anti-imperialism that would define Algerian nationalism for years to come. An Antagonistic Alliance: Algerian Nationalists and the Early Years of the League Against Imperialism After the Brussels Congress concluded, the Algerian delegates returned to Paris “satisfied” with their work, certain that they “had just lived through historic days in the Belgian capital.”45 However, the euphoria of these early days of global anti-imperialism would soon crash up against the realities of organizing politically in the shadows of both the repressive colonial state and the domineering Communist International. Algerian nationalists, initially enthusiastic about building on the legacies of the Brussels Congress, would seek an active role in the nascent French branch of the League Against Imperialism (LAI). The ENA, as by far the largest political organization representing colonial subjects in metropolitan France, had a legitimate claim to the leadership of the anti-imperialist movement in the country. And yet, for much of the 1930s it would find itself locked in a struggle with the French Communist Party, the driving force behind the LAI, that would negatively impact on the strength of organized internationalist anti-imperialism in France and the position of Algerian nationalists within it.

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The Algerians were marginalized within the French branch of the newly founded League Against Imperialism from the outset. The League Against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism (LCOCI), affiliated to the LAI, had been set up in Paris in January 1927, with the pacifist writer and leftist activist Henri Barbusse as its President and the Communist militant Jacques Ventadour its secretary general.46 Despite the demographic strength of the Algerian migrant community in Paris and the ENA’s affiliation to the organization, the LCOCI’s executive committee did not include a single Algerian. The North Africans were represented by the Tunisian Chadly Khairallah, a member of both the ENA and the Tunisian Destour movement.47 His background as a highly educated intellectual from Tunisia marked him out from the membership and the leadership of the ENA, both of which were overwhelmingly Algerian, working-class, and lacking formal education. This inevitably led to some tensions.48 The committee also included activists from Syria, Vietnam, the Antilles, China, and Latin America, making the absence of representatives from France’s most important colony all the more striking.49 The ENA had no representation on the executive committee of the international LAI, though Chadly Khairallah served on its general council, alongside a fellow Tunisian, Chadly Khelledy. The sole Algerian representative on the LAI’s general council, Chabila Djilali, may have been a member of the ENA but he was also an ally of the Communists and did not share Messali Hadj’s growing hostility to the Party’s overbearing influence.50 The fiery leader of the ENA had increasingly come to see the Brussels Congress and the organization born out of it as tools of the Communist International. While he clearly resented his movement “being used as a means of pressure for the Soviet Union,” this wily political operator was willing to cooperate with the Communists if it was to the benefit of his cause and his organization would “lose nothing in return.”51 Messali had not turned his back on the politics of international anti-imperialism, writing to the French press and Members of Parliament, declaring that Algerians had the right “like the Chinese, the Indians and the Indonesians” to mobilize behind a national party for independence.52 Nevertheless, his pragmatic commitment to building his movement tempered both his allegiance to international antiimperial solidarity and his burgeoning animosity towards the Comintern. The cause of Algerian nationalism would always come before the cause of internationalism. The evolution of both the ENA and the LAI in the final years of the 1920s would further undermine the links between Algerian nationalism and the institutions of international anti-imperialism. The shift towards

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the politics of the “Third Period” in Moscow and the consequent embrace of a “class against class” policy by the Comintern had a significant impact on the diversity of the membership of the LAI at both a local level in France and an international level.53 The Communists more actively sought to control the LAI, and although it never became a simple front organization for the Comintern, it did become a much more hostile environment for those unwilling to toe the Communist line. While this shift in policy inevitably drove bourgeois nationalists like Nehru out of the LAI (see Michele Louro’s chapter), it was not the class profile of the ENA that led to conflict with the Communists, but rather its organizational and ideological independence. The Communist Party withdrew all financial support for the ENA and fired Messali from his position as a paid fulltime activist.54 In February 1928, the members of the ENA voted to form “an independent organisation on a national basis.”55 The Party adopted new statutes that theoretically prohibited its members from also holding membership of the Communist Party.56 The ENA continued to draw heavily on Leninist rhetoric and organizational tactics, but its programme increasingly insisted on the primacy of the national question.57 This clashed with the LAI’s new orientation that prized the class struggle above all else. Nevertheless, the ENA did send a delegate to the Second AntiImperial Congress, held in Frankfurt in June 1929. Ben Ali Boukhort, who would subsequently choose the Communist Party over the ENA and become a leading figure in its colonial section, was scathing about the treatment he received in Frankfurt from the French delegation, “who did not even bother to talk to him.”58 The Algerian nationalists’ conflict with the Communist party diminished their capacity and desire to participate actively in the international anti-imperialist struggle coordinated by the LAI. At the beginning of the 1930s the fight for survival was the ENA’s primary focus, leaving little room for the politics of international antiimperialism. Alarmed at the growth of the movement, which had 4,000 members in early 1929, the French authorities launched a crackdown.59 In November of that year the ENA was legally dissolved, throwing the organization into disarray. In an effort to maintain the momentum behind Algerian nationalism, Messali Hadj launched a newspaper, El Ouma (The Nation) which promoted a form of revolutionary nationalism that prioritized Arabo-Islamic identity but also drew on the language of international anti-imperialism. The paper continued to denounce global imperialism as a system built on “the misery of the working class, the reinforcement of the slavery of the colonial peoples … and the preparation

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for war.” The “destruction of the regimes of imperialist countries,” it argued, was the only way “to secure peace.”60 However, this rhetoric did not translate into concrete actions of anti-imperial cooperation and solidarity. The struggle with the Communist Party continued to dominate the agenda. This conflict resulted in the Communists blocking ENA participation in international congresses of organizations such as the Amsterdam-Pleyel Committee where global anti-imperialist activists met and discussed their shared struggles.61 It also compounded the problems of the French branch of the LAI, which had already lost most of its prominent non-Communist members and was now denied the support of the largest anticolonial movement in France.62 The meagre efforts made by the LAI to court North Africans in this period were largely unsuccessful.63 The Communists were seeking to freeze the rebellious Algerians out of the institutions of international anti-imperialism, significantly weakening them in the process. These efforts to sideline the ENA did not, however, mean that the movement abandoned its support for international anti-imperialism. Throughout the early 1930s, the period of its most intense conflict with the Communist Party, the ENA continued to engage in limited forms of anti-imperial solidarity. The highlight of the French branch of the LAI’s political action came in 1931 with its protest against that year’s International Colonial Exhibition in Paris. The LAI, with the support of the Communist Party, organized a counter-exhibition in the city centre to present the “truth about the colonies.” Combining displays of indigenous art and surrealist art with denunciations of the horrors of the colonies, the counter-exhibition represented a serious intellectual challenge to the legitimacy of France’s imperial project. Although police documents suggest that the ENA was affiliated to the counter-exhibition, it appears to have been largely excluded from its organization.64 The ENA instead dedicated its energies to spreading the anticolonial message to those North Africans whom the French authorities had brought over to perform at the Colonial Exhibition. Messali, his wife, French radical Emilie Busquant, and their one-year-old son Ali attended the Exhibition every day in the hope of making contact with the orchestra that had been shipped in from his hometown, Tlemcen, in Western Algeria. They managed to slip past the group’s minders and invite them to attend a specially organized evening of music, North African food, and nationalist speeches.65 Impressed by the success of the event, LAI activists from Guadeloupe and Madagascar sought to emulate the Algerians’ tactics by targeting colonial subjects working at the Exhibtion.66 Despite its exclusion from the major event

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of opposition to the Exposition, the ENA managed to organize its own act of resistance, which both strengthened the nationalist movement and inspired other anti-imperialist activists. By 1933, the ENA had recovered sufficient strength to officially relaunch as a political movement committed to the independence of North Africa and the global struggle against imperialism. The organization’s new programme set out a radical anti-imperial vision that called not only for political independence for North Africa but also for the unity of the Maghreb and for the complete transformation of the structures of the colonial economy and society.67 The speeches of its now uncontested leader, Messali Hadj, blended demands for immediate independence with calls for total resistance, even suggesting a willingness to resort to armed struggle.68 The movement turned to the international comparisons that underpinned global anti-imperialism to indicate and to justify this shift in tone. In a public address in June 1933, Messali drew a direct comparison between Algeria and Ireland, a country that had recently liberated itself from British rule through armed struggle.69 Several months later, he accompanied a call for the unity of all the Arab peoples who “live under the yoke of French imperialism” with a direct appeal to Muslim soldiers in the French Army to fight “not for France … but for their own independence and religion.”70 The ENA’s new programme and rhetoric were unabashedly nationalist but its nationalism remained informed by the ideologies and the practices of the global anti-imperial struggle. Soon, the rising tide of fascism, the pressure of the repressive colonial state, and the French Communist Party’s acceptance of the ENA’s organizational independence would see the movement return to the heart of the institutions of international anti-imperialism. A Shared Struggle? The ENA, the LAI, and the Fight against Fascism and Imperialism The reinvigorated ENA quickly sought to build new alliances and strengthen its position on both the French and the international political scenes. The unity of the French Left in the face of the increasing threat from the Far Right offered the ENA an opportunity to raise its profile. The movement participated in the mass protest against fascism of February 1934 and actively encouraged its members to take up committee positions in anti-fascist organizations, including those associated with the Communist Party.71 The ENA’s new engagement with the organizations of the Left coincided with the Comintern’s adoption of the Popular Front policy. André Ferrat, the head of the French Communist Party’s

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Colonial Commission, would actively seek to overcome the ENA’s suspicion and rebuild relations between the two movements. Messali Hadj responded cautiously to Ferrat’s overtures, insisting that he accept that “the Communist Party and the League Against Colonial Oppression (LCOCI) had denigrated the ENA.”72 Throughout the summer of 1934, Ferrat was careful to acknowledge the failures of the Communists in their Algerian policy and to recognize the strength and independence of the ENA.73 By late August, the ENA had signed up to the first of many joint enterprises with the Communist Party, the League Against Imperialism, and International Red Aid.74 The League began to actively target North African workers, issuing bilingual pamphlets denouncing the crimes of imperialism and calling on “French workers” to “[s]upport the Struggle of the North African Peoples.”75 Still technically illegal, the ENA used the LAI to provide legal cover for its activities, much to the consternation of the police in Paris.76 Party activists turned up at League meetings to support the broader anti-imperial struggle but also to challenge the more moderate elements who had rallied to the cause of anti-imperialism by insisting on the goal of national liberation.77 The Algerian nationalists had returned to the institutions of the global anti-imperial struggle but, as ever, they would jealousy guard their independence. The arrest of Messali Hadj and other prominent ENA leaders in November 1934 led to a further rapprochement between the French branch of the LAI and the Algerian nationalists. The LCOCI led a vigorous public campaign against the repressive actions of the colonial state, holding rallies to call for Messali’s release.78 Increasingly crushed by the weight of the coercive colonial state, the ENA became dependant on the League and similar groups for the organization of its public meetings.79 The most significant rally in support of the detained nationalists in Paris took place in late 1934 under the aegis of the League and was chaired by the then President of its French branch, Francis Jourdain. The rally featured speakers from a range of different left-wing groups, including André Ferrat and the prominent socialist Jean Longuet, who shared a stage with Messali’s wife Emilie and the ENA’s Secretary General, Amar Imache. Each speaker appealed for the release of the ENA leader while also denouncing the wider crimes of imperialism.80 The campaign to liberate Messali solidified the growing connections between the League and the Algerian nationalists. Both parties stood to gain from this new close relationship. For the League, its thorny relationship with the ENA, an organization that held a near monopoly of the politicized Algerian migrant community, had long undermined its claims to speak for all

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opponents of colonialism in France. For the Algerian nationalists, faced with an increasingly coercive police state, the League offered a forum in which they could publicize the plight of their party and promote their vision of national liberation. The joint anti-imperial action of the League and the ENA was contingent on their new relationship being mutually beneficial. The summer of 1935 saw this relationship further develop under the wider banner of the Popular Front. The ENA signed up, somewhat reluctantly, to the project for a broad alliance of the Left partly as a result of the efforts of Léo Wenner, a prominent member of the Central Committee of the LAI. She had actively participated in the campaign to free Messali and now urged him to rally the ENA to the cause of the Popular Front at the Bastille Day parade of 1935.81 The ENA’s presence at the march, under its own flag, away from the Communist Party’s colonial section, and with banners calling for the freedom of “the Maghreb, Syria and the Arab world,” underlined its fierce protection of its independence within both the anti-imperialist movement in France and the broader Popular Front.82 In the months that followed, the ENA participated in a number of Popular Front events organized by the League Against Imperialism and affiliated groups.83 The organization refused to submit to the moderating logic of coalition by abandoning the language of revolution and the demand for national liberation. Activists from the ENA repeatedly took to the stage at meetings organized by the LAI to denounce the Popular Front’s refusal to endorse the cause of nationalism in North Africa.84 While the Algerian nationalists were committed to the antifascism that underpinned the Popular Front, they were not willing to accept its primacy over all other forms of political contestation, especially anti-imperialism.85 As Messali Hadj put it, “[O]f course we were antifascists, but we were anti-colonialists and anti-imperialists first.”86 The events of 1935 not only confirmed the Algerian nationalists’ enduring commitment to an independent form of anti-imperialism but they also solidified the African and Arabo-Islamic hue of their vision of the anti-imperial struggle. The Algerian nationalists took a leading role in the campaign against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, working closely with black activists from the League for the Defence of the Negro Race (LDRN) through the LAI’s Coordination Committee of Arabs and Blacks.87 The ENA offered its headquarters to its black African comrades and used its paper, El Ouma, to publicize the plight of the Ethiopians.88 At a rally jointly organized by the ENA, the LDRN, and the LAI, prominent Algerian nationalists not only urged “all Africans to unite to fight

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imperialism in Africa” but also explicitly advocated that colonial troops “turn their arms on those who dominate them in the case of a global conflict.”89 Messali, who had fled to Geneva following his release from prison, was nominated to represent the ENA in a Popular Front delegation to the League of Nations on the Ethiopian question. He clashed bitterly with the other delegates who, he claimed, tried to sideline him, and used the meeting with the President of the League of Nations to stress the importance of Ethiopia to all “Africans as a symbol, a living hope for our own independence.”90 Messali’s time in the capital of interwar internationalism would have an enduring legacy for the way his movement understood the anti-imperial struggle. His presence in Geneva allowed him and two other ENA leaders to participate in the European Muslim Congress that took place in the city in September 1935. Organized by the prominent Arabo-Islamic nationalist, Chekib Arslan, the Congress reinforced the ENA’s commitment to special solidarity with Arab and Islamic countries. Drawing on his experience at the Brussels Congress, Messali invited delegates to his hotel for tea at the end of the conference, using the opportunity to publicize the ENA’s programme and to underline its shared struggle with “all colonised peoples and movements of national liberation.”91 The movement was developing its own intercolonial links and asserting its independent vision of the antiimperialist struggle. The Algerian nationalists’ insistence on both total organizational independence and radical anti-imperialism inevitably led to a break with the Popular Front and the institutions of anti-imperialist struggle it coordinated. Initially, Messali cautiously supported the government, celebrating its relaxation of restrictions on anti-colonial activists and calling for it to fundamentally reform the system of rule across the Empire and in Algeria.92 However, when the newly elected Popular Front government proposed limited reforms that offered citizenship only to Algerian elites and upheld French sovereignty in the colony, the ENA vigorously opposed it, condemning the project as “an instrument of division and discord.”93 The organization denounced the Popular Front’s betrayal of anti-imperialism, arguing that the fate of the colonial peoples had been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. The ENA Secretary General, Amar Imache, tackled the hypocrisy of the Communists and their allies, who “proclaim their commitment to helping … every national movement to free the colonies from the imperialist yoke, but are now riding atop the tank of imperialism.”94 The Popular Front’s subsequent decision to ban the ENA in Jaunary 1937 would seem to prove him right. This dramatic

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rupture coincided with the winding down of the French branch of the League Against Imperialism, which seems to have disbanded in 1936. Anti-imperialism, at least in its radical form, was now seen as incompatible with the politics of the Popular Front. Both the LAI and the Algerian nationalists with whom it had such a tumultuous relationship fell victim to this new political dispensation. The disbanding of the LAI and the dissolution of the ENA did not spell the end for organized anti-imperialism in Paris or for Algerian nationalists’ active role within it. In late 1936, Nguyen The Truyen, a Vietnamese nationalist and veteran of the Union Intercoloniale, proposed that colonial activists and their allies in Paris join forces once more. An invitation was sent to Messali Hadj, who was then in the process of relaunching the Algerian nationalist movement.95 On 11 March 1937, Messali and other former ENA activists founded the Algerian People’s Party (PPA), a new movement which, in the hope of broadening its appeal and diminishing the risk of repression, now framed the nationalist struggle in terms of “emancipation” rather than revolutionary separatism.96 Five days later, at the headquarters of the Algerian nationalist newspaper El Ouma, anti-imperial activists gathered to discuss their plans for a new movement, the Rassemblement Colonial (Colonial Assembly). Messali was chosen as its provisional President.97 The Rassemblement was officially launched the following month, bringing together a wide range of colonial activists from across the French Empire with left-leaning anti-imperialist intellectuals, most of whom had been connected to the LAI at some point.98 Unlike the Union Intercoloniale and the LAI, which preceded it, the Rassemblement was neither founded nor co-opted by the French Communist Party. It was the product of independent anti-imperialist solidarity. The Rassemblement called for a radical restructuring of the Empire, granting citizenship rights to colonial subjects and autonomy to each colony.99 This dovetailed perfectly with the PPA’s new, less confrontational vision of the national struggle. Although Messali, who was focused on building the PPA on both sides of the Mediterranean, never took up the leadership of the Rassemblement, Algerian nationalists were active within the organization.100 They worked with fellow anti-imperial activists from across the French Empire to call both for immediate social reforms in the colonies and for the transformation of the imperial polity.101 Representatives from the Rassemblement participated in the PPA’s rallies in Paris and El Ouma regularly publicized its activities, highlighting the importance of both the Algerian national movement within the broader anti-imperial struggle and the concept of anti-imperial solidarity within

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the ideology of Algerian nationalism.102 Although the fall of France in 1940 and the subsequent installation of the Vichy regime ensured that the Rassemblement was a short-lived enterprise, its success in uniting the anti-imperialist activists of Paris without the tutelage of the French Left and/or the Comintern confirmed for the Algerian nationalists that an independent anti-imperialism was possible. In the decades that followed, they would build on this experience to place Algeria at the heart of the global anti-imperial struggle and thus transform the fate of their country and the colonial world. The Algerian nationalists’ participation in the foundation of the Rassemblement was just one example of their capacity to build antiimperial alliances without the direct support of the LAI. Throughout this period, Messali Hadj and his followers experimented with different forms of regional and global anticolonial solidarity. Their efforts to foster networks of African and especially Arabo-Islamic anti-imperial cooperation reflected an understanding of the political and cultural nature of the struggle against colonialism that sometimes diverged from, but was not necessarily incompatible with, the LAI’s Leninist antiimperialism. Algerian nationalists did not feel obliged to choose between the revolutionary proletarian anti-imperialism of Communist movements within the LAI, the race-based critique of Empire articulated by figures like Lamine Senghor, and the ethno-religious condemnation of colonialism defended by Chekib Arslan.103 Like many of the other nationalist groups discussed in this collection, they explored the multiple possibilities offered by anti-imperialism to reimagine their political project. Their involvement in the League provided them with the language, the practices, and the contacts which they could use to develop their own networks of antiimperial solidarity, sometimes within the orbit of the LAI, sometimes expressly outside it. The Afterlives of Algerian Interwar Anti-Imperialism In April 1955, the Indonesian President Sukarno inaugurated the momentous Afro-Asian Conference by evoking the Brussels Congress in which he and “so many delegates present” in Bandung had first “met each other and found new strength in their fight for independence.”104 While Brussels veteran Nehru was central to the elaboration of the conference’s new vision of an independent anti-imperialism, Messali Hadj was notable for his absence. The father of modern Algerian nationalism and ardent defender of independent anti-imperialism shared Sukarno’s nostalgia for the Brussels Conference throughout his political life.105 This was

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not enough, however, to secure him a place at the Conference table in Bandung. Although Messali continued to bitterly oppose colonial rule in Algeria, his movement had been supplanted (or, in many areas, violently crushed) by a new nationalist organization, the National Liberation Front (FLN). The sidelining of Messali could, in part, be attributed to his strategic and ideological vision of the struggle that had been shaped by his interaction with the Communist Party and the LAI. One of the key sources of conflict between the FLN and Messali Hadj was his refusal to compromise his longstanding commitment to the independence of his organization.106 Whereas the ENA and PPA had always resisted any form of organizational unity, the FLN deployed this strategy to subsume and effectively cannibalize most of its rival movements.107 Ironically, in the early years of the Algerian Revolution the FLN was able to achieve the strategic organizational goals over which both Messali Hadj and the Comintern had struggled in the 1920s and 1930s. By imposing a common organization on the political class (with the exception of Hadj’s movement of course), the FLN was able to monopolize the anticolonial struggle in Algeria, establishing the kind of hegemony the Comintern promoters of the LAI had dreamed of when they were organizing the global anti-imperial struggle in the interwar period. The imposition of organizational unity also allowed the FLN to reverse the logic of Messali’s long-standing fear of subordination to the Communists by effectively subordinating the Communist Party to the FLN.108 The FLN had established itself as the sole legitimate representative of the Algerian people’s struggle against imperialism. It would confirm this status on the international scene at the Bandung Conference in April 1955. The movement’s diplomats managed to secure accreditation to the Conference as “observers” and were so successful in promoting the Algerian cause that the final joint communiqué issued by the delegates in Bandung endorsed Algerian independence.109 The Brussels veteran Messali Hadj may have been sidelined, but the new generation of Algerian nationalists had succeeded in placing their cause at the very centre of the latest iteration of the global anti-imperialist movement. While the continuities in Algerian independent anti-imperialism from Brussels to Bandung are striking, there are a number of important ruptures that reflect broader shifts in local and global understandings of anti-imperialism. Although the nationalist movement in the interwar period was formally committed to independence, the creation of a wholly sovereign Algerian state was not always seen as the only means of realizing it. By the late 1930s, Messali’s PPA was advocating for the extension

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of some form of dominion status to Algeria that would undo the racial hegemony of the European settlers without necessarily breaking the link with France.110 Algerian nationalism had yet to fully embrace the clear nation-state model that would define its successor organization, the FLN. Likewise, the LAI and the other networks of regional and global antiimperialism that emerged in the period did not always see the sovereign nation-state as the only possible outcome of a future dismantling of Empire. As Disha Karnad Jani suggests in her chapter, “the early years of the League” were defined by “the working through of why different kinds of political subjects should or could have a sovereign political form.” The conceptual flexibility of both the Algerian nationalist and the global anti-imperialist movements in their formative phases allowed for the development of complex and often conflictual forms of solidarity. When Algerian nationalists met with their anti-imperial comrades twenty-eight years later in Bandung, both groups shared a fixed understanding of what the strategy and the goal of the anti-imperialist struggle should be. In the words of Jeffrey Byrne, a “new consensus on outright nationalism and formalised interstate relations had emerged.”111 In this new dispensation, as Michele Louro has highlighted in the case of Nehru’s India, the realpolitik interests of post-colonial states sometimes “limited the possibilities for anti-imperialist solidarity,”112 while the equality between struggles that had nominally characterized interwar anti-imperialism was cast aside as new forms of solidarity were conceived of primarily in terms of inter-state relations.113 These changes may have disadvantaged certain groups, especially those with no clear prospective nation-state, but they actually helped the FLN to ensure that statehood was the only sustainable solution to the conflict in Algeria.114 Participation in Bandung conferred unprecedented legitimacy on the Algerian nationalist movement or, more accurately, on the FLN as the embodiment of a putative Algerian nationstate, placing its struggle at the very heart of global internationalist antiimperialism. At Bandung, far more so than at Brussels, new forms of Algerian nationalism and global anti-imperialism were bound together, mutually dependent on each other for success. As the FLN’s campaign to secure an end to colonial rule in Algeria evolved, it both drew on and fed into the growing power of a new form of independent internationalist anti-imperialism. The decision in 1958 to set up a Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA), soon recognized as the sole legitimate government of Algeria by scores of countries internationally, is a prime example of this.115 Matthew Connelly’s magisterial diplomatic history of the Algerian War

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has demonstrated how the Algerian nationalists used this new form of internationalist anti-imperialism effectively to mobilize Arab and African countries and the broader nascent Third World bloc in support of their cause. In doing so, they showed how independent internationalist antiimperialism could manipulate and subvert the binary logics of the Cold War to forge a new world order that was fundamentally hostile to colonialism.116 Now national liberation movements could look to the Algerians for an example of how the leaders of anticolonial struggles could use international institutions and the bonds of anti-imperial solidarity to secure their own freedom.117 The post-colonial Algerian state would do its utmost to promote and develop its version of an independent, radical, and internationalist anti-imperialism. Integrating the movement’s long history of anti-imperial solidarity into the institutions of the nascent post-colonial state, Algerian governments built strong links in Africa, playing a key role in the foundation of the Organization of African Unity, in the Arab world, as a member of the Arab League, and as a voice for other anticolonial causes on the international scene.118 Committed to a radical vision of anti-imperialism, they proactively assisted other national liberation movements, especially those from other African and Arab countries, by providing financial support and operational bases within Algeria. Indeed, the ideologies of nationalism and radical internationalist anti-imperialism became so intertwined that one leading historian of post-colonial Algeria has suggested that the “country’s new leaders perhaps secretly feared that without the revolution, there was no nation.”119 Conclusion This chapter has argued that, from the very outset, Algerian nationalism and global anti-imperialism were, to some degree, mutually constitutive. The initial organizational impetus for the Algerian nationalist movement came from the internationalist anti-imperialism of the French Communist Party. The first articulations of an explicitly nationalist Algerian politics coincided with the first encounters of Algerian activists with fellow antiimperialists from around the colonial world, all under the patronage of the French Communists. The ideologies and institutions of both Algerian nationalism and global anti-imperialism in Paris would be forged in the same context and, as Michael Goebel has shown, quite often in the same milieu and the same spaces.120 The Brussels Congress launched both Algerian nationalism and organized anti-imperialism on the international stage. While the Algerian nationalists would embrace the concept of the global anti-imperial struggle and the possibilities it could offer, they would

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also resist any perceived attempt to use the institutions of anti-imperialism to control them. Theirs was a radical, independent anti-imperialism. Where this aligned with the agenda of the League Against Imperialism and other organizations of global anti-imperialism, they were happy to cooperate. Indeed, at one stage in 1933–1934, the Algerian nationalists found that the LAI was essential as the only means of providing legal cover to their then illegal organization. When the LAI’s political vision ran counter to their interests, they did not hesitate to break from it, without ever abandoning their commitment to the politics of anti-imperialism. As the largest anticolonial movement in France representing the biggest colonial migrant population in the country, they had the power seriously to compromise the French branch of the LAI. The fact that they were not afraid to use this goes some way towards explaining why Paris, the great “anti-imperial metropolis” of the interwar period,121 was never a particularly happy hunting ground for the LAI. The Algerians may have frequently proven to be a thorn in the side of the nascent institutions of global anti-imperialism in the interwar period, but they would be among the leading lights of the internationalist anti-imperial struggle in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. When, during and after the independence struggle, the FLN finally got a chance to fully elaborate and practise its version of the independent, radical, and internationalist anti-imperialism originally developed by Messali Hadj’s ENA through its encounter with the LAI, it would transform both Algerian nationalism and the global anti-imperial movement. Notes 1 2

3 4

Messali Hadj, Mémoires: 1898–1938, edited by Renaud Rochebrune (Paris: J.C. Lattès, 1982), 156. Fredrik Petersson, “Anti-imperialism and Nostalgia: A Re-assessment of the History and Historiography of the League Against Imperialism,” in Holger Weiss (ed.), International Communism and Transnational Solidarity: Radical Networks, Mass Movements and Global Politics, 1919–1939 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 191–255, 250.   Allison Drew, We Are No Longer in France: Communists in Colonial Algeria (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2014), 29. Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 180.

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5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27

28 29

Rabah Aissaoui, Immigration and National identity: North African Political Movements in Colonial and Postcolonial France (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2009), 14–5. Benjamin Stora, Ils venaient d’Algérie: L’ immigration algérienne en France 1921–1992 (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 24. Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer (ANOM), FM/3SLOTFOM/3: Note de l’Agent Désiré, 13 November 1924. Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 190. Messali, Mémoires, 154. Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 195. Ibid. ANOM, FM/3SLOTFOM/3: Note de l’agent Désiré, 25 October 1925. Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 197. Ibid. Mahfoud Kaddache, Histoire du nationalisme algérien: Tome I, 1991–1939 (Algiers: EDIF 2000, 2003), 169. Benjamin Stora, Ils venaient d’Algérie: L’ immigration algérienne en France (1912–1992) (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 27. Kaddache, Histoire du nationalisme algérien, 169. Messali, Mémoires, 156. Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s Hisotry of the Third World (New York: The New Press, 2007), 21; Michele Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism: Nehru, India and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 19–54 and Fredrik Petersson, “Hub of the Anti-Imperialist Movement,” Interventions, 16:1 (2014), 49–71: 51–52. Stora, Messali Hadj, 68. Kaddache, Histoire du nationalisme algérien, 176. Benjamin Stora, Messali Hadj 1898–1974 (Paris: Hachette, 2004), 71. Céline Marangé, “Le Komintern, le Parti communiste français et la cause de l’indépendance algérienne (1926–1930),” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’ histoire, 131:3 (2016), 53–70: 59. Ibid., 60–61. Messali, Memoires, 156. Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 203. Nedjib Sidi Moussa, “Les messalistes et la gauche française. Alliances, ruptures et transactions dans l’entre-deux-guerres,” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’ histoire, 131:3 (2016), 71–85: 73. “Discours de Messali Hadj au Congrès de Bruxelles,” La Lutte Sociale, 11 March 1927. Ibid.

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30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57

Benjamin Stora, “Messali Hadj et la création de l’Etoile Nord-Africaine en 1926,” in Abderrahmane Bouchène et al. (eds.), Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale) (Paris: La Découverte, 2014), 393–7: 394. See Klaas Stutje’s chapter in this volume. Kaddache, Histoire du nationalisme algérien, 193–201. Chadly Khairallah, “Rapport sur le Congrès Anti-Impérialiste de Bruxelles,” L’Ikdam Nord-Africain, reproduced in L’Afrique Française, June 1927, 229. Ibid. Ibid. Messali, Mémoires, 157. See David Murphy in this volume. Messali, Mémoires, 157. Messali, Mémoires, 157. For more details on El Bakri’s role at Brussels see Tannoury-Karam’s chapter in this volume. Messali, Mémoires, 157. Stora, “Messali Hadj et la création de l’Etoile Nord-Africaine en 1926,” 394; and Kaddache, Histoire du nationalisme algérien, 177. James McDougall, A History of Algeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 168. Ibid. Messali, Mémoires, 158. ANOM/GGA/3CAB/41: Rapport de la Direction des Affaires Indigènes de la Résidence Générale de la République Française au Maroc sur la Situation Politique et Economique, 16–31 October 1934. Archives de la Préfecture de Police (hereafter APP), APP/BA/1912: Rapport sur la Ligue contre l’oppression coloniale et l’impérialisme, July 1928. Messali, Mémoires, 158. APP/BA/1912: Rapport sur la Ligue contre l’oppression coloniale et l’impérialisme, July 1928. Messali, Mémoires, 169. Ibid., 158. Stora, Messali Hadj, 72. Petersson, “Anti-imperialism and Nostalgia,” 239–41; and APP/BA/1912: Rapport sur la Ligue contre l’oppression coloniale et l’impérialisme, April 1933. Nedjib Sidi Moussa, “Les messalistes et la gauche française,” 73. Ibid., 74. Stora, Messali Hadj, 76–8. Nedjib Sidi Moussa, “Les messalistes et la gauche française,” 74.

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58 59 60 61 62

63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Benjamin Stora, Dictionnaire biographique des militants nationalistes algériens (Paris: L’harmattan, 1985), 340. Stora, Messali Hadj, 79. “Les Nord-Africains et la paix,” El Ouma, September 1931. Messali, Mémoires, 172. Petersson ascribes the LAI’s failure in France to the repressive measures of the state and the indifference of the PCF. I would argue that the conflict with the ENA had a significant negative impact on the LAI’s development and should also be taken into account. Pettersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers: Willi Münzenberg, the League against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925–1933” (Åbo Akademi University, 2013), 257. One report from this period notes that the LAI has no Arab section at all while another underlined the failure of efforts to organise Arabs as part of a LAI-supported pan-African front. APP/BA/1912: Rapport sur la Ligue contre l’oppression coloniale et l’impérialisme, Avril 1934; and Archives Nationales (hereafter AN), 19940500/236: Rapport sur l’effort de constituer une Union Intercoloniale, 28 November 1933. APP/BA/1912: Rapport sur la Ligue contre l’oppression coloniale et l’impérialisme, April 1933. Messali, Mémoires, 171. Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 211. “Programme de l’Etoile Nord-Africaine,” in Jacques Simon (ed.), Messali Hadj par les textes, 22–3. Stora, Messali Hadj, 100. Ibid., 99. Ibid., 100. Kaddache, Histoire du nationalisme algérien, 329. Stora, Messali Hadj, 131. Sidi Moussa, “Les messalistes et la gauche française,” 76; and André Ferrat, “Que signifie les événements de Constantine?,” Cahiers du Bolchévisme 11:16 (1934), 940–49: 949. Stora, Messali Hadj, 132. AN/20010216/159: “Travailleurs Français – Soutenez la Lutte des Peuples de l’Afrique du Nord,” Pamphlet of the French Branch of the LAI. APP/BA/1912: Réunion de LAI, 29 November 1934. AN/20010216/159: Réunion de la Ligue Contre l’Impérialisme, 20 October 1934. “L’Action de la Ligue,” Journal des peuples opprimés, February 1935. “Une belle manifestation de solidarité,” El Ouma, December 1934. Ibid.

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Messali, Mémoires, 192 and 194. Stora, Messali Hadj, 133. 83 Sidi Moussa, “Les messalistes et la gauche française,” 77. 84 ANOM/GGA/3CAB/42: Rapport sur l’action de l’Etoile Nord-Africaine à Paris, 30 January 1936. 85 René Gallissot, La République française et les indigènes: Algérie colonisée, Algérie algérienne (Paris: Éditions de l’Atélier, 2006), 98. 86 Messali, Mémoires, 193. 87 AN 19940500/236: Rapport sur une réunion du Comité de Coordination des Peuples Noirs et Arabes, 08 January 1936 and Rapport sur le Comité de Coordination des Associations noires et Arabes, 21 May 1936. 88 Messali, Mémoires, 193. 89 Stora, Messali Hadj, 135. 90 Messali, Mémoires, 195 and 196. 91 Ibid., 198. 92 AN 19940500/236: Rapport sur un meeting organsié par l’Association pour la Défense et l’Emancipation des Peuples Coloniaux et l’ENA, 27 June 1936. 93 “Peuple Algérien, Dresse-toi contre le Projet Viollette,” El Ouma, January 1937. 94 Charles Robert Ageron, De l’Algérie française à l’Algérie algérienne et Genèse de l’Algérie algérienne (Algiers: Editions Bouchène, 2005), 359. 95 ANOM/GGA/3CAB/42: Rapport sur le Rassemblement Colonial, 09 April 1937. 96 Rabah Aissaoui, Immigration and National Identity: North African Political Movements in Colonial and Postcolonial France (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 28–9. 97 ANOM/GGA/3CAB/42: Rapport sur le Rassemblement Colonial, 09 April 1937. 98 AN 19940500/236: Rapport sur le Rassemblement Colonial, 17 June 1937. 99 James E. Genova, “The Empire Within: The Colonial Popular Front in France, 1934–1938,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 26:2 (2001), 175– 209: 192, 196. 100 Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 171. 101 Genova, “The Empire Within,” 196–8. 102 “Meeting du Wagram,” El Ouma, December 1937; “Contre le trafic de chair humaine,” El Ouma, January 1938; and “Allocution du Rassemblement Colonial à la mémoire de l’Emir Khaled,” El Ouma, 11 March 1938. 103 For more information on Arslan, see Tannoury Karam’s chapter. 104 Prashad, The Darker Nations, 30. 105 Stora, Messali Hadj, 71. 81 82

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106 See Benjamin Stora, “La différenciation entre le F.L.N. et le courant messaliste

(été 1954 – décembre 1955),” Cahiers de la Méditerranée, 26 (1983), 15–82: 68. 107 McDougall, Algeria, 203. 108 Drew, We Are No Longer in France, 209. 109 Jeffrey James Byrne, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonisation and the Third World Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 41. 110 McDougall, A History of Algeria, 174. 111 Byrne, Mecca of Revolution, 64. 112 See Michele Louro in this volume. 113 Byrne, Mecca of Revolution, 64. 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid., 65. 116 Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the origins of the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 276–9. 117 Ibid., 279. 118 Byrne, Mecca of Revolution, 174–5. 119 Ibid., 298. 120 Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 56–88. 121 Ibid.

Chapter 4

Long Live the Revolutionary Alliance Against Imperialism: Interwar AntiImperialism and the Arab Levant Sana Tannoury-Karam1 The Arab region was central to the foundation of the League Against Imperialism (LAI).2 Yet, accounts of the League have overwhelmingly dismissed Arab participation within the LAI as well as internationalist circles of the interwar period. This in turn has obscured the contributions and—often controversial—issues that Arab intellectuals and activists brought into an international organization such as the League. It has also silenced Arab voices that rose against imperialism. This chapter amplifies these voices and contextualizes them within a longer Arab anti-imperialist tradition that, much like the one this volume highlights within the LAI, was diverse, complex, and, most importantly, very threatening to colonial authorities. Yusuf Yazbik, a leftist intellectual and activist and one of the main founders of the Lebanese People’s Party—the precursor to the Communist Parties of Lebanon and Syria—was walking home from a clandestine meeting in Beirut in January 1926 when he was arrested by the police. Yazbik had just arrived from Paris and was meeting with Artin Madoyan, an Armenian communist, and Ali Nasser al-Din, an Arab nationalist. Yazbik had letters and information from Marcel Cachin and Shakib Arslan that Nasser al-Din was to relay to Sultan al-Atrash, the leader of the anticolonial Syrian revolt against the French Mandate (1925–1927).3 At the police station where he was held Yazbik shared a cell with Nasser al-Din and Madoyan, whom the French authorities had also managed to arrest that same night, as well as prominent communist activists.4 At the special criminal court headed by a French judge, they were accused of agitating for armed revolt and of enticing people to rebel and the army to disobey its superiors.5 Awaiting their trial, some of those arrested managed to make contact with the outside world, particularly with the Palestinian as well as the French Communist Parties. The latter sent a French lawyer, Jacques Sadoul, to defend the accused, and the CP newspaper, l’Humanité, launched a campaign on its pages protesting their arrest.6 Prisons in Syria 107

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and Lebanon were also filled with rebels and nationalist militants who were fighting against French colonialism in these two newly established countries. Messages on the walls of Beirut’s prison read “workers of the world unite” and “Long Live Syrian Independence.”7 What connected leftists, militant rebels, and nationalists in the same prison cells in 1926? The anti-imperialist struggle, although not new for Arabs, had become more salient by the end of the First World War and the imposition of the Mandate system on the former Ottoman provinces. Anti-imperialism was a common theme that animated individuals such as Arslan, Yazbik, al-Atrash, and many other seminal Arab nationalist and leftist figures of the interwar world within the same narrative. The Syrian Revolt that erupted in 1925 and ended only after violent French suppression in 1927 was a major turning point in the anti-imperialist struggle in the Arab Levant. The Syrian Revolt would also constitute a major component in Willi Münzenberg’s decision to convene a congress of anti-imperialist leaders and activists in 1927 after organizing the Against Cruelties in Syria Committee in 1925. Yusuf Yazbik, even after leaving the Syrian-Lebanese Communist Party in 1928, would go on to participate at the second congress of the League Against Imperialism (LAI) in Frankfurt in 1929, joining numerous other Arab figures. Thus, events in the Arab region and Arab activists clearly played an important role in the formation of the LAI, and Arab political activists played an active role in it. As Michael Goebel notes, the summer of 1925 was a “global moment … when events in Morocco coincided with the Great Syrian Revolt and Chinese May Thirtieth Movement” to mobilize anti-imperialists “with what they depicted as a worldwide uprising against different forms of imperialism.”8 Yet, there has not been any study that examines Arab participation in the international formations that emerged on the heels of that moment, let alone one that focuses on anti-imperialist activists who bridged the gap between the nationalist and internationalist spheres of the interwar period.9 Moreover, scholars have so far failed to address the ways in which these divergent and often competing groups came together in international spaces such as the League. This essay breaks this silence by examining Arab engagement with the LAI, especially in the Arab Levant. First, I identify the individuals who made it into the circles of the League and its congresses, particularly noting some changes in representation between the first meeting in 1927 and the second in 1929. Second, I contextualize Arab participation at the League within anti-imperialist activism of the interwar Levant, arguing for a thread of continuity between the anti-imperialist tradition from

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pre-war to post-war years, while emphasizing the changes the interwar years brought to this tradition. Third, I examine the ways in which the colonization of Arab lands and Arab resistance to western imperialism, particularly during the Syrian Revolt, played a significant role in the League’s foundation and in shaping its future trajectory. This chapter also complicates the relationship between the League and the Comintern, first, by including leftist Arab voices such as that of Yusuf Yazbik who did not necessarily identify as communist by the time he participated in LAI meetings. Second, by bringing into the League’s circles Arab pan-Islamist nationalist figures such as Shakib Arslan who was also involved in the League of Nations. This juxtaposition is an indication of the continued “acceptance” within the circles of the LAI of non-communist members even by 1929, and as a testament to possibilities within the LAI that would not continue to be available post1929. I therefore challenge overemphasis on the communist international in organizing anti-imperialist mobilization, while at the same time revisiting interwar internationalism and its links to nationalism.10 I argue for the ability of the League, despite its move towards a more Cominterncontrolled line by the end of the 1920s, to attract a range of political actors, as is evident in the mélange of delegates coming from different Arab countries. These dynamics within the League would also create, as this chapter shows, spaces for the Arab delegates to engage in pressing issues, primarily the anti-imperialist struggle within the context of the Syrian Revolt and Palestine. The Palestine question, indeed, defined the discourse and parameters of the Arab anti-imperialist struggle as well as the Arab relationship with the Soviet Union and the left for years to come. The Traditions of Arab Anti-Imperialism and the Appeal of the Soviet Union There is a long history of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist activism in the Arab Middle East that emerged in response to continued Western encroachment on the domains of the Ottoman Empire in what was coined as the “Eastern Question.” Egypt and Algeria, first colonized by France in 1798 and 1830 respectively, would witness the emergence of a tradition of anti-colonial discourse and militancy as well. The Arabic nahda (renaissance) that developed in the nineteenth century and occurred simultaneously with a period of reorganization and modernization of the Ottoman Empire contained elements of this anti-colonial tradition that would develop alongside a nationalist discourse in the Arab Levant as well as debates about modernization and progress. Starting in the midnineteenth century, anti-imperialism in the Arab Middle East took on

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various approaches that developed separately while overlapping in certain instances. The first tradition of anti-imperialism developed in the form of Islamic modernism/reformism that would also develop during the pre-First World War and the war years into pan-Islamism. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani’s initial “Islam against the West”11 approach was developed by pan-Islamists such as Shakib Arslan as “Islamic-oriented resistance to the outsider,”12 a form of Islamic nationalism to counter western imperialism. The other approach to anti-colonialism, primarily in the post-war years, would be nationalism, in the form of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalists such as Sati‘ al-Husri and Constantine Zurayq advocated for a unifying national identity to counter imperialism through nationalist struggles across the various Arab regions. These two approaches to the anti-imperialist struggle would continue to be relevant, and often intermixed, by activists in the interwar period. The interwar years witnessed an unprecedented level of political organization, party formations, and mass mobilization within the newly created Arab states. More importantly, they saw an unprecedented continuum of resistance to colonial rule that began in Iraq in 1920, followed by Syria in 1925, and Palestine in 1936. Shakib Arslan, who became the head of the Syrian-Palestinian delegation to the League of Nations in 1925, spent the interwar years between Geneva and various capitals of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa advocating for pan-Islamism within the internationalist framework of that period.13 The Syrian-Palestinian Congress convened in Geneva in the summer of 1921 as the first attempt to organize against French and British Mandate rule over the Levant. Funded by Michel Lutfallah, a wealthy Syrian landowner residing in Egypt, the Congress brought together prominent activists and intellectuals of the late Ottoman generation, including Rashid Rida, Shakib Arslan, and Ihsan al-Jabiri.14 This generation, most of whom served the Ottoman state before its collapse, would go on to play central roles in Faysal’s short-lived Kingdom in Syria. As a result, they escaped or were exiled to Europe when the French took Damascus in 1920 and joined the exiled international community in the interwar period, representing Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine in the League of Nations and the League Against Imperialism. Shakib Arslan, who became the secretary of the Syria-Palestinian Congress, along with Ihsan al-Jabiri and Sulayman Bey Kan‘an, would form the European delegation of the Congress representing Syria and Palestine at the League of Nations.15 Arslan and al-Jabiri, along with the Lebanese member of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress, Riad al-Sulh, would attend the League

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Against Imperialism’s inaugural meeting in 1927 in Brussels representing the Levant. Their attendance in Brussels attests to two major points that are worthy of emphasis. First, that the culture of anti-imperialism in the Levant in the interwar years drew upon and relied on the principles and history of that tradition from the pre-war Ottoman years, and that Brussels embodied that continuation; and, second, that the LAI in its first meeting depended on already established circles of international exile communities, often ones that overlapped with the “other” League (the League of Nations), as was the case with the Syrian-Palestinian Congress. Shakib Arslan’s visit to Moscow in November of 1927 as part of the tenth anniversary celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution and his participation at the LAI intensified French and British surveillance and suspicions of him. The French and the British accused him of working under Moscow’s directives, a charge that was conveniently and often used against anti-imperialists.16 Besides the nationalist and Islamic currents represented by Arslan, there was a major Arab anti-imperialist tradition that emerged in the postwar years from within the left. Unlike Arslan and other nationalist and Islamic figures of his ilk, leftists completely rejected the League of Nations as an arena of struggle, seeking radical alternatives and new venues to channel their activism. Although scholars have argued that the interwar years witnessed more continuity than rupture with the pre-war and war years in the nature of debates and the forms of mobilization against colonialism, the scale and scope of mobilization and the ways in which activists organized witnessed a major transformation.17 The central factor that precipitated this transformation was the emergence of the Soviet Union, an enormous Eurasian power that was officially committed to supporting anti-imperialist struggles around the world, and that offered a clear ideology for articulating those struggles and specific organizational tools for pursuing them. The years following the First World War saw the emergence of the role of leftists and communists in putting forward an internationalist agenda separate, but not necessarily in opposition to, the nationalist and panIslamic activism of the pre- and post-war periods. Leftist and communist activism, however, differed from pan-Islamism in its secular character, and diverged from nationalism in its class-based mobilization. What also separated the pre-war from the post-war (First World War) periods was the ability of leftists, through the internationalism that the left represented, to create solidarities across imperial and national borders. In the worldview of these leftists, communism’s ability to “combine” capitalism and

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imperialism as conceptually antithetical to colonized people’s freedom and liberation was especially important. In an interview he gave in 1981, Yusuf Yazbik explained the attraction of communism at the time: We thought all the evil conditions of the world—poverty, ignorance, exploitation, corruption—could be eliminated with this new doctrine. This must be understood against the background of the early 1920s with the West in occupation of the Arab lands and the Soviet Union a revolutionary state extending its hand to the rest of the oppressed world. As young intellectuals disillusioned with the conditions of our society, we enthusiastically grasped the extended hand.18 The few historians who have covered this period have looked at ideology or the lack thereof, and the extent to which “communism” was understood and adopted. Their narratives, however, have generally overlooked the point that Yazbik highlighted in hindsight, primarily the link between attraction to the Soviet Union and opposition to imperialism.19 That attraction was founded on a spatial perception of the division of the world between East and West, between colonizer and colonized, between oppressor and oppressed. The Soviet Union projected this kind of image as much as those who sought solutions to their problems demanded it. At the end of the First World War colonized people’s hopes for independence became embodied in two competing worldviews, between Wilsonian self-determination and Leninist anti-colonial internationalism. The failure of the “Wilsonian moment” at the Paris Peace Conference pushed those who were still holding on to the Wilsonian order to seek independence within the revolutionary orbit.20 Although not all anticolonial activists became members of leftist and communist parties, those who did support communism as propagated by the Soviet Union inextricably linked it with the anticolonial struggle during the interwar period. This is most evident in the diversity of people and ideas that came together in the late 1920s under the banner of the League Against Imperialism. Placing the attraction of Arab intellectuals to communism and the Soviet Union in the early 1920s within this interwar global context is important for understanding it. This attraction was part of the interwar moment and a direct result of the defeat that befell Arab societies with the League of Nations’ imposition of the mandate system. The disappointments that colonized people felt with the results of the Paris

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Peace Conference in 1919 left a void that the Soviet Union and the newly founded Third International (also known as the Communist International or the Comintern) rushed to fill.21 For the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire the Soviet Union played a special role in the immediate post-war period. The Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union had initially been received positively by some intellectuals of the Ottoman Empire when the Soviets exposed the colonial ambitions of the French and British in the Levant by leaking their wartime agreements to divide the region amongst themselves after the war.22 This interest in the Soviet Union was also a result of Soviet efforts directed towards the colonized people of the world, and more specifically to the “East.”23 The strong stance against colonialism that the Soviet Union took from its inception and Lenin’s particular interest in people living under colonial rule in the “Near East” further helped to favour the Bolsheviks in the eyes of the inhabitants of the region— and all colonized people for that matter—who began to feel the brunt of colonialism more heavily as the new decade unfolded.24 Although not all socialists and Marxists openly welcomed the Bolshevik Revolution, with the end of the First World War and the imposition of the Mandates on the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empir, the position of the Soviet Union within the post-war world order cast a favourable light on the Soviet project of communism. Moreover, the socioeconomic and political conditions created by a devastating war left fertile ground for the spread of socialist ideas that would gravitate towards the Soviet model. The Mandates, Capitalism, and the “Economic Colonization” of the Levant The inhabitants of the Levant who did not perish or emigrate during the war came under French and British Mandate rule.25 The first five years of the French Mandate were characterized by military rule exemplified by the army background of the High Commissioners who presided over Lebanon and Syria. During the first few years of its rule, the French administration intensified foreign and particularly French capitalist penetration into the Lebanese and Syrian markets that had begun during the late Ottoman era, creating for Lebanon and Syria an economic dependence on France that resulted in the development of a new urban bourgeoisie intimately tied in its interests to French capital and foreign investment and trade. The trade deficit sustained during the First World War increased during the 1920s, while trade was encouraged at the expense of industry and agriculture.26 French policies also encouraged the development of the service sector, as more French banks opened their doors in Beirut and

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major cities, monopolizing the financial sector.27 Large French enterprises also managed to gain monopolies over certain industries and companies, most prominently the tobacco-producing and railway companies between 1923 and 1924. The gradual takeover of French financial institutions and companies of the Lebanese and Syrian markets allowed for the foundation of a modern capitalist state in these newly established countries. While this system primarily benefited French nationals who invested in the Levant, a small group of Arab bankers, lenders, and merchants, some of whom greatly benefited during the war at the expense of the larger population, managed to tie themselves to French interests. Out of this local emerging bourgeoisie an organized nationalist elite developed that challenged imperial rule through engaging in politics on the local and global levels, including pushing for national independence in the hallways of both the League of Nations and the League Against Imperialism. Within Syria and Lebanon the emerging political left would also organize against imperialism and for national independence, while simultaneously framing the anticolonial struggle as linked to the anticapitalist struggle. Yusuf Yazbik declared in a manifesto explaining the purpose behind the establishment of the newspaper al-Insaniyya (l’Humanité) in 1925 that “[t]his newspaper has been established to serve the workers and peasants, to fight for their rights, and to proclaim to the ruling powers—French, ‘national’!, and capitalist—their cries against injustice.”28 Al-Insaniyya, the mouthpiece of the Lebanese People’s Party that was owned by Yusuf Yazbik, published critiques and analyses of French and British colonialism. “British Colonialism Chokes Every Voice That Awakens the Working Class,” read a headline in the fourth issue of al-Insaniyya as a response to the British authorities stopping the newspaper from entering Egypt, explaining that British colonialism constituted a danger to world peace.29 Another attack on British colonialism in Palestine came after a group of workers in prison went on hunger strike in Jerusalem to protest their maltreatment at the hands of the British authorities.30 Often in their critique of the social and political landscape of their countries, leftists brought up colonialism to attack colonial practices—of censorship, maltreatment of prisoners, and suppression of workers—as well as to argue for one or another issue related to class struggle and national liberation. Therefore, in these discussions leftists intertwined class with colonialism, arguing that the oppression of workers and the poor was primarily orchestrated by a colonizing power. This merging of capitalist and colonialist oppression

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was particularly developed in the context of discussing the status of the local economy and the role of capitalism. For instance, considering the amounts and prices of merchandise exported and imported from and into the ports of Beirut and Tripoli, al-Insaniyya bluntly concluded that the balance of trade deficit created by the growing number of imports was an “economic colonization of this country.”31 Under the Mandate, the strong pull of the world capitalist system on the inhabitants of the Levant manifested itself in the increasing number of foreign-owned companies and factories, as well as French-imposed monopolies on certain industries. In this context, attacks on capitalism and its agents became attacks on colonialism. Therefore, with the increase of worker mobilization against industrial factories and foreign-owned companies, a symbiosis between anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism occurred. This in turn explains why, as a labour historian of the Middle East argues, “Resistance to European plans to partition the Ottoman Empire and demands for political independence intersected with the economic grievances of peasants and urban working people which had been exacerbated by war.”32 This could not have been more evident than in the summer of 1925 and upon the eruption of the first major threat to French presence in the Levant: the Syrian Revolt. The Syrian Revolt and the Birth of the League Against Imperialism On 19 July 1925 in Jabal al-Duruz, some 100 kilometres south of Damascus, the first shot of the two-year revolt against the French Mandate was fired. What started as a local uprising led by Sultan al-Atrash would soon engulf all of mandate Syria and a huge part of mandate Lebanon as well.33 The Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria, in an extraordinary meeting on 22 July 1925, decided to support the revolt in Syria to achieve independence and liberation. A public statement, the first to be published in the name of the central committee of the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria, was distributed around Beirut shortly after this meeting.34 It is indicative and noteworthy that the Communist Party’s first public appearance came in the context of a call for anticolonial national liberation. The revolt, or the Great Syrian revolt as it would become known, changed the nature of colonial rule in the region as well as the attitudes and approaches of the mandated population. It was the “largest, longest, and most destructive of the Arab Middle Eastern revolts” of the 1920s that “brought together veterans of the Great War and earlier postwar rebellions and served as a template for later revolts.”35 For the people living in Syria and Lebanon, the revolt, whether experienced directly or indirectly,

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represented an explosion of political as well as social frustrations. For the French mandate authorities, the revolt created justification for further repression of the population and allowed the mandated power to use it as a pretext for dealing violently with any form of mobilization.36 For leftist intellectuals active in Lebanon and Syria, the revolt became their initiation into the anti-colonial struggle; it created a framework through which they incorporated a national liberation discourse within an antiimperialist struggle. In the weeks that followed its declaration, the Communist Party intensified its support for the Syrian revolt by publishing bulletins that encouraged the Lebanese people to support the revolt and join it. As far as we know, this was the first anticolonial cause in the Levant that rallied communists. The Syrian revolt thus became a foundational issue in the history of the communist party and the lives of its early members. Joseph Berger (Abu Zayyam), a member of the Central Committee of the Palestine Communist Party (PCP), arrived in Beirut from Palestine in October 1925 to discuss the possibility of direct contact with the revolutionaries in Syria. After several secret meetings with Eli Teper, another member of the PCP, and Fuad al-Shamali, it was decided that Abu Zayyam should go immediately to Paris, Berlin, and Moscow to ask for support for the revolt from the respective communist parties and the Comintern in the form of weapons, personnel, and money. They also agreed to lobby the international communist press to launch campaigns informing the world about the revolt and to transport weapons and ammunition through the Turkish and Palestinian Communist Parties, while the Lebanese Party worked towards enticing French soldiers and local volunteers/recruits to rebel against their commanders and refuse to fight in Syria.37 The central committee of the CP published a call to the soldiers in the French army fighting to suppress the revolt in Syria and Lebanon. Printed in French and on red paper, the call was circulated in the centres of concentration of French soldiers, mainly in Beirut, in Riyyaq, and Zahle in the Biqa‘, as well as in Aleppo and Damascus.38 They asked the soldiers, sons of workers and farmers, to turn their weapons against their officers rather than use them to kill the revolutionaries who were, like their fathers, also workers and farmers.39 Emphasizing the violence and barbarism of the French generals against the population of Syria, the burning of entire villages, and terrible violence, the communists declared that the French “have made from every peasant a rebel, and from every worker a revolutionary, and from every striker a communist.”40 The

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violence and atrocities were happening under the watching eyes of “the pioneers of European civilization.” Oh proletariat of Europe! Your hands are producing the bombs, grenades, and planes that plant death and destruction among us … our call is directed to you, honorable proletariat; you are the faithful friends of our freedom. Form a coalition to fight with revolutionary Syria! We the millions persecuted in the colonies, and you the laborers of Europe, have one common enemy, European imperialism! Stand against French imperialism. Long live the revolutionary alliance against imperialism!41 The statement clearly made a direct link between European proletariat and colonized people, between capitalism and imperialism. It also openly supported the national and liberating aspect of the anti-colonial revolution in Syria, asking for recruitment and support for it from the people.42 By working to internationalize the conflict, intellectuals and activists attempted to stand as liaisons between the fighters in Syria and the international community. Ali Nassir al-Din, a close friend of Yusuf Yazbik and the liaison between the rebels in Syria and the communists, transmitted documents and information on the revolt that Yazbik would, in turn, carry to Paris to the French Communist Party and to Shakib Arslan to gain the support of the French CP and increase international agitation against French suppression of the revolt.43 It was upon his return from one of these trips in 1926 that Yazbik was arrested by the French authorities, as narrated above. The Syrian revolt was also a turning point for Arslan and the European delegation of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress. After the eruption of the revolt, Arslan returned to Geneva to reactivate the Congress in August 1925 at the urging of Rashid Rida. He lived near the headquarters of the League of Nations for the next twenty years, mobilizing against imperialism and earning the title “Warrior of the East in the West.”44 Although he succeeded in getting the attention of the Permanent Mandate Commission through his reports on Syria and France’s violent war against the revolt, he failed to alter the Commission’s stance on the unreadiness of the Syrians for independence.45 He carried the frustration of this failure to the halls of the Egmont Palace in February 1927. The Syrian Revolt in 1925 was central not only to the development of the tradition of anti-imperialism amongst Lebanese and Syrian communists and nationalists, but also in the very inception of the League

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Against Imperialism itself. In December 1925, a few months after the Syrian Revolt had erupted, the Communist Party in Germany and the IAH (Workers’ International Relief) organized a public demonstration in Berlin under the slogan “China in Revolution, the Cruelties in Syria, and the International Working Class.”46 This demonstration became the launching point of the Against the Cruelties in Syria Committee that Willi Münzenberg would establish in conjunction with the Hands Off China campaign that he had initiated earlier that year.47 Petersson argues that “Münzenberg required the ECCI to authorize the IAH to pursue the Syria question, and merge it with the political pathos of the Chinese campaign.”48 Rather than a series of demonstrations like the China campaign, in the case of Syria Münzenberg’s goal was to organize a committee that would take the IAH into the Middle East and North Africa.49 Also in contrast to the China campaign, the Syria campaign was not solely about relief efforts but was rather “overtly political in its support for the Syrian nationalist struggle.”50 The Against the Cruelties in Syria Committee would constitute Münzenberg’s attempt, and in a short time success, to establish an organization against colonialism that would be separate from the IAH. This attempt would materialize in transforming the Syria Committee into the Action Committee Against the Colonial Politics of the Imperialists (or the Action Committee for short). In February 1926 the latter would constitute the organizational structure of the League Against Colonial Oppression (LACO), differing in its formation as a league rather than a committee.51 Acknowledging the centrality of the Syrian anticolonial question in the making of the LAI is very important if we are to refute exceptionalist and sectarian approaches to Middle East history.52 Not only was Syria a rallying point for future LAI activists, but it was also an anticolonial cause that mobilized Syrians and other Arabs at the time. This point needs to be particularly emphasized in the face of existing histories of Münzenberg and his anti-imperialist operations that focus on the relationship between the Comintern and Berlin and rarely consider the Syrian and other Arab activists involved. Fredrik Petersson specifically argues that the failure of the Committee to foster anti-colonialism within the IAH was reflected in the failure of communism to attract much support in the Arab region— Syria, Palestine, and Egypt more specifically.53 Not only is this assumption regarding the Arab attraction to communism false, but it is also built upon erroneous assumptions about the Middle East and the Arabs which suggest that, as Petersson put it, “the communist movement could not

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compete with the religious and racial structures in the Arab countries. Thus, the Middle East and the Arab region seemed immune towards the attempts of the international communist movement to penetrate its sociological structures.”54 We know that for the period in question communism was appealing enough in Syria and Lebanon to merit the attention of French and British mandate authorities who, in turn, monitored the activities of communists and eventually imprisoned them alongside the nationalist revolutionaries of the Syrian Revolt. The incarceration of leftists and nationalists, which ended in 1928 after the revolt was suppressed, obviously prohibited their participation in the League’s first meeting in 1927. Nevertheless, other prominent Arab delegates, mostly those in exile, did attend that first meeting of the LAI in Brussels. 1927: Brussels and the Arab Delegates During that first meeting in Brussels where the LAI was established, Egypt dominated the Arab anti-imperialist scene. Mohammad Hafiz Ramadan, an Egyptian parliamentarian and a member of the Watani Party (the National Party), served on the executive committee of the Congress in 1927 representing Egypt.55 Egypt was also represented by Ibrahim Youssef, a delegate from the Egyptian National-Radical Party. The resolution of the Egyptian delegation during the first meeting of the LAI asked for full independence for Egypt, the immediate evacuation of Egyptian territory by British land and naval forces, and the placing of the Suez Canal under Egyptian administration.56 Egypt represented a seminal place within the imagination of antiimperialists in the interwar period. As Michele Louro points out, Nehru especially emphasized the link between Egypt and colonized Asia, going as far as to situate Egypt within Asia, because of the importance of the Suez Canal in joining the colonization of Egypt with India and the rest of Asia. Given Hafiz’s emphasis during his statement at that meeting on continued military presence in Egypt despite nominal independence in 1922, Louro explains that “[n]o doubt Nehru connected his Egyptian comrade’s experiences of imperial oppression with his own interpretation of the British in India.”57 Nehru’s views regarding the rest of the Middle East were less empathetic. Although the Arab countries of Western Asia figured in his “vision of anti-imperialist regionalism,” his analysis did not go beyond “racialized stereotypes and generalizations” of Arabs as “fighting peoples lacking ‘intellectual’ qualities.”58 The anti-imperialist worldview that informed Nehru’s thinking about the world, meaning his

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prioritization of anti-imperialist struggles in order of relevance to India’s struggle and to global imperial trends, might also have been the common framework through which LAI officials and leaders saw the Arab region and its delegates. North African Arabs, for instance, would by the 1930s represent a more pressing anti-colonial issue due to the manifestation of fascism in the region; however, in 1927 and 1929 the archives are silent about their voices within the meetings despite their participation.59 North African Arabs were represented at the 1927 Congress, by the Destour Party from Tunis, the North African Star from Algeria, and Hassan Mattar representing Morocco.60 The National Syrian Committee was represented by Ihsan al-Jabiri. Shakib Arlsan and Riad al-Sulh were part of the Arab delegation as well.61 Syrian nationalists connected to the revolt were also represented by Mazhar al-Bakri. 62 Al-Bakri belonged to a small landowning Damascene family that had ties with the Arab Revolt of 1918 and King Faysal.63 In 1925, the Bakris had joined the revolt, cementing their friendship with its most prominent leader, Sultan al-Atrash.64 Mazhar, who lost one of his brothers—As‘ad—fighting in the revolt,65 took refuge in Cairo in 1926 along with his brother Fawzi. In what appeared to be a “bid to establish ties between the Comintern and the Syrian national movement,”66 the PCP had contacted the Bakris while in Cairo. It was in that context that Mazhar arrived in Brussels as the Syrian delegate to the League Against Imperialism meeting in 1927. Shakib Arslan spoke in Brussels on behalf of the Syrian delegation. Addressing his speech directly to the French delegation, Arslan launched a direct attack at the French socialists who, according to him, had done nothing in light of the insurgencies in the Rif in Morocco and most recently in Syria. “Gentlemen socialists, among whom I have a lot of friends, have done almost nothing,” proclaimed Arslan. He added in a nod to his knowledge of the differences that plagued the left within the League that “… whether it’s the fault of the second or the third international, I do not know. I know for instance that the MacDonald government has come to power, but what has it done for Egypt? What is the difference between the politics of the Labour government in England and the politics of the government of Baldwin? There is none.”67 He further intensified his attack regarding the incompetence of the socialists, particularly the French socialists, in the face of the colonization of Syria and their inactivity regarding the revolt in Morocco, questioning, “French socialist … what did they do? They

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voted for the occupation of Syria … There was a war in the Riff. What did the socialists do?”68 Although Arslan was careful to proclaim that he himself was not a socialist, he understood the political and ideological dynamics behind the League and demanded support for the Syrian and Arab cause based on his interpretation of those dynamics. He cited Lenin to argue for the importance of the European proletariat’s support of the colonized people’s insurrectionary movements against imperialism, giving credit to the communists for suggesting this link. He also directly criticized French socialists while casting doubt on their ability to perceive Syria and the rest of the colonized world beyond the imperialist frame. According to Arslan, the French communist—later turned fascist—Jacques Doriot had one day presented to the French Parliament a photograph of a French officer who had pictured behind him Arab skulls, questioning how this could be permitted. When another Member of Parliament responded to Doriot’s question by asking him what he would have done instead, Doriot supposedly answered, “I would not have committed the stupidity of taking a photograph with your head behind me.” “Behold that mentality!” comments Arslan. “If this is how it goes in the parliament of a country that pretends to be the most liberal in the world, we don’t expect very substantial results,” he continued, and concluded while addressing the French particularly, “You have to change your methods … imperialist governments do not retreat except in the face of force.”69 The French response to Arslan, which came from the representative of the CGTU (Confédération Générale du travail unitaire), Herclet, carried defensive and often patronizing overtones, and suggested that the Syrian nationalists should support the CGTU’s work in Syria if any independence was to be gained from imperialism. Responding to Arslan’s point on the need for the proletariat’s support in the struggle for Syrian independence, he argued that they had given that aid even before it was demanded, and for the same reasons that Arslan had exposed: that imperialism must be weakened by all means, and that the workers of the metropole had the same interests as the oppressed people of the colonies in tearing down imperialism, in itself a form of capitalism.70 Apart from Arslan and the Syrian-Palestinian Congress, the National Arab Congress of Palestine was one of the representatives of Palestine at Brussels.71 The Congress was the main political body of the native Arab majority of Palestine, housing under its umbrella the major national currents in the country. Given that it was representing Palestine in Brussels, it is surprising not only that the Poale-Zion (Workers of Zion)

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Party was also present but also that it used its presence in that meeting to attack the Arab Congress as a reactionary nationalist bourgeois movement and to voice its support for Jewish immigration to Palestine.72 A delegation from Poale-Zion presented its report in the halls of the Brussels meeting. Linking the political situation in Palestine to that of India, China, Syria, and Egypt, the report stressed the importance of Palestine to the imperialist project, particularly through its strategic link to Suez and therefore to Britain’s imperial domains in India. It then went on to declare that “imperialism protects bourgeois and feudal elements in their exploitation of the proletariat and the working masses in Palestine,”73 the latter being made up of Jewish immigrants to Palestine and Arab labouring masses. According to Poale-Zion’s report to the Congress, the Arab and Jewish proletariat in Palestine, as well as the Jewish proletariat around the world, should combat imperial domination in Palestine for the economic and political independence of the country. The report openly identified the Arab National Congress as a reactionary feudal representative of nationalism that fights against the liberation of the working masses, against labour immigration, and against the economic development of Palestine, but does not fight British imperialism.74 Calling for a proletariat movement that would fight that feudal reactionary movement, the report declared that the struggle against imperialism depended on the growth of workers’ unions for Arabs and Jews, and on intensive immigration of Jewish working masses to Palestine.75 Poale-Zion’s report ended with demands that would prepare the struggle for anti-imperialism, primarily fighting against immigration restrictions, and towards increasing immigration of Jewish workers to Palestine, as well as fighting for agrarian reform and for labour laws to protect workers.76 Arab objection to the presence of Poale-Zion would emerge in the 1927 meeting and intensify with the second meeting in Frankfurt in 1929; it would also be compounded in Frankfurt with the shift in Comintern and in LAI policies and the wider rift that would grow between the Comintern and Second International. This “shift” within the LAI could also be seen through a change in the make-up of the Arab delegation in 1929 as opposed to the 1927 Congress. 1929: Frankfurt and the Question of Palestine In contrast to the 1927 Arab delegates who primarily came from the nationalist elite that more or less controlled politics in their respective countries and from representatives of the Syro-Palestinian Congress, the 1929 Congress saw “independent” delegates who came from more leftist

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traditions and organizations. Possibly reflective of the move away from nationalist elite representatives in Arab countries was also the absence of Muhammad Hafiz, the Egyptian parliamentarian, from the executive committee of the League in 1929. This shift in representation within the Arab delegation corroborated the move within the LAI leadership towards a more Comintern-controlled league, which in turn was a response to the “class against class” policy of the 1928 Sixth Comintern meeting. However, it did not necessarily, in the Arab case, completely block the way to non-communists. Yusuf Yazbik was at Frankfurt, although we are not sure in what capacity since in 1929 he was no longer affiliated with the communist party. His notes of the congress proceedings highlight the prominence of the Palestinian representation at the LAI. In the course of the congress meetings, after the representative of Poale-Zion, Ben Saul, gave his speech, a member of the Arab delegation stood up and read aloud the delegations’ protestation against the decision to accept Poale-Zion’s representative in the congress of the LAI.77 There seems to have been a sharp altercation (vive altercation) between several Arab delegates and Ben Saul, the delegate from the left wing of Poale-Zion.78 Following that altercation, Shapurji Saklatvala, a former member of the British Parliament and current member of the LAI’s executive committee, gave a speech in support of the Arab delegation’s protests.79 Saklatvala seems to have declared that Poale-Zion, a party that claimed to support workers and fight against capitalists while in fact fighting only Arab capitalists, might find acceptance in Second International circles but should not be accepted in Third International milieus. Attacking first British imperialism and its tactics in Palestine, Yazbik reported that Saklatvala declared Zionism, which Poale-Zion was part of, a tool of British imperialism.80 The LAI resolution regarding the Arab countries echoed Saklatvala’s concerns and points. “In Palestine, Zionism constitutes the greatest support for British imperialism,” read the resolution regarding the Arab countries.81 The exploitation of the Arab workforce at the expense of developing the Jewish workforce benefited the capitalism of British imperialists, and so the latter worked to create friction between the two communities, disguising it with racial and religious difference. The Congress asserted British imperialism’s collaboration with Zionism, stating that “aided by Zionist bourgeoisie, English imperialists divide and corrupt the Arab national movement.”82 The LAI proclamation also identified Zionism as particularly dangerous, given that it masked

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itself with humanitarian disguises of the Second International. Taking a particularly Soviet-centric stance, the proclamation concluded that “this hypocrisy goes so far that there are entire associations (Poale Zion) that declare themselves revolutionary and claim the slogans of the republic of Soviets and the dictatorship of the proletariat.”83 The decisions of the Arab delegation stressed the complete independence and unity of Arab countries, the immediate evacuation of all imperialist forces, and the annulment of treaties, such as the Balfour Declaration and the Mandates, that supported imperialism. The delegation also stated a willingness to work with all groups and organizations that opposed imperialism, while vehemently fighting groups that were willing to compromise with imperialism. The delegation declared itself in support of a government emanating out of the sovereignty of the people.84 Palestine dominated the speeches and interjections of other Arab delegates as well. Although the papers identify Khalil Budeiri, a leftist Palestinian intellectual who had close ties with the PCP, as speaking on behalf of Iraq, neither his speech nor what we know from secondary sources indicated that he was the Iraqi representative during the League.85 In his speech to the Congress, Budeiri denounced the Balfour Declaration and declared the continuation of the struggle until victory was achieved.86 Hamdi al-Husseini, who had belonged to the more radical wing of the Palestinian national movement and was supposed to be a delegate to the Congress from Palestine, could not make it to Frankfurt because the Egyptian authorities would not grant him a visa in July. Instead, Khalil Budeiri attended Frankfurt representing Arab leftists sympathizing with the PCP, along with a delegation from the PCP itself.87 Al-Husseini had attended the Cologne meeting of the League earlier that year in February; in his absence in Frankfurt, he was elected as an honorary member of the praesidium of the Congress. Upon his return to Palestine from Cologne al-Husseini was placed under British intelligence surveillance and all materials and documents from his LAI executive meeting were confiscated.88 Hamdi al-Husseini was imprisoned by the British in August of 1929, along with Kamal al-Dashani. Al-Husseini declared a hunger strike in opposition to being held without examination by the British authorities and as a protest at British treatment of prisoners. In a statement about his decision to strike, he argued that, “… if we lose our lives, then you know that the Mandate power with its brutal system has killed us and not lack of food.”89 The events unfolding in Palestine were framed within the parameters of intra-European, and in this case particularly intra-British, leftist

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divisions between the Second and the Third Internationals. The LAI in Berlin issued an “Appeal against imperial terror in Palestine” in October 1929, calling for his release. The appeal widely condemned British imperialism, declaring the actions of Britain in Palestine and the deplorable conditions that peasants were being subjected to in labour camps as “imperialist terror”; however, its overall tone and its purpose seemed to have been a direct attack on MacDonald’s government. “How could Hamdi al-Husseini be spared by this new wave of terror instituted by the MacDonald government!” the appeal declared.90 Not only was the attack directed against the British Labour Government, but it also identified Zionism and feudal “Arabian elements” as supporters of imperialism and the enemies of the working class. The LAI appeal accused Zionists and reactionary Arab feudalists of inciting violence. In response to the 1929 “wailing wall” incidents, al-Husseini had publicly called for the unity of Arab and Jewish workers and for annulling the Mandate which would have annulled the Balfour Declaration. “This,” the appeal explained, “was sufficient ground to arrest Hamdi al-Husseini instead of the revisionist-Zionist trouble-makers, instead of the reactionary feudalist Arabian elements who had attempted to exploit the just indignation of the Arabian masses in their own interests.”91 Comparing al-Husseini’s imprisonment in Palestine to that of the Meerut prisoners in India, the LAI appeal presented its most striking attack on the Labour Government in Britain. Announcing that “MacDonald’s ‘Labour government’ was always prepared to let revolutionaries die in its gaols,”92 the LAI concluded the appeal by declaring, “Down with the imperialist policy of the MacDonald government which is supported by the British Labour Party and by the British Independent Labour Party! Release Hamdi al-Husseini and all other revolutionaries in the gaols of British imperialism all over the world!”93 Conclusion The al-Husseini and Meerut cases not only took place at the same time, but both involved leftist non-communists imprisoned by the British for fear of anti-imperialist insurrections in Palestine and in India respectively. Therefore, the al-Husseini case attests, first, to the considerable threat that anti-imperialist activists were posing to the imperial powers and, second, to the fact that, despite the Comintern’s attempts to homogenize the membership and contacts of the LAI, leftist non-communist affiliation with the League and its circles prevailed, at least in 1929.94

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The other indication of the disconnect between the LAI and the Comintern revolves around the question of Palestine. There is a contradiction between, on the one hand, the Comintern’s decision in 1929 to stand in support of the Arabs in the Wailing Wall incidents, and on the other hand, the LAI’s decision to allow Poale-Zion as a representative during the 1927 and 1929 Congresses despite Arab protests against Zionist representation, and more importantly their declaration that cast the blame on Arab reactionary forces and Zionists equally. The latter declaration echoed the PCP’s statement at the beginning of the incidents in Palestine in August 1929, which the Party had to re-evaluate and “correct” after the Comintern and the ECCI declared the events to be a national liberation and anti-imperialist movement of all Arabs.95 The fact that the question of Palestine created contestation within the LAI and showed the divergence between the LAI and the Comintern as well as the Comintern and the PCP foreshadows the continued schisms this issue would create within anti-imperialist movements and within the left throughout the twentieth century. The Soviet decision to accept the partition of Palestine in 1947 created one of the major schisms within the Communist parties of the Arab world as well as Arab leftists at large. This decision and its implications have been portrayed in the literature as a surprise to the leftists involved. Yet, a closer look at the dynamics with which the Palestine question was dealt with in the milieus of the League and the Comintern as early as 1927/1929 reveals ambiguity in tackling the issue of Palestine and in framing Zionism within the anti-imperialist framework. This chapter has therefore shown not only that there was a failure to address the question of Palestine, but that the LAI reproduced the Eurocentrism of the struggle between the Second and Third Internationals by imposing these divisions within the European left upon the struggle in Palestine against Zionism. This residual orientalism that framed the narrative of the League towards the Arab countries in general, and Palestine in particular, brings to the fore the limits of the “globality” of the League. Breaking the silence on Arab voices within the League is important. Highlighting the history of Arab anti-imperialism within an organization such as the LAI reveals some of the issues and debates that concerned Arab delegates representing their states and societies in the interwar world. Arab delegates to the League demanded independence and freedom. They also called for government of and by the people, and they declared in these venues their support for social justice and democratic principles.

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Yusuf Yazbik’s involvement and presence in the 1929 Congress of the LAI, for instance, attests to the durability of internationalism for leftists who moved away from organized communist activity by the late 1920s.96 Although the communist parties that individuals like Yazbik founded in the mid-1920s would become more dogmatic and Stalinist by the late 1920s, the Arab public sphere allowed for a diverse political culture to continue to exist and to contend over visions of national and international futures. Notes 1

2

3 4

5

6 7 8

I am profoundly indebted to the feedback of Abdel Razzaq Takriti and Ussama Makdisi. This chapter has also benefitted from the feedback of the editors as well as the commentators on this volume: Antoinette Burton, Ani Mukherji, Susan Pennybacker, and Erez Manela. I use the term Levant in this chapter in reference to Bilad al-Sham, meaning the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire that became Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Muhammad Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamra’: Hikyat Nushu’ al-Hizb al-Shuyu‘ i al-Lubnani, 1924–1931 (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1974), 388–90. Hikazun Buyudjian, Eli Teper and Fu’ad al-Shamali. Al-Shamali and Teper had in fact been in prison since December 1925. Al-Shamali recounted his and Teper’s arrest and the rest’s arrest explained through the planted agent Vart Padrik, Fuad al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu‘ iyya fi al-Bilad al-Suriyya al-Lubnaniyya (Beirut: Matba’at al-Fawa’id, 1935), 40–41; Artin Madoyan, Hayat ‘Ala al-Mitras: Dhikrayat wa-Mushahadat (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 2011), 117. Al-Shamali said they were in prison for 45 days before they were joined by the others, al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu’ iya, 36–40; Madoyan, Hayat ‘Ala al-Mitras, 116–19; Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamra’, 390–92. Dakroub mistakenly claimed that al-Shamali and Teper were arrested the same time as the rest; however, according to al-Shamali and Madoyan, the two were arrested earlier in December while the rest were arrested on January 1926. al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu’ iya, 41–42; Madoyan, Hayat ‘Ala al-Mitras, 120. Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamra’, 394. Dakrub’s source was Inprecor, number 71, 1926. Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 165.

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9

10

11

12 13

14

15 16

Some accounts that have mentioned the League Against Imperialism: Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Ba‘thists, and Free Officers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Musa Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party 1919–1948: Arab and Jew in the Struggle for Internationalism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010). Michele Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra (eds.), Cosmopolitan Thought Zones: South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas (New York: Pelgrave, 2010); Ali Raza, Franziska Roy, and Benjamin Zachariah (eds.), The Internationalist Moment: South Asia, Worlds, and World Views, 1917–1939 (London: Sage, 2014); Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Although this term was used by William Cleveland to explain Shakib Arslan’s attraction to pan-Islamism, it was, as Cleveland also explains, al-Afghani’s and Abdu’s formulations of these ideas that allowed Arslan to uphold it and fight for it. See William L. Cleveland, Islam against the West: Shakib Arslan and the Campaign for Islamic Nationalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985). Ibid., xix. Arslan, who belonged to the last generation of Ottoman Arabs, was a staunch Ottomanist before the dismantling of the OE post-WWI. He embraced pan-Islamism as part of his Ottomanist loyalties through the teachings and influence of al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdu. He would spend the interwar years as the delegate of the Syrian-Palestine Congress to the League of Nations, and became attracted to fascism in the 1930s. For more on Arslan, see Ahmad Sharabasi, Shakib Arslan (Misr: Wazarat al-Thaqafah - wa-alIrshad al-Qawmi al-Mu’assasah al-Misriyah al-’Alam, 1963); Cleveland, Islam against the West; David Stenner, “Centring the Periphery: Northern Morocco as a Hub of Transnational Anti-Colonial Activism, 1930–43*,” Journal of Global History 11:3 (2016), 430–50. Cleveland, Islam against the West, 49–51. For more on this late Ottoman generation: Michael Provence, The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Cleveland, Islam against the West, 50. Ibid., 76.

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17

18

19

20

21

22

23 24

Recent histories have concentrated on the debate between continuity and change in pre and post-war Middle East and have emphasized the need to acknowledge the continuities that have until recently been overlooked. See Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan, The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates (London: Routledge, 2015). Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 12. Translation is Ismael and Ismael’s. Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamra’; Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1998; Tareq Y Ismael, The Communist Movement in the Arab World (London/New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005). Hanna Batatu, who focused on communism in Iraq, also covered the foundations of the Communist Party in Lebanon and Syria through this historiographic trend in Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 1978. The ‘Wilsonian Moment’ was coined by Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). Ibid., 7. Moreover, during the Paris Peace Conference, the Soviets seemed to have approached certain delegations such as members of the Egyptian Wafd to offer support against the British, including financial support. See Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 378–79. Mas‘ud Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtima‘ i, 1914–1926 (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1974), 395. For instance, in Egypt, Bolshevism was a topic in local newspapers in 1919 when the Grand Mufti of Egypt, encouraged by the British, proclaimed a fatwa against Bolshevism. Salamah Musa’s al-Ahali, the nationalist Wadi al-Nil, as well as al-Ahram defended Bolshevism and published interviews of Lenin explaining his definition of communism. An intelligence report to the British revealed that the Egyptian public was interested in Bolshevism, and news of Bolshevik advances in Russia and Central Asia seemed to be met with joy and support. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 377. The category of the “East” was related and used similarly to the Asianism that Carolien Stolte explores in her contribution to this volume. The period between 1860 and 1914 witnessed a spread of socialist, anarchist, and radical leftist ideas in the Eastern Mediterranean with the increase in the circulation of people and ideas within new communication and organizational networks. See Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

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25

26

27

28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36

The Ottoman Empire’s population was diminished by 25% percent due to war-related deaths, including the loss of upward of half of the population of Mount Lebanon due to a famine and a locust invasion compounded by a French and British blockade of the Mediterranean. On the First World War in the Levant, see Melanie S. Tanielian, The Charity of War: Famine, Humanitarian Aid, and World War I in the Middle East (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017; Leila Tarazi Fawaz, A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014). Moreover, France was the primary importer to Lebanon and Syria during the Mandate period. Lebanon’s trade deficit continued between 1923 and 1932. For an economic history of Lebanon see Hicham Safieddine, Banking on the State: the financial foundations of Lebanon (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019). The Mandate period generally saw the expansion of Beirut at the expense of the mountain and the countryside. The French particularly undertook the task of the ‘modernization of Beirut’, see Marwan Buheiry, “Beirut’s Role in the Political Economy of the French Mandate, 1919–1939,” in Papers on Lebanon, Center for Lebanese Studies (1986); Roger Owen, “The Political Economy of Grand Liban, 1920–1970” in Essays on the Crisis in Lebanon (London: Ithaca Press, 1976). “al-Insaniyya,” al-Insaniyya 1 (15 May 1925), 4. Translations by the author unless otherwise indicated. “Al-Isti‘mar al-Baritani Khatar Yuhaddid Salam al-‘Alam,” al-Insaniyya 4 (7 June 1925), 3. “Sawt min Suriya al-Janubiyya Yastasrikh,” al-Insaniyya, 2 (24 May 1925), 4. “Iqra’ wa-Tama‘an,” al-Insaniyya, 3 (31 May 1925), 3. Joel Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 83. Ibid., 91; Sultan al-Atrash had petitioned the League of Nations in 1922 to protest the creation of an autonomous entity of “Jabal Druze” in Jabal Hawran, arguing for unity with Syria since the Druze community were in fact Syrian, and for self-determination for the Syrian nation, see Michael Provence, “French Mandate Counterinsurgency and the Suppression of the Great Syrian Revolt,” 143. For more on the Syrian Revolt see also Michael Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005). Madoyan, Hayat ‘Ala al-Mitras, 99–100. Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism, 12. For more on the Syrian Revolt, see Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 168–204; Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism.

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37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52

53

Al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu’ iya, 32–34. Madoyan, Hayat ‘Ala al-Mitras, 112. The call, according to Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamra’, 400, was later published in Inprecor in 1926 under the name of the Syrian and Palestinian Communist Party (issue 98, August 1926). These were two separate parties but it was not until 1928 that LCP was recognized by the Comintern and renamed the Lebanese and Syrian Communist Party. The Comintern had thought it best, on the insistence of the Jewish communists in the PCP, that the Lebanese and Syrian communists remain under the jurisdiction and guidance of the Palestinian party. See Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 14. Madoyan, Hayat ‘Ala al-Mitras, 111–12; Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamra’, 372. Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamra’, 484. Ibid., 484–85. Document reproduced from Inprecor 98 (6 August 1926), 1905. Madoyan, Hayat ‘Ala al-Mitras, 112–3. Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamra’, 388–89. Cleveland, Islam against the West, 53; Provence, The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 160. Cleveland, Islam against the West, 53–55. Fredrik Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, the League Against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925–1933 (Lewiston: Queenston Press, 2014), 153–4. For more on this campaign, the wider context for the formation of the League, and the Chinese participation in the LAI see Belogurova’s and Petersson’s chapters in this volume. Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, 154. Ibid., 154, 158. Ibid., 156. Ibid., 175, 184. For literature that has refuted these narrow histories of the Middle East, see Ussama Samir Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean; James L Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Orit Bashkin, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); Dyala Hamzah, ed., The Making of the Arab Intellectual (1880–1960): Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood (New York: Routledge, 2012). Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, 159.

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54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75 76

Ibid. International Institute of Social History (IISH), League against Imperialism Archive (LAIA), file 2: List of Organizations and Delegates attending the Congress Against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism, 10 February, 1927. IISH, LAIA, file 20: Resolution of the Egyptian Delegation. German original. Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism, 56. For more on Nehru and the League, see also Michele Louro’s contribution to this volume. Louro, Comrades, 57. For a discussion on North Africa, particularly Algerian involvement in the League, see Donál Hassett and Jeffrey Byrne’s chapters in this volume. IISH, LAIA, file 2: List of Organizations and Delegates attending the Congress Against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism, 10 February, 1927. Ibid. Note: According to the German list, but not the French or English list. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 438–39. His brother, Nasib al-Bakri, was King Faysal’s envoy to Jabal al-Duruz between 1917 and 1920, a link that the Bakris established with the Druze of that region that would continue throughout the 1920s including during the great revolt. See Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism, 72. Ibid., 72–73. Ibid., 78. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 438–39. Russian State Archives for Social and Political History (RGASPI), File 542/1/14, 542/1/14: Shakib Arslan, speech at Brussels Congress. Ibid. Ibid. RGASPI, 542/1/14: Herclet, speech at Brussels Congress. IISH, LAIA, file 2: List of Organizations and Delegates attending the Congress Against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism, 10 February 1927. For more on the history of Zionism in the context of the British Mandate in Palestine and the British Left, see Paul Kelemen, The British Left and Zionism: History of a Divorce (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). IISH, LAIA, file 21: Délégation du Parti Ouvrier de Palestine (Poale-Zion), 3. Ibid. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 5.

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77

78 79

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

95 96

Private Papers of Yusuf Yazbik, Hadath, Lebanon (PPYY). Yusuf Yazbik, “The Arab Protestation and Saklatvala’s Speech” (unpublished manuscript); “Service d’Information et de Presse no. 12” (26 July 1929), 3. The private papers of Yusuf Yazbik were preserved by his family in Hadath, Lebanon. I was granted access to this private collection by the generosity of Yazbek’s family in June 2015. PPYY, “Service d’Information et de Presse no. 12” (26 July 1929), 1. The LAI document (Service d’Information) corroborates the fact that Saklatvala took a stance, right after the Arab delegates’ protest, against the presence of Poale-Zion at the LAI. PPYY, Yazbik, “The Arab Protestation and Saklatvala’s Speech” (unpublished manuscript). IISH, LAIA, file 86: Resolution Regarding the Arab Regions, 20–31 July 1929, 5 (German original). Ibid. Ibid. PPYY, “Demandes/Décisions de la Délégation Arabe” (unpublished manuscript). Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party 1919–1948, 17. PPYY, “Service d’Information et de Presse no. 12” (26 July 1929). Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party 1919–1948, 17.See Filastin, 15 July 1929. IISH, LAIA, file 130: Appeal Against Imperialist Terror in Palestine, October 1929, 1. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 1. IISH, LAIA, file 130: Appeal Against Imperialist Terror in Palestine, October 1929. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 3. Other authors in this volume have also shown the prevalence of this trend into 1929. See, for instance, the chapters by Michele Louro, Dónal Hasset, and Mark Reeves. Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party, 23–30. Yazbik himself had left in 1928 the communist party he had founded in 1924–5.

Chapter 5

China, Anti-imperialist Leagues, and the Comintern (1926–1937): Visions, Networks, and Cadres Anna Belogurova In spite of the hopes of many anti-colonial activists, the Treaty of Versailles following the First World War did not stop Western imperialism in Asia and Africa. In response, a number of new religious and political organizations engaged in transnational anticolonial activities and aspired to transform what they believed was an unfair post-war world order.1 From 1923 to 1924, the Indonesian communist Tan Malaka envisaged a federation of Eastern communists,2 while the Senegalese Lamine Senghor and Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh, both members of the French Communist Party’s Union Intercoloniale, established the Ligue de Défense de la Race Nègre.3 In such organizations, ideas of national liberation were intertwined with pan-regional concepts and ideas of internationalism. Chinese delegates’ participation in the organization of the League Against Imperialism (LAI) was also part of this global zeitgeist among non-Western intellectuals seeking a world free from colonial oppression. Asianist ideas, especially regarding an alliance between India and China, underlined the participation of Indian and Chinese LAI delegates, as Carolien Stolte also shows in her chapter. Indeed, both Indian4 and Chinese nationalism were channelled through internationalism in the early interwar period. The idea of the world anticolonial revolution that would end Western imperialism in China, too, was at the heart of the ideology of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang, GMD, est. 1912). Having evolved in part from international anti-colonial ventures of its founder, “the father of the Chinese nation,” Sun Yat-sen, the GMD propagated Chinese liberation and revival among overseas Chinese communities and fundraised for the revolution among them and foreign powers. From 1923 to 1927, Sun Yat-sen’s government in South China allied with the Soviet Union, which provided the GMD with military aid on condition that the GMD restructured after the model of the Bolshevik party and worked in a united front with the then small and young Chinese Communist Party (CCP, est. 1921). By 1927 however, the CCP’s resultant membership 135

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and influence expansion, especially in the countryside where the CCP undermined the GMD’s power base, led the GMD to break the alliance with the CCP and the Comintern.5 Internationally, the Comintern initiated the anti-imperialist organizations and all communist parties had anti-imperialist departments. In 1925, the Comintern sent the head of the anti-imperialist department of the American Workers’ Party, Charles Shipman, to Mexico to establish the All-American Anti-imperialist League (AAAIL).6 The Chinese GMD, meanwhile, also organized anti-imperialist leagues together with various Asian revolutionaries in China, including one in Canton in 1925 by GMD leader Liao Zhongkai and Ho Chi Minh. However, Hu Hanmin and others in the GMD were unsuccesseful in their requests to join the Comintern independently from the CCP, aiming to realize the party’s vision of a world revolution.7 Hu hoped to convert the Comintern into a global organization, an International of Nationalities (minzu guoji), which had allegedly been promoted by Sun Yat-sen, and thus the GMD would play the leading role in the world nationalist revolution (lingdao guojide minzu geming yundong).8 After the breakdown of the GMD–CCP alliance in 1927, the same year as the League Against Imperialism was established in Brussels, the Union of the Oppressed Peoples of the East (Dongfang beiyapo minzu lianhehui) began to operate in Hankou and Shanghai.9 It consisted of Vietnamese, Koreans, Indians, and Javanese, and had the goal of wresting leadership over Asian communists from the Comintern.10 After the end of the GMD-Comintern alliance, the Chinese Communist Party, which also inherited Sun Yat-sen’s internationalist imagination, worked hand in hand with the Comintern in its anticolonial project. Dutch Comintern cadre Sneevliet stressed that the CCP revolution “was linked to and formed an integral part of” wider worldwide anti-imperialist struggle. In this, according to Saich, “the interests and policies of the national party were subordinate to the Comintern.”11 The connection between Chinese communist anticolonial activities and the world anticolonial movement tightened when the Moscow-based Comintern actively began to foster a world revolution in the colonies12 after the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928 and supported the establishment of communist parties there.13 The Chinese communists, as we will see, played an important role in that. This chapter outlines how the early history of the LAI and regional anti-imperialist leagues (AILs) organized by Chinese communists in the Americas, South China, and Southeast Asia related to the Chinese national project and the Comintern. This was a grand vision propagated

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by volumnous printed propaganda by the movers and shakers of this world revolution, who were sojourning intellectuals of various hues, including students, journalists, schoolteachers, and politicians of national calibre. The story of one of those, Liao Huanxing, the GMD representative to the LAI and its first secretary, demonstrates not only how an Asianist grand vision of the interwar world shaped the transnational lives of LAI protagonists but also the realities of the flow of money from Moscow to Berlin, confirming Fredrik Petersson’s point in this volume about the importance of this spatial vector. And indeed, as David Murphy states in his contribution about Lamine Senghor, “communists were the anticolonial movement’s surest and wealthiest allies.” Liao made his living as a journalist and as a Comintern cadre. As we know, party intrigues were not uncommon in the movement worldwide.14 The beginning of the decline of Liao’s stellar career in Berlin was his conflict with Münzenberg and comradely squabbles among the Chinese-language faction of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) (Degong Zhongguo yuyanzu). In the end, Liao shared the destiny of many Soviet and foreign Comintern cadres in Moscow during Stalin’s repressions, but he was among the lucky ones: he survived the Soviet labour camps. Oppressed nations: From national ideas to transnational organizations The Chinese nationalism of the early twentieth century, the goal of which was to solve China’s problems and create a world of independent nations, was inseparable from and ran parallel to world anticolonial currents. Proponents of reform and intellectuals like Mark Twain established a League Against Imperialism (1898–1900) opposing American colonial expansion to the Philippines as contradicting the American tradition of democracy and liberty.15 Chinese politicians promoted anti-imperialism, as well as a change of government in China among Chinese immigrant communities facing discrimination in their host countries. The anticolonial wars in Cuba (1895–1898) and the Philippines (1896–1898, 1899–1902), the Boer Wars (1899–1902), and Asian migrant rights campaigns in Southern Africa (1906–1911), where the Chinese entered an alliance with Indian migrants led by Gandhi,16 inspired those seeking the revival of China after a series of military defeats starting from the Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860) to the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) to the Boxer War (1899–1901), among others. In the early 1900s, Chinese anticolonial activists started to form new, transnational networks, such as those of the Save the Emperor Society (Baohuanghui).

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Nascent Chinese nationalist transnational networks intersected with Asianist societies in Japan and Shanghai, the precursors to the AntiImperialist Leagues in East Asia mentioned above. They took inspiration from the successes of Japan in its modernization and its victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Among those inspired by these events was Liu Shipei, a member of the Indo-Chinese Asian Solidarity Society (Yazhou heqinghui) in Tokyo, established in 1907, who pointed out the importance of solidarity among the weak peoples (ruozhong) of Asia in the confrontation between China and Asia and the imperialism of Japan and the West.17 In 1924, Sun Yat-sen believed that an alliance of oppressed nations was central to the idea of China’s revival. Sun postulated in his lectures on nationalism that China would rise to power again only if it returned to its historical policy of “helping the weak” (ji ruo fu qing), opposing the strong, and allying itself with polities in the former Chinese sphere of influence that had been lost to European colonial encroachment.18 Sun’s “oppressed nations”19 were not only former Chinese vassals, friendly neighbours, and decolonized countries in the Americas but also Soviet Russia and post-Versailles Germany, who he believed were both oppressed by the post-war peace treaty and allied armed actions. The Pan-Asian ethos of the Chinese Revolution echoed earlier globalist Chinese traditions, such as ideas about global interconnections expressed in ancient concepts such as tianxia (All Under Heaven) and da tong (Great Unity). This ethos was manifested in Sun Yat-sen’s own discussions of internationalism (shijiezhuyi) stemming from nationalism,20 as well as in the intellectual and social change triggered by the protest movement against the Versailles Treaty, the so-called May Fourth Movement (1919), where nationalism and internationalism merged.21 In the CCP, too, preexisting ideas and aspirations for an interconnected and just world were linked to new ideas of national identity and world communist revolution. The ideas of Asian unity in juxtaposition to the West, combined with traditional ideas of China’s role as a benevolent patron in the region, were channelled into new anticolonial ideologies where internationalism of the global communist alliance and calls for the independence of each nation converged. The GMD adopted Sun’s geopolitical imagination in its education policies both in China and among overseas Chinese communities. In diasporic networks, those appealed to some in the Chinese communities where migrant ideas about the need for assimilation into local societies remained strong despite concurrent re-Sinicization policies, and the discrimination of the host governments against the Chinese created resentment.

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Overseas GMD and CCP organizations developed simultaneously with Hu Hanmin’s attempts to join the Comintern. Promoting an antiBritish and broader anti-imperialist cause among overseas Chinese, the GMD established the Overseas Chinese Communist Division in 1926 to foster the unity of Chinese in the Nanyang and the emancipation of the “small weak races” (i.e. the indigenous peoples).22 Thus, well before the founding of the LAI, Chinese anti-colonial groups were already welldeveloped and operated over long distances in the places of historical Chinese sojourn and migration in Southeast Asia and the Americas as individual sojourn intellectuals embraced Sun Yat-sen’s vision and found employment at the international organizations, such as the Comintern. Berlin-Moscow: The rise and fall of Liao Huanxing Liao Huanxing, the LAI’s first secretary, is emblematic of the GMD and CCP importance for the anti-imperialist project globally and the Comintern networks. The opposition to imperialism in China was the common cause in the All-American League23 and the LAI. The LAI originated from the Hands Off China Society, created by Workers’ International Relief and Willi Münzenberg in Berlin in 1925 with Comintern funding. From the GMD perspective, Germany had a special place in visions for the future. In 1923, Sun Yat-sen harboured the idea of a three-country alliance between the Soviet Union, Germany, and China, wherein China would benefit from the Soviet Union’s ideology and Germany’s military technology and advisors. In this vision, once China’s sovereignty and power were fully restored China would help Germany rejuvenate itself.24 From the German perspective, it is not difficult to see how the Chinese discourse of an alliance of oppressed peoples would be attractive, at least in some circles. In the early 1930s, in competition with the Nazis, the German Communist Party (KPD) ran an election campaign based on eliminating the consequences of the peace of Versailles.25 This reflected the mood of post-war Germany. A GMD cadre in 1929 noted that Germans referred to themselves as members of an oppressed nation that wanted to ally itself with other weak nations. This sentiment, in combination with the anti-British leanings of Chinese students in Germany, provided the basis for Sino-German nationalist cooperation.26 In the soul-searching of post-Versailles Germany, there was an intellectual fascination with China as a model of a nation that had changed dramatically and rapidly through revolution.27 Chinese activists in Germany related to Germany’s cause as an oppressed nation, and German authorities were empathetic to Chinese

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anti-British sentiments, given the post-Versailles mood in Germany. In 1925, German police even released Chinese students who had been arrested for anti-British protests in support of the May Thirtieth Movement, which opposed British suppression of Chinese student demonstrations in Shanghai.28 Among these students was Liao Huanxing, a future secretary of the executive committee of the LAI and representative of the GMD and the Comintern in Berlin.29 In February 1927, the Brussels inaugural congress of the LAI devoted special attention to China, and in fact one fifth of the representatives present came from the GMD.30 Initially, the GMD’s Central Committee decided to appoint as its representative to the first LAI congress Hu Hanmin, who had just returned from a trip to Moscow during which he had advocated for the GMD to become a member of the Comintern independently of the CCP. However, Hu’s assistant, Liao Huanxing, went in his place, apparently because Liao was the GMD representative in Berlin since he had been entrusted by the British GMD to establish a branch there.31 In Brussels, Liao quoted Sun Yat-sen’s plea that the GMD unite with the oppressed classes of the West and with the oppressed nations of the world to oppose oppressors and imperialists.32 Liao Huanxing’s story demonstrates how the personal intertwined with the political in the LAI, as well as the role of individual survival and party intrigues in the development of an international organization. Liao’s autobiography is also the embodiment of the CCP narrative of the Chinese Revolution. By 1932, when his life story was recorded in the Comintern, he had already appropriated some elements of the emerging CCP historical narrative, such as the support of Mao Zedong, a fellow native of Hunan, by Moscow. Liao claimed to have participated in all kinds of “revolutionary” organizations, beginning with the 1911 overthrow of the Qing government, such as early Marxist study societies organized by famous revolutionaries, communes, and GMD newspapers. Liao self-identified as an “intellectual.”33 He was born in 1895, in Hengyang County. His father had 400 mu of land, more than twentyfive hectares, and was a magistrate, though some Comintern documents identify him as a professor. During the 1911 revolution, Liao stirred peasants up to cut queues in a symbolic act supporting the overthrow of the government. He also fundraised for the revolutionary cause among rich community members.34 He joined the GMD early and witnessed its dissolution in 1913. Liao was involved in the YMCA and claimed to have participated in the society organized by Peking University rector Cai Yuanpei and GMD co-founder Wang Jingwei, which promoted family

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morality and opposed concubinage, gambling, and holding government office. Following the anti-Japanese mood in China after the TwentyOne Demands (1915), Liao organized another society for the same moral causes in 1916 in Wuhan together with early CCP leader Yun Daiying, but this time he opposed the YMCA. These changing allegiances show how Christianity and the communist movement initially overlapped, establishing the same goals and attracting the same individuals, but later dissolved in the Chinese context. After the October Revolution, like many other young Chinese students, Liao turned to the Russian experience and Marxism. He took part in the society for mutual help from 1918 to 1922, and in 1919 he participated in the May Fourth Movement in Wuhan. There, he organized a society he called In the Interests of the Masses (za interesy mass, Lijun or Liqun), in which members had to abandon all their belongings and raise their children jointly. To make a living, they opened a commune, student dormitory, and weaving factory, as well as a bookshop selling Marxist literature, all headed by Liao. Members of this commune went to Hubei, Hunan, Anhui, and Sichuan to become school directors, so they spread communist propaganda among their students. Liao claimed that they even advised Mao Zedong when he opened a bookshop in Hunan! At a 1921 conference, the group adopted a communist programme for dictatorship of the proletariat and wanted to describe itself as Bolshevik, but instead it decided in favour of the name Society for Communal Life, as the group wanted to retain its “strict (surovyie) petty bourgeois” norms. This society was one of many Marxist groups established across China, one of which, with the support of the Comintern, became the CCP in Shanghai in July 1921.35 While the Society for Communal Life sent a representative to Moscow for the Eastern conference, after the creation of the CCP this group dissolved and its members joined the party individually. Liao claimed to have done so at the recommendation of Mao Zedong in 1922. After graduating from the Chinese (Zhonghua) University in Wuchan in 1922, Liao’s family financed his trip abroad to study national economy at Berlin University. Liao had originally wanted to study in France where there was already a large Chinese student community, but he ended up choosing Germany because the cost of living was low due to high inflation.36 Liao was instructed to spread propaganda among Chinese living in Germany. Thus, upon arriving in Berlin he contacted members of the Chinese Communist Youth Union of Western Europe and Chinese communists in Berlin and Paris. Like many Chinese students overseas, Liao worked as a journalist: for a GMD newspaper, for the Comintern

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periodical Inpresskorr, and for the KPD newspaper Die Rote Fahne.37 He also hosted Chinese communists travelling from France to Moscow. He was intermittently the secretary of the Chinese communist cell in Berlin and participated in the KPD worker group in the district of Wedding. From 1923 to 1927 he was a referent for the information office of the Comintern for Western Europe, the so-called Varga Bureau, and prepared over 1,000 reports without asking the Comintern for much money.38 As was already mentioned, in 1924, the GMD entrusted Liao with the establishment of GMD branches in Paris and Berlin.39 Liao’s position led him to represent the GMD in the early days of the LAI from its formation in April 1926. He remained the GMD representative and the author of all propaganda documents for the Berlin chapter until its dissolution and appropriation into the united GMD– CCP organization in 1927. At the December 1927 LAI conference, Liao demanded that the GMD be excluded from the LAI because of its violent break with the CCP earlier that year, and also that GMD organizations in Europe and the Americas under CCP influence dissolve and join the CCP. From February 1927 to August 1928 Liao served as a member of the LAI executive committee. Liao was also one of the signatories of the Anglo– Indian–Chinese resolution in Brussels.40 As Michele Louro shows, India became the successor model for communist–nationalist alliances after the GMD was expelled from the LAI.41 In cooperation with the KPD and party factions within the LAI, Liao organized campaigns for the defence of the Chinese Revolution in Paris, London, Germany, and Geneva. In Berlin, Hamburg, and Rotterdam he conducted propaganda work among Chinese merchants and traders.42 The length of his tenure as one of two secretaries of the LAI has been disputed, as we will see. In addition, his Chinese comrades questioned his legitimacy as a CCP representative, not being aware of Liao’s secret work for the Comintern. Despite his importance to the LAI’s formative days, Liao’s tenure on the executive committee of the LAI was brief. His role ended in April 1928.43 In May 1928, Berlin-based ECCI cadre Wu Zhaohao, alias Petrashevsky, began what Liao described as a bullying campaign (skloka) against him at the ECCI. Liao dismissed the accusations as coming from people who had no CCP credentials. Established in March 1926 as a discussion group at KPD, the Chinese group consisted of a mere five people who at the “high rise” (pik) of the Chinese Revolution had joined only the Communist Youth League (CYL). In other words, Liao implied that, like other CYL members around the world,44 they were not bold enough to join the CCP. They had never had to earn their living in Germany and lived on family

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funds or government scholarships.45 Another Chinese overseas communist dated the foundation of the German branch of the CCP (Lü De zhibu) to 1922 and apparently insisted on its legitimacy as a CCP organization. It later became the Chinese language group of the KPD in 1927.46 This group accused Liao of acting on its behalf but not discussing anything with it, and of having contact with the Third Party leader, Deng Yanda, a GMD and CCP rival in Chinese national politics (whom Liao had once presented as a possible successor to the CCP while conveying a report from China in 1927).47 They also accused him of speaking for the GMD in 1929, two years after the GMD was banned from the communist world and the LAI.48 This was quite possible, given individual contacts between CCP and GMD members in the aftermath of the 1927 breakdown of cooperation.49 However, in 1930 the Chinese delegation at the ECCI refuted all accusations and only scolded him for contacts with “alien elements” (za sviaz’s chuzhdymi elementami) such as Deng Yanda. In addition to squabbles with other Chinese revolutionaries, Liao also came into conflict with Willi Münzenberg, the chief organizer of the LAI. The antagonism, according to Liao’s personal file,50 developed because Münzenberg claimed that Liao’s employment as the LAI’s secretary stopped right after the Brussels conference. Hence, Münzenberg insisted that Moscow, rather than the LAI, should pay Liao from October 1927 to January 1928. Apparently, Liao had been one of the LAI treasurers around the time of the Brussels conference, and Münzenberg neither recognized nor denied this. Once Münzenberg left town and a “friendly organization,” that is, the Comintern, had sent a subsidy for the LAI on 2 May 1928, Liao took the entire US$1,000—sent in accordance with the Comintern’s promise to settle the LAI’s debts—and put it towards the LAI’s debt to him for his unpaid salary plus 300 Reichsmarks that he had lent to the LAI in the past. Already three months earlier, in February 1928, Liao had written to the ECCI asking for payment for six months for another job, as he needed to support his wife and son.51 Liao had stopped receiving materials from Shanghai after the CCP–GMD breakdown52 and thus had apparently lost his appeal for the Comintern. Münzenberg insisted that other members of the secretariat, Chatto (Virendranath Chattophadyaya) and steno-typist Ella Windmüller, had been misled by Liao into approving his takeover of the Comintern subsidy and demanded that Liao return the money.53 From the Comintern documents it is not clear whether the Comintern decided that Liao had to return US$600, as Münzenberg demanded.54 In April 1928, the ECCI wrote to Münzenberg that Liao could go to Moscow to enroll in the International Lenin School

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with a salary of fifty rubles and a further sixty rubles as a subsidy for him and his family. Clearly, such a salary indicated that the life awaiting Liao in Moscow would not be luxurious either.55 Since Liao’s career at the LAI started during the time of the CCPGMD cooperation, he had been a Comintern cadre and the CCP representative to the LAI too. Liao’s position at the LAI and his salary were decided in Moscow, where Liao was recalled by the Chinese delegation at the ECCI which coordinated CCP activities in different parts of the world. He transferred to the CPSU in 1929 and became a graduate student at the Sun Yat-sen University. From 1930 to 1931 he served on the staff of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. After that, the Chinese delegation transferred him to the Institute of the Monopoly of Foreign Trade (Institut Monopolii Vneshnei Torgovli). From 1932 to 1935 he was a referent of the Chinese delegation at the ECCI and Wang Ming’s secretary. During party cleansing in 1930–1931, he was accused of not fulfilling the Chinese delegation’s directives. As a result, he was finally removed from ECCI work in 1935, and the head of the CCP delegation at the ECCI, Wang Ming, recommended him for work at the Publishing House of Foreign Workers in Moscow.56 Thus started to decline the star of Liao Huanxing, the GMD and CCP representative to the LAI and the European navigator of the worldwide currents of the Chinese communists in the late 1920s. Liao’ story demonstrates the decision-making in the LAI management. For one, the Comintern in Moscow was responsible for the CCP representative at LAI. At the same time, although the final decision-maker was the ECCI, the Chinese cadres at ECCI, KPD, as well as Münzenberg in Berlin created the circumstances that led to the decision. The League Against Imperialism’s Intercontinental Links: The Americas In the incomparably larger Chinese community in the US (around 100,000) than in Germany (1,800 in 1935), the communists were also comparably very few and not popular among the majority of the Chinese community.57 The Chinese cadres involved in the anti-imperialist leagues, CCP, and the Comintern activities were several dozen activists who propagated along with the Comintern the grand vision of the world revolution. The activities of the LAI were intertwined with those of the CCP overseas via the Comintern connection, and the first Chinese communist organization in the United States was established after contact with the LAI network. A member of the American Communist Party, Ji Chaoding,

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represented the American Anti-Imperialist League and a Chinese student organization at the Brussels World Anti-Imperialist Congress in 1927. Upon his return, he established a Chinese-language faction58 under the anti-imperialist committee of the American party. After breaking with the GMD in 1927—just like Liao suggested—the Chinese faction took over the anti-imperialist activities of leftist GMD organizations in the United States, Canada, Cuba,59 and Mexico through branches of the Alliance for the Support of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolution in America (ASCWPRA), established first in San Francisco, then in Philadelphia,60 and finally across the United States and in Havana. Activities in Cuba continued in the revolutionary tradition of Chinese participation in the Cuban national independence struggle, which dated back to the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898). Cuban local leaders such as Jose Martí had included the Chinese in internationalist solidarity and in the pan-American vision.61 As Chinese communists borrowed the regional imagination of the Monroe Doctrine, their goals were to promote the cooperation of Chinese and American workers and pro-China policies, such as the abolition of unequal treaties, as well as the interests of Chinese immigrants.62 In 1929, the ASCWPRA joined the LAI and participated in the second Anti-Imperialist Congress in Frankfurt.63 Also formed in 1928, the AllAmerican Alliance of Chinese Anti-Imperialists established the Oriental Branch of the American Anti-Imperialist League in 1929, uniting Asian immigrants.64 Chinese revolutionary networks helped to staff regional Comintern organizations in the Americas through connections between the Chinese faction and party members in Cuba, the Philippines, Canada, Chile, Mexico, and Peru.65 The Workers’ Party of America revived the All-American Anti-Imperialist League with Comintern authorization in 1925, but within two years it existed only on paper.66 A Chinese Comintern cadre suggested that the Chinese faction become the centre of huaqiao work in the Americas by recruiting avant-garde members of the Anti-Imperialist League into the party and establishing local CCP cells in cooperation with local parties. The American Chinese faction acted as a liaison between the Comintern and the CCP chapters worldwide.67 The Comintern, in the meantime, picked up on the activity of Chinese sojourners in Moscow. Into the 1930s, the Comintern believed that the Chinese diaspora and its leadership of anti-imperialist internationalism overseas was critical to world revolution. An ECCI letter to the Far Eastern Bureau of the Comintern in Shanghai dated 23 October 1930 stated, “The Chinese communists in a number of Eastern countries play and will play the

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largest role in the cause of the establishment of the organized communist movement.”68 In 1932, a document entitled “CPUSA Suggestions for Work Among Colonial Workers” stated that only the Chinese had connections with local communist parties and other organizations under communist leadership in the colonies—the Philippines, India, and Indonesia.69 In addition, the Chinese organizations in their mutual aid tradition were collecting funds for anti-Japanese campaigns and anti-GMD activities, such as those by the CCP. The Chinese communists participated in the worldwide fundraising competition for the newspaper of the Chinese faction of the CPUSA, The Chinese Vanguard, and were eager to have their fundraising efforts publicized to their compatriots via the newspaper.70 The Chinese funds could thus make a worthy addition to scarce Comintern subsidies. The grand visions of an interconnected free world did not translate into everyday actions for regular community members among the Chinese overseas communities, apart from captivating the minds of sojourning intellectuals and worrying the police about the communist menace. However, even then, although Comintern activities aiming to bring workers to power internationally had ended in defeat in Europe and Asia alike,71 the shift in the Comintern’s policy towards Asia and the establishment of communist parties in the colonies as a way of undermining European imperialism through its “weakest link” at the Sixth Congress in 192872 should be considered in light of the successful launch of the LAI project. Even if its results were modest at best, the scope of its ambition was captivating. China’s role in this was expressed in the discourse of the importance of the Chinese Revolution for the world revolution propagated by both the CCP and the GMD, though the two were now enemies. The Chinese Revolution: the GMD, the CCP, and the Comintern Liao’s relationship with the GMD and the Anti-Imperialist League in Shanghai, established in 1929 and supported by both CCP and GMD, reflected CCP–GMD relations after the breakdown of the united front. Worldwide chapters of the CCP and the GMD, including those in China, only gradually parted ways, mostly due to individual relationships and a shared anti-colonial stance. The importance of the Chinese Revolution as a harbinger of global changes, perceived as the world revolution originally advocated by the Comintern, had become integral to the platforms of both the GMD and the CCP. In 1930, Hu Hanmin stated, “Our Chinese nation is truly so

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large that our national revolution must obtain international assistance and establish international contacts. Of course, the responsibilities that we, the Chinese people, ought to bear will be heavy ones indeed. To the smaller and weaker nations we should offer support in order to strengthen the forces of revolution.”73 The de facto leader of the CCP in 1930, Li Lisan, argued, “Increasing international propaganda for the Chinese Revolution among the international proletariat and regarding the defense of the Chinese Revolution is the most serious task of the Chinese Communist Party.” Li Lisan continued Hu Hanmin’s earlier attempts to use the Comintern for the benefit of the Chinese Revolution, and in 1930 he suggested establishing a new, more efficient Far Eastern Bureau (FEB) of the Comintern and demanded that organizational activities among foreign sailors, while carried out by “foreign comrades from England, France, Japan, India, Indochina,” remain under CCP leadership.74 Even with the Chinese Revolution, anti-imperialism in China afforded space for GMD and CCP collaboration. These Chinese-led anticolonial organizations and the anti-imperialist leagues show that even after the breakdown of the united front the relationship between the GMD and the CCP was not as clear-cut as the narrative of the Chinese Revolution presents it to be, either inside China or among overseas communities. Following the establishment of the LAI organization in Europe in 1927, anti-imperialist leagues were established in Shanghai, Canton, and Malaya as CCP front organizations, sometimes with the support of local GMD organizations. The Taiwanese Communist Party’s Comintern liaison, Weng Zesheng, and other members from Taiwan, Korea, Annam, the Philippines, and India, established the Anti-Imperialist League of the East in Shanghai (1929–1930) under CCP leadership.75 The CCP was supposed to supply arms and money, while the local office of the GMD promised support for the revolutionary movements in India, Indonesia, and Korea.76 Weng Zesheng also promoted to the Comintern the idea of converting Taiwan’s public organization, the Taiwan Cultural Association, into an anti-imperialist league under the leadership of the Taiwanese Communist Party.77 These groups survived albeit for a short time, the GMD-CCP split in the Chinese Revolution. As late as November 1930 the idea of the Anti-Imperialist League was thoroughly adopted by the CCP. The Eastern Secretariat of the ECCI introduced the idea of establishing a Far Eastern subsection of the LAI, the Far Eastern Secretariat of the League Against Imperialism (FESLAI). The primary reason for setting up the FESLAI was the initiative of the CCP and the Chinese CYL to form the Eastern Anti-Imperialist

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League. The FESLAI was to be set up as an international workers’ relief aid organization and to function as a front organization without explicit connections to either the Profintern or the FEB of the Comintern in Shanghai. The FESLAI was to coordinate the operations of the LAI in the Far East and assist the international secretariat of the LAI in establishing contact with anti-imperialist movements in China, Korea, Indochina, Formosa, Malacca, Siam, Java, Indonesia, and Japan.78 By 1930, while the two trends of the interwar global moment, internationalism and indigenization, had manifested in the transnational organizations promoting the Chinese Revolution, both the CCP and the GMD sought to recruit local populations into their revolutionary organizations. Anti-imperialist leagues perfectly carried out the functions of the Chinese organizations trying to grow local roots, but the realities of recruitment of those speaking different languages often confined the anti-imperialist leagues to a predominantly Chinese membership. In the Philippines, an anti-imperialist league was the front organization uniting the members of trade unions, the party, and the movements of various ethnic and religious backgrounds.79 In Malaya, an anti-imperialist league had been founded in 1928 by immigrants from Hainan island, whose periodical addressed the “oppressed nations of the East,” yet they had no connection with the anti-imperialist league in Brussels, the LAI.80 Despite the multinational population of Malaya and Singapore being a fertile ground for a multiethnic anti-imperialist league organization, as was the case in the United States, anti-imperialist leagues were predominantly Chinese. In 1931, the Singaporean anti-imperialist league’s 110 members were all Chinese.81 In 1932, the Malayan anti-imperialist league’s leading committee of nine included only two Malays and two Indians.82 The Nanyang Anti-imperialist League, run by the party, planned to develop a regional network as well, but it failed for a lack of cadres and ever-decreasing ranks.83 In 1932, however, the Comintern nonetheless planned to continue with the Far Eastern section of the LAI84 as a network for communist connections in Southeast Asia. At the same time, the GMD government in China promoted Sun Yat-sen’s idea of a regional organization in Asia led by the Chinese. The idea of a pan-Asian minzu guoji, an International of the East, or a Three Principles International headed by China became a key element in the GMD’s policy of countering Japan’s southward expansion and was promoted in overseas Chinese schools.85 The GMD cultivated identification with China and anti-Japanese activities, such as boycotts, as well as pan-Asian ideas.86

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A British translation of a 1931 address by the president of the Institute of Culture in Shanghai and the president of the Control Yuan of the GMD government, Yu Yujin, reads as follows: “The only fault of the weak races of the East is that they are not united. They must form an organisation for the overthrow of Imperialist [sic], and China must be its centre.” To achieve this, the GMD would organize an Eastern International based on the Three People’s Principles of Sun Yat-sen, which would serve as a revolutionary doctrine for those struggling for international, political, and economic equality. This was to be a League Against Imperialism in the East and would have connections with the Eastern proletariat. The address goes on to state, “In his will, Dr. Sun urged us to help the weak races and to lead the world’s revolution in order to set up a ‘utopia’ for the world … Only then can we be in a position to offer resistance to the imperialistic encroachments and be vanguards of the world revolution.”87 A minzu guoji and Chinese overseas unity tied the emancipation of oppressed peoples together in the discourse of the Nanjing GMD’s policy towards the huaqiao, which aimed to cultivate the Chinese identity of locally born Chinese. Around the same time, the Comintern relied on the Chinese to foment world revolution in Southeast Asia and promoted cooperation between Chinese immigrants and locals. Regarding antiimperialism, Chinese nationalism, and the localization of Chinese in the Nanyang, the goals of the GMD and the CCP were identical. Epilogue The GMD’s and CCP’s ideas about China’s role in the world revolution were at the heart of the two parties’ participation in the LAI and in other Anti-Imperialist Leagues around the world. They shared a multiethnic and nationalist orientation. The Comintern employed, sometimes literally, those Chinese activists. Together, the CCP and the Comintern built an extensive but thinly stretched global network of individual activists. In this project the GMD, although barred from the international level after 1927, still sometimes participated on the local level because the official GMD government’s international policy was also based on Sun Yatsen’s principle of Chinese revival, conditioned on the alliance with the oppressed of the world. The anti-imperialist message appealed to the Chinese diaspora, who did not have equal rights with citizens in their host countries and thus felt oppressed by host governments. While most Chinese were not attracted to the dangerously radical paths of communist organizations, traditional Chinese universalist ideas and organizational patterns of

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Chinese migration resonated with the interwar internationalist moment and with Sun Yat-sen’s idea of allying with the oppressed for the sake of China’s revival after its defeat by Western imperialism in the late nineteenth century and increasing Japanese aggression in the twentieth. What brought the goals of the Anti-Imperialist League and CCP project of internationalist cooperation among the Chinese communities to mass participation was anti-Japanese war (1937–1945), not the communist cause. Chinese overseas networks of all political hues were mobilized during the anti-Japanese China National Salvation campaigns starting from the early 1930s. This intensified after 1937. The need for Chinese organizations to indigenize so as to fit in better with local societies also matched the need for the localization of Comintern operations, and it was promoted by the GMD Chinese government; both worked through the involvement of non-Chinese members in Chinese organizations. The multiethnic organizations of Anti-Imperialist Leagues made sense under the circumstances for sojourning activists involved in their establishment. Chinese communist operations rested on the synergy of antidiscrimination and anti-Japanese causes among Chinese immigrants and Comintern interests in fomenting revolutions and cultivating alliances in those countries. The start of the war in 1937 conflated the anti-Japanese and anti-imperialist causes of Southeast Asian and American regional Anti-Imperialist Leagues.88 Some Anti-Imperialist Leagues more than others, such as the Chinese Anti-Imperialist Alliance (CAIA), were Comintern non-party front organizations, such as Red Aid, organizations of leftist intellectuals, women, and workers, and the LAI itself, following shifts in the Comintern policy, including those towards fascism and Nazi Germany and promoting the defence of the Soviet Union. As Sana Tannoury-Karam notes in this volume, the attraction of Arab intellectuals to the Soviet Union was due to the fact that the Soviet Union was a revolutionary state that extended its hand to the rest of the oppressed world. The same applied to Chinese communists and Chinese overseas, who felt like members of an “oppressed nation” in their new countries. The Comintern’s goal of liberating the colonies offered an internationalist legitimacy for those revolutionaries. Chinese communists argued that in the Philippines, in Cuba, and in the world, Chinese communists could help the revolutions of residents (juliudi de minzu geming) along with the revolution in China,89 and that a world revolution and national liberation of the colonies would be beneficial for China’s national interests and “soviet” (suweiai) revolution.90

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Yet the everyday realities of the costly transnational operations were different from the captivating vision of a liberated world. The lives of individuals caught in this world liberation project, such as Liao Huanxing, were shaped by comradely squabbles, the stringent economy of a world revolution financed mostly by one place (Moscow), and Stalin’s inescapable Great Purge against all parties involved. In 1937, the Chinese delegation at the ECCI, apparently anticipating a move against Liao, suggested that Liao and his German wife go to China “to take part in Anti-Japanese work without connection with the party.”91 In 1938, Liao was arrested for possessing a grammophone that a man named Yu, from the Chinese embassy in Moscow, had given to him as a gift. He was released in 1946. In 1948, he repeatedly asked to be sent to China, but was denied. Instead, he worked at a railway repair shop in the city of Aleksandrov, near Moscow, and returned to China only after 1951.92 Liao, like many other foreign and Soviet Comintern cadres, was betrayed by the party while striving to build a more just and equal world. Liao’s life is emblematic of the story of the Chinese Revolution. His early years in China; his involvement with the Comintern, the GMD, and the LAI; the role of Sun Yat-sen’s ideas; the crucial role of the CCP delegation in the Comintern; and finally his exile in Moscow, all help us better understand the ambition of the Chinese Communist Party to become the leader in the world revolution in the second half of the twentieth century.93 Notes 1

2

3 4 5

6

Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). The Russian State Archive of Social-Political History (hereafter RGASPI), 495/154/700/23-5: “Guiding Principles in the colonial question, by Tan Malaka,” 1923. See David Murphy’s contribution to this volume. Michele Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Tony Saich, “The Chinese Communist Party during the era of the Comintern (1919–1943)”. https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/fs/asaich/chinese-communistyparty-during-comintern.pdf (accessed 19 June 2019). Charles Shipman, It Had to Be Revolution: Memoirs of an American Radical (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), xiv–xv, 154–7. This AAAIL was not connected to the 1898 American Anti-Imperialist League which declined with the passing of the generation of the founders by 1920. Fred H.

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7

8

9

10 11 12

13

14 15

16

17 18

19 20

Harrington, “The Anti-Imperialist Movement in the United States, 1898– 1900,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 22:2 (1935), 211–230. Li Yuzhen, “Fighting for the Leadership of the Chinese Revolution: KMT Delegates’ Three Visits to Moscow,” Journal of Modern Chinese History 7:2 (2013), 218–239. Hu Hanmin, “Minzu guoji yu disan guoji” [International of Nationalities and Communist International], in Hu Hanmin shiji ziliao hu ji [The Works of Hu Hanmin], vol.4, Cuncui Xueshe ed. (Xianggang: Dadong tushu gongsi, 1980), 1395–1401, esp. 1400–1. Hoover Archives, Hankou dang’an, [Hankou Collection] reel 64, File 7625.1: “Dongfang beiyapo lianhehui shang zhongzhihui cheng” [A letter from the Union of the Oppressed peoples of the East to the Central Committee of the GMD], 23 July 1927. Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years, 1919–1941 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 83–4, 167. Saich, “The Chinese Communist Party During the Era of the Comintern.” “Revolutsionnoe dvizhenie v kolonial’nykh i polukolonial’nykh stranakh,” Shestoi kongress Kominterna, Stenograficheskiy otchet vyp. 4 [“Revolutionary movement in colonial and semi-colonial countries,” The Sixth Comintern congress, stenographical report, vol. 4] (Moscow & Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo, 1929), 24. See Anna Belogurova, The Nanyang Revolution: the Comintern and Chinese Networks in Southeast Asia, 1890–1957 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). See, for example, Dónal Hassett’s contribution on Algerian nationalists in this volume. Harrington, “The Anti-Imperialist Movement in the United States,” 211–30. For more on this League, see Michael Cullinane, Liberty and American AntiImperialism: 1898–1909 (London: Palgrave Nacmillan, 2012). Melanie Yap and Dianne Leong Man, Colour, Confusion, and Concessions, The History of the Chinese in South Africa (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1996), 138–68. Rebecca E. Karl, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002) 113–4, 169–73. Sun Zhongshan, [Sun Yatsen], “Sanminzhuyi” [Three Principles of the People], in Sun Zhongshan quanji [Collected Works of Sun Yatsen], vol. 9 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 253. Disha Karnad Jani’s contribution to this volume problematizes the discourse on “oppressed peoples.” Sun, “Nationalism,” 226.

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21

22 23 24

25 26

27

28 29

30

Xu Jilin, “Wusi: shijiezhuyi de aiguo yundong” [May 4th: Cosmopolitan patriotic movement] Zhishi fenzi luncong [Compendia of Intellectual Debates] 9 (2010); John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 347. British Colonial Office Records (hereafter CO) 273/534, “Monthly Bulletin of Political Intelligence” (hereafter MBPI), 1 January 1926. Shipman, It Had to Be Revolution: 154–7. Fei Lu (Roland Felber), “Jiezhu xinde dang’an ziliao chongxin tantao Sun Zhongshan zai ershi niandai chu (1922–1923) yu Su E guanxi yiji dui De taidu de wenti” [“Regarding Sun Yatsen’s views on the relations with Soviet Union (1922–1923) and his attitudes to Germany based on new archival materials”], in Sun wen yu huaqiao. Jinian Sun Zhongshan danchen 130 zhounian guoji xueshu taolunhui. Lunwen ji [Sun Yatsen and Chinese overseas. International conference commemorating 130 anniversary of Sun Yatsen. Proceedings] (Kobe: Caituan faren Sun Zhongshan jinianhui, 1997), 57–69. Gregor Benton, Chinese Migrants and Internationalism (London: Routledge, 2007), 32, 35–6. Report of the Chinese nationalist party [Guomindang], French General Branch Report on European Party Affairs to the Third National Congress (March 1929), in Marilyn Levine, The Found Generation: Chinese Communists in Europe During the Twenties (Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1993) [SLOTFOM VIII, 6], 122–53, esp. 149–50. Li Weijia, “Otherness in Solidarity: Collaboration between Chinese and German Left-Wing Activists in the Weimar Republic,” in Qinna Shen and Martin Rosenstock (eds.), Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 73–93. The May Thirtieth Movement boosted the membership of the CCP in China and around the world. Liu Lüsen, “Zhongcheng jianyi de gongchandang ren: Geming xianqu Liao Huanxing tongzhi zhuanlüe” [Loyal and persistent CCP member: A biography of the revolutionary avant-garde comrade Liao Huanxing], in Yidai yingjie xinminzhuzhuyi geming shiqi zhonggong Hengnan dangshi renwu [An era of heroes: the party members of the revolutionary period of New Democracy of Hengnan] 1996, 3–11; Liu Lüsen, “Zhongcheng jianyi de gongchandang ren Liao Huanxing” [Loyal and persistent CCP member Liao Huanxing] Hunan dangshi yuekan [Hunan Party History Monthly] 11 (1988), 20–2. Hans Piazza, “Anti-imperialist League and the Chinese Revolution,” in Mechthild Leutner, Roland Felber, Mikhail Titarenko (eds.), The Chinese Revolution in the 1920s: Between Triumph and Disaster (London: Routledge, 2002), 166–76.

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31

32

33 34 35

36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46

Liu Lüsen, “Zhongcheng jianyi de gongchandang ren: Geming xianqu Liao Huanxing tongzhi zhuanlüe” [Loyal and persistent CCP member: A biography of the revolutionary avant-garde comrade Liao Huanxing]; Liu Lüsen, “Zhongcheng jianyi de gongchandang ren Liao Huanxing” [Loyal and persistent CCP member Liao Huanxing]. Liao Huanxing, “Zhongguo renmin zhengqu ziyou de douzheng: Guomindang zhongyang changwu weiyuanhui daibiao de jiangyan” [The righteous struggle of Chinese people – the speech of the representative of the Standing Committee of GMD] in Zhonggong Hengnan difang shi: Xin minzhuzhuyi geming shiqi [The history of Hengnan county: The revolutionary period of New Democracy] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 1995), 142–5; Li, “Fighting for the leadership;” and RGASPI, 495/225/1043: “An die I.K.K.”, Liao’s response to the criticism of the KPD Chinese language group, 4 February 1929, 31–7, esp. 32, 34. RGASPI 495/225/1043/207: Fragebogen für Mitarbeiter des E.K.K.I. RGASPI 495/225/1043/137-57: Biografia Liao [Liao’s autobiography], 17 April 1935. Hans van de Ven, From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920–1927 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Ishikawa Yoshihiro, transl. by Joshua Fogel, The Formation of the Chinese Communist Party (New York: Columbia University, 2012). Biografia Liao [Liao’s autobiography]. Ibid. Joachim Krüger, “A Regular China Voice from Berlin to Moscow: The China-information of Liao Huanxing, 1924–1927,” in Leutner et al., The Chinese Revolution in the 1920s, 177–186. In 1934, Liao said it was the CCP. RGASPI 495/225/1043/67: “Spravka ot Liao” [Note from Liao] 4 February 1934. Krüger, “A Regular China Voice from Berlin to Moscow.” See Michele Louro’s contribution in this volume. RGASPI, 495/225/1043/90-91: Liao, “Über meine Tätigkeit in Deutschland.” Krüger, “A Regular China Voice from Berlin to Moscow.” H. Maring, “Letter to Zinoviev, Bucharin, Radek and Safarov, 20 June 1923,” in Saich (ed.), The Origins of the First United Front in China, 611–9, esp. 613. RGASPI, 495/225/1043/147-156: Biografia Liao [Liao’s Biography]. Liao Huanxing, “Zhongguo gongchandang lü Ou zongzhibu, 1953” [European branch of the Chinese Communist Party, 1953], in Zhongguo xiandai geming shi ziliao congkan. “Yi Da” qianhou. Zhongguo gongchandang diyici daibiao dahui qianhou ziliao xuanbian [Series of Materials on Chinese

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47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57

58 59

modern Revolutionary history] (Beijing: People’s Publishing house, 1980), 502–10. Krüger, “A Regular China Voice from Berlin to Moscow.” RGASPI, 495/225/1043/97: K delu Liau [To Liao’s File]. See Belogurova, The Nanyang Revolution, 116. See Petersson’s contribution in this volume. RGASPI 495/225/1043/350: Liao Huanxing, “Lieber Genosse Petrowski,” 13 February 1928. Krüger, “A Regular China Voice from Berlin to Moscow.” RGASPI 495/225/1043/147-156: Biografia Liao. RGASPI 495/225/1043: Willi Munzenberg, “Aktennotizen zu dem Erklärungen des Genossen Liau und Chatto in dem Frage der 600.–$.” RGASPI 495/225/1043/349: “Gen. Münzenberg,” 7 April 1928. In 1928–9, in Moscow, 1 kg of rye flour cost 0.11 rubles, 1 kg of butter was 2-2.50 rubles, 10 eggs were 0.46-63 rubles, 1 kg of beef was 0.93-97 rubles, and 1 liter sunflower oil was 0.87 rubles. Moskva i Moskovskaia oblast’. Statisticheskoekonomicheskii spravochnik po okrugam, 1926–7, 1928–9 [Moscow and Moscow Region. Economy Statistics Handbook by Areas, 1926–7, 1928–9] (Izdanie Moskovskogo oblastnogo statisticheskogo otdela, 1930), 368–74. The Comintern scolded Liao for receiving a transfer of 2000 marks from Germany in the early 1930s. RGASPI 495/225/1043/90-1, 163: Comrade Poliachek, “Spravka,” 3 November 1937. Renqiu Yu, To Save China, To Save Ourselves: the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011); Gregor Benton, Chinese Migrants and Internationalism: Forgotten Histories, 1917– 1945 (London: Routledge, 2007), 30–7. The Chinese community in the US numbered 94,414 in 1910. Over the next decades, it increased only slightly due to the Exclusion Law (1882). Madeline Y. Hsu, Asian American History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 38–9. For more information about the activities of the Chinese leftists in the USA see Josephine Fowler, Japanese and Chinese Immigrant Activists Organizing in American and International Communist Movements, 1919-1933 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, 2007); and Him Mark Lai, Chinese American Transnational Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010). RGASPI 515/1/4117/30: Wang Ming’s letter to the Chinese fraction of CPUSA, undated. “Guba huaqiao ying jiaji geming huodong” [Cuban Chinese Must Intensify Revolutionary Activity], Xianfeng Bao [The Chinese Vanguard], 15 November 1933, 107.

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60 61

62 63 64 65 66

67

68

69

70

71

72 73 74

Yu, To Save China, 37. Benton, Chinese Migrants, 37–47; “Guba huaqiao ying jiaji geming huodong” [Cuban Chinese Must Intensify Revolutionary Activity], Xianfeng Bao [The Chinese Vanguard] 107, 15 November 1933. RGASPI 515/1/1451/41-48: “Report of the Bureau of the Chinese fraction,” 5 August 1928. Him Mark Lai, Chinese American Transnational Politics, 73. Fowler, Japanese and Chinese Immigrant Activists, 145–7. RGASPI 515/1/4117/31-38ob: A letter to the Chinese fraction of CPUSA, 4 April 1933. Fredrik Petersson, “‘We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers.’ Willi Münzenberg, the League against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925–1933,” (Åbo Akademi University, 2013), 70, 175. RGASPI 515/1/3181/19-23: “Pismo v kitaiskoe buro KP SShA s predlozheniiami po voprosy o rabote sredi kitaiskikh emigrantov” [Letter to the Chinese fraction of the CPUSA: With suggestions regarding the work among Chinese migrants]. It was written sometime after 10 July 1933. RGASPI 495/62/2/1,2: Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), “Malaiskoe pis’mo [Malayan Letter],” Letter to the FEB, 23 October 1930. RGASPI 532/4/2015/4, 5: Predlozhenia po rabote kompartii SASSh sredi kolonial’nykh rabochikh v Amerike [CPUSA Suggestions for Work among Colonial Workers],” 16 January 1932. “Xian’e shoukuan yundong jieshu shi yi shou dao kuanxiang,” Xianfeng Bao [The Chinese Vanguard] 1 March 1933; Shanghai Municipal Police Files, 1929-1945: Guo Guang, Letter to the FEB, 15 August 1934 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1989), D6152. Alexander Vatlin and Stephen A. Smith, “The Comintern,” in Stephen A. Smith, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 187–94. “Revolutsionnoe dvizhenie v kolonial’nykh i polukolonial’nykh stranakh” [Revolutionary movement in colonial and semi-colonial countries], 24. Hu, “International of Nationalities.” “Pismo Li Lisania Zhou Enlaiu i Tsiui Tsiubo” [Li Lisan’s letter to Zhou Enlai and Qu Qiubai], 17 April 1930, in Mikhail L. Titarenko and Mechthild Leutner (eds.), VKP(b), Komintern i Kitai, Dokumenty. T.III. VKP (b), Komintern, i sovetskoe dvizhenie v Kitae, 1927–1931 [The Comintern and China, Documents. Volume 3. CPSU (Bolshevik), the Comintern, and the soviet movement in China, 1937–1931] (Moscow: AO Buklet, 1999), 865–8.

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75

76 77

78

79

80

81 82 83

84 85

Wang Naixin et al (eds.), Taiwan shehui yundong shi, 1913–1936 [History of Taiwan’s Social Movement], 5 Vols. (Taibei: Chuangzao chubanshe, 1989), vol.3, Gongchan yundong [Communist Movement], 300–20. Quinn-Judge, Ho Chi Minh, 166–7; Wang, History of Taiwan’s Social Movement, 354–72. K. Tertiski and A. Belogurova, Taiwanskoe kommunisticheskoe dvizhenie i Komintern: Issledovanie. Dokumenty (1924–1932) [Taiwanese Communist Movement and the Comintern: A Study. Documents. 1924–1932] (Moscow: Vostok-Zapad, 2005), 414. RGASPI 542/1/37/248-250: “Plan of Work of the Far Eastern Secretariat of the Anti-Imperialist League, the Eastern Secretariat,” November 1930. Quoted in Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 414–5 n1047. RGASPI 495/62/28/47-62: “Resolutsii s pervogo s’’iezda ispolkoma TsK” [Resolutions of the First Congress of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee] in the letter from the Eastern Secretariat of the ECCI to the Communist Party of the Philippines, “Situation in the Philippines and tasks of the CPPI,” 10 January 1932. Khoo Kay Kim, “The Beginnings of Political Extremism in Malaya, 1915– 1935” (University of Malaysia, 1973), 312; CO 273/542: “Kuo Min Tan and other societies in Malaya (continued), July – September 1928,” 23 October 1928, 9–10. CO 273/572, “Monthly Review of Chinese Affairs” (hereafter MRCA), December 1931, 48. CO 273/585, MRCA, March 1933, 21, 24. RGASPI 514/1/632/7-28, “Otchet o polozhenii v Nan’iane [Report About the Situation in Nanyang],” January 1930, esp. 24–5, CO 273/572: MRCA, December 1931, 48, 53; RGASPI 514/1/634/93-158: “The Minutes of the Third Representative Conference of Nanyang,” 23 April 1920, esp. 132. Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 466. So Wai Chor, The Kuomintang Left in the National Revolution, 1924–1931: the Leftist Alternative in Republican China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 84–5, 92, 234; Li Yinghui, Huaqiao zhengce yu haiwai minzuzhuyi (1912–1949) [Overseas Chinese policy and Overseas Chinese Nationalism (1912–1949)] (Taibei: Guoshiguan, 1997), 506–7. Essays about minzu guoji appeared in various periodicals. See Hu Hanmin (recorded by Zhang Zhenzhi), “Minzu guoji yu disan guoji” [International of Nationalities and the Third International], Xin Yaxiya [New Asia], 1930, 23–7; Han Hui, “Minzu yundong yu minzu guoji” [Nationalist Movement and International of Nationalities], Xin Dongfang [New East] (1932) 3–8, 108–29. For minzu guoji as constructed in opposition to the Comintern see Craig A. Smith,

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86 87 88

89

90

91 92 93

“China as the Leader of the Small and Weak: The Ruoxiao Nations and Guomindang Nationalism,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 6:2 (2017), 530–57. Li Yinghui, Huaqiao zhengce yu haiwai minzuzhuyi, 506–7. CO 273/572: “A review of the misery of the weak races of the East,” Culture Biannual (Wenhua banniankan) February 1931, MRCA, June 1931, 49–51. Anna Belogurova, “Nationalism and Internationalism in Chinese Communist Networks in the Americas,” in Oleksa Drachewych and Ian McKay (eds.), Left Transnationalism: The Communist International and the National, Colonial and Racial Questions (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020), 387-405. Xu Yongying, “Zhongguo Guomindang yu Guba geming” [Chinese GMD and Cuban Revolution], Xianfeng Bao [The Chinese Vanguard] 105, 15 October 1933. Han Han (possibly Chen Hanxing), “Lun zai huaqiao gongzuo zhong zhixing geming luxian” [Regarding the Revolutionary Line in Working among Chinese Overseas ] Xianfeng Bao [The Chinese Vanguard] 15 March 1934, 3. The term “China’s soviet revolution” (zhongguo suweiai geming) migrated to CCP texts from Comintern discourse promoting “soviet movement” (sovetskoe dvizhenie) in China. Thus, the term “China’s soviet revolution” describes the aspiration for a revolutionary government led by a communist party. RGASPI 495/225/1043/90-1, 163: Comrade Poliachek, “Spravka,” 3 November 1937. RGASPI 495/225/1043/1-3: “Rakhimov,” 17 May 1948. Alex Cook, “Third World Maoism,” in Timothy Creek (ed.), A Critical Introduction to Mao (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 288– 312.

Chapter 6

“We will fight with our lives for the equal rights of all peoples”: Willi Münzenberg, the League Against Imperialism, and the Comintern Fredrik Petersson The culmination of the “First International Congress against Colonialism and Imperialism” at the Palais d’Egmont in Brussels was Willi Münzenberg’s speech on 14 February 1927. It came on the heels of many others delivered since the opening of the congress on 10 February, including the French author Henri Barbusse’s opening of the event; the joint demonstration of solidarity for the Chinese liberation struggle between Guomindang representative Liao Huanxing and British socialist, A. Fenner Brockway; Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech on British imperialism and India; the Egyptian Mohammed Hafiz Bey’s speech about the freedom struggle in Egypt and of the Arab people; and the fiery speech on the African liberation struggle by Lamine Senghor, the representative of the Paris-based association, Committee in Defence of the Negro Race, covered in David Murphy’s chapter in this volume. Following this plethora of anti-imperialist rhetoric, Münzenberg declared in his opening address on the establishment of the League Against Imperialism and for National Independence: “Ladies and gentlemen! The congress, which has been meeting in Brussels for several days … [is] behind us, and, as so often, one could say that once again the optimists, the faithful, were right. Whatever may come; one thing is clear: the congress in Brussels— the first congress against imperialism and for national independence—is a complete success.”1 The annotations found in the manuscript describe that the above was received with “lively approval.” The principal aim of the speech was to address the formal establishment of the international League Against Imperialism and for National Independence (LAI, 1927–1937).2 Observing that much work was ahead for the attending participants, consisting of 174 delegates representing 134 organizations, Münzenberg declared that “our congress” needed no director, closing his speech with the remark that “we will fight with our lives for the equal rights of all people.”3 The speech was 159

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later printed and included in the official protocol of the Brussels congress proceedings, Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont.4 The aim of this essay is to delineate a historical understanding of the trajectory of Münzenberg’s pivotal role in the LAI, but also to disclose the reasons why he chose to detach himself gradually from the organization. It is of central importance to establish the connections flowing between Berlin and Moscow, and how this process of interconnectedness often overlapped and affected other related issues linked to the LAI’s antiimperialist campaigns, such as the Comintern’s efforts to develop propaganda against fascism and the threat of renewed war. However, the primary focus is on Münzenberg and his role in developing and advancing the LAI as an international organization against colonialism and imperialism, and to distinguish crucial breaking points in his relation to the organization. A number of factors on an organizational and individual level helped Münzenberg to develop the LAI from an idea to an international organization. The LAI included individuals originating from different national backgrounds, which helps explain how the LAI turned into a transnational hub of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist activism. The Communist International (Comintern; Third International, 1919– 1943) is likewise needed to tell this story, as it delineates Münzenberg’s and the LAI’s intimate connection to various actors at the Comintern’s headquarters in Moscow. Finally, this essay discloses the pivotal role of the Comintern Archive in Moscow in discerning the totality of Münzenberg’s endeavours in turning the LAI into an international organization and petitioner against colonialism and imperialism. The central question and point of departure is: who was Münzenberg? The persona of Münzenberg has aroused interest and conflict in scholarly debate since his death in 1940. Perceived as a charismatic character in the international communist movement between the wars, Münzenberg was a German communist and the General Secretary of the international mass organization, Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (IAH, Workers’ International Relief; 1921–1935). Born in 1889 in Erfurt, a city in the Thuringian province in Germany, Münzenberg was at an early age drawn to and engaged in the budding socialist movement. As a youth activist Münzenberg participated in the organization of youth committees and demonstrations, undertakings that were frequently suppressed by the German authorities. Prior to and with the outbreak of the war in August 1914, Münzenberg developed connections to radical socialist and pacifist movements in Switzerland, a country which turned into a haven for émigré left-wing socialists during the war, including Lenin and his Bolshevik entourage.

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Thus, it was a logical step for Münzenberg to relocate to Zurich with the outbreak of the war on the European continent; there he met Lenin for the first time in Bern in 1915. At the same time, the Second International had failed to unite and protest against the war, a fact which dealt a severe blow to its professed message of socialist internationalism.5 The war was a formative period on a personal and political level for Münzenberg. On the personal level it signified the creation of a relation to Lenin and the left wing of the socialist Zimmerwald movement, while on the political level it encouraged a radicalization that fused socialist and pacifist values with the dogma of communism. The aim here is not to outline Münzenberg’s life in its entirety. Rather, it is to identify crucial moments that explain how and why he succeeded in turning the LAI into a reality in 1927. First, although Münzenberg observed the Russian revolution and Bolshevik coup d’état in 1917 from a geographical distance, it left a permanent impression on him because of his personal relation to Lenin and the Polish communist Karl Radek. Second, the establishment of the Comintern in 1919 offered Münzenberg a crucial organizational platform to orchestrate local and global activities until 1938, when the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Comintern expelled him and categorized him as persona non grata. Third, his central role in the establishment of the Communist Youth International (Kommunisticheskii Internatsional Molodezhi, KIM) at its founding congress in Berlin on 20–26 November 1919 earned him a position in the Comintern hierarchy. This in turn prompted Lenin to grant him the authority to initiate the formation of the IAH’s forerunner in 1921, the Auslandskomitee zur Organisierung der Arbeiterhilfe für die Hungernden in Russland, a proletarian solidarity committee in support of the starving people in Russia as a consequence of the short period of War Communism in 1918–1920.6 But it is Münzenberg’s mysterious death and the discovery of his body in a forest outside the small French town of Saint-Marcellin in October 1940 that continue to cast a shadow over his life.7 The seminal political biography of Münzenberg, Willi Münzenberg. Eine politische Biographie, was written by Babette Gross in 1967. Gross had been Münzenberg’s partner and close associate in developing his media apparatus in Berlin, and was very aware of his political enterprises and organizations. The biography included a “Vorwort” authored by Arthur Koestler, a colleague of Münzenberg during the Paris exile after both escaped from Germany once Hitler and the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (the Nazi party, NSDAP) had gained formal power on 30 January 1933. Under Münzenberg’s supervision, Koestler

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contributed to a series of publishing and propaganda enterprises in the French capital of the publishing company Editions du Carrefour.8 According to Koestler, Münzenberg was “a political realist” devoted to three fundamental principles: the struggle against war, exploitation, and colonialism. However, Münzenberg’s close relation to the Comintern and its hierarchical structure(s) determined his life not as a politician or theoretician, but rather as a propagandist and activist, Koestler argued. Yet at the same time, Koestler perceived Münzenberg as a “Red Eminence,” to whom he was “deeply attached” until the latter’s death in 1940.9 On the other hand, Münzenberg’s antagonists perceived him differently. For example, the Austrian socialist and secretary of the Labour and Socialist International (LSI, successor of the Second International), Friedrich Adler, was critical of Münzenberg’s propaganda methods. Considering the ideological divide between socialism and communism, Adler seriously doubted Münzenberg’s intentions with the LAI, particularly as he was “a genuine communist” and “spiritus rector” of the organization. Thus, Adler believed that the LAI functioned only as a vessel that served the Comintern’s interests.10 What can we make out of this when it comes to Münzenberg’s role in establishing and promulgating the LAI as a global voice against oppression? Was it a process that followed a set of logical steps? Brigitte Studer’s study of transnational Comintern activists, depicted as “Cominternians,” and their commitment to communism as a belief in an international cause to change the world, offers a perspective on how to approach Münzenberg. According to Studer, the “Cominternians’” commitment corresponded to a set of values that aimed to understand the world, and how these could assist in shaping and making history. The fusion of rationality, experience, and emotions in the Comintern as a transnational space is central here and, as Studer writes, the idea of creating “a world party of the proletariat” included the struggle and ambitions of the colonial people to achieve national independence and self-determination.11 For Münzenberg, being “a political realist” and highly skilled political organizer in the 1920s, merging anti-imperialism and anticolonialism with communist internationalism under the umbrella of the Comintern and his own proletarian mass organization, the IAH, served organizational and administrative purposes that aimed to strengthen transnational networks and relations.12 Moreover, Münzenberg was not alone in developing the LAI into a real and notable international organization. Thus, to reach a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the LAI during its existence from 1927 to 1937 involves

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tracing multiple individuals and their biographies, and their connection to the Comintern, international communism, and/or anti-imperialism between the wars. What one could call a prosopographical approach, meaning the interpretation of “the past by detailed biographical studies of individuals,”13 fits well into narrating and assessing the interconnections, overlaps, and relations flowing between Moscow and Berlin and beyond. The reason a broad knowledge of other actors is important in this case is that Münzenberg was often, but not always, in control of how the LAI progressed over time after its inception in Brussels in 1927. This progression involved, for example, the question of the most suitable location for the organization when it was founded, whether Berlin or Paris; the escape to Paris after the Nazi regime gained power in 1933; the transfer of the LAI from Paris to London in 1933; and the partial supervision of the organization by the British socialist, Reginald Orlando Bridgeman (1884–1968), and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) after 1933. Understanding these events requires the inclusion of central actors that worked closely with Münzenberg in conceptualizing, developing, and controlling the LAI, particularly during the years in which the organization had Berlin, “the global village Comintern,”14 as the locale of operations via the administration of the LAI’s international secretariat. It is essential to recognize the most fundamental documentary resource when it comes to, on the one hand, understanding Münzenberg’s life and persona in the context of international communism and, on the other hand, the history of the LAI through local, national, and transnational frameworks: the Comintern Archive in Moscow. Located as a section in the Russian Archive for Social and Political History (RGASPI), documents on Münzenberg and the LAI disclose not only the local and global scope of the organization’s activities, but also the complex relation to and between the Comintern as a global actor, which initially aimed to function as a “world party” consisting of national sections and mass sympathizing organizations.15 In all of this, the LAI was a constituent part of the international communist web. As Otto W. Kuusinen, a Finnish communist and distinguished actor in the Comintern apparatus, argued in 1926, anti-colonial organizations and committees were part of a “solar system” consisting of communist organizations and committees “under the influence of our Party [Comintern].”16 Thus, the individuals and organizational setting of the LAI, and the ways in which Münzenberg was able to manoeuvre in this milieu, were based on a set of connections flowing in vertical and horizontal directions, and were enacted in a

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distinctly hierarchical and transnational world defined by the restrictions and possibilities of the Comintern. Hierarchies and Networks Münzenberg’s cadre file in the Comintern Archive summarizes his career in the service of the Comintern and the KPD. Containing a broad range of documents outlining primarily his conflict with the German party leadership of Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm Pieck in the 1930s, it depicts the end of Münzenberg’s role as the leading propagandist for the Comintern in the West. Further, it contains evidence of his last visit to Moscow in the autumn of 1936 just before Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937– 1938 was inflicted on the Soviet Union and the Comintern.17 While the Comintern’s cadre files are useful sources, they are also a documentary repository created for a special purpose. As Studer eloquently remarks, the Comintern’s cadre files give evidence to a “civilisation of report,” meaning that the files not only accumulated evaluations from representatives in power and authority but also relied on “observations and judgements of numerous informants” whether they were colleagues, party comrades, friends, or relatives. Further, the cadre files give voice to the subjects themselves, and are therefore essential in making it possible to understand the dynamics and connected parts that constituted the world of the Comintern on an individual and organizational level. The Comintern’s cadre files are the historical record of “performed deeds,” and disclose the “complex bureaucratic and political practices” of those linked to the world of communism between the wars.18 The LAI’s connections with anti-imperialist and anticolonial organizations, including the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW, Hamburg 1930), the Negro Welfare Association (NWA, London 1931), and the Ligue de Défense de la Race Nègre (League for the Defence of the Negro Race; LDRN, Paris 1927), were intertwined with those of the Comintern and of national communist parties. Additionally, Münzenberg facilitated the establishment of associations and movements like the Friends of the Soviet Union (established 1927), the Anti-Fascist League (1923), and the Anti-War Amsterdam/Pleyel Movement (1932), while remaining in frequent contact with VOKS (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, 1925) and the International Association of Revolutionary Writers (1930). Thus, the plethora of Münzenberg’s contacts and networks within the international communist movement had a lasting imprint on his personal life and career. At the same time, the LAI was

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inescapably interconnected with the organizations, associations, and movements mentioned above. In addition to Münzenberg, most individuals working for the LAI at an organizational level had a cadre file in the Comintern Archive. Of these, some were connected to the LAI’s nerve centre in Berlin: the international secretariat. Between 1927 and 1933, the capital of the Weimar Republic functioned as one of several anti-imperialist hubs and anti-imperial metropolises in Europe.19 Babette Gross observed that about 5,000 individuals from the colonies lived in Berlin in the 1920s, occupying themselves as students, journalists, or travellers.20 For Münzenberg and the LAI’s international secretariat Berlin functioned as a host and haven; as a political and organizational educational centre; and as a general meeting place for actors belonging to either the international communist movement or the anti-imperialist movement. While Münzenberg acted as the informal leader of the LAI, in charge of administering and maintaining contacts with both Comintern headquarters in Moscow and the Zentralkomitee des KPD in Berlin, he could not have carried out the work without the contributions and assistance of other individuals, especially the secretaries. The Indian nationalist revolutionary and journalist, Virendranath Chattophadyaya (Chatto, 1880–1937), was crucial for Münzenberg in developing the LAI’s contacts with India after the Brussels Congress. In his “Autobiography,” written and addressed to the Comintern’s International Control Commission (ICC; the Comintern’s internal repressive organ) on 15 October 1931, Chatto explained that “I worked hard for the Brussels Congress, and finding that my work had gained the confidence and approval of the German Comrades, I formally entered the KPD, with the help of Münzenberg, in October 1927.” Assuming the position of international secretary in 1928, Chatto was key to maintaining contacts with members like India’s Jawaharlal Nehru and England’s Reginald Bridgeman. However, after being accused in April 1931 by the Comintern’s Political Commission of having committed “political dishonesty” due to his activities and connections with the German Foreign Office during the 1914–1918 war, Chatto was forced to resign from the post as LAI’s international secretary. He left Berlin for Moscow in August/September 1931, never to return. Instead, he was caught in the maelstrom of the Great Terror, accused and convicted of being “a German spy,” and was executed in Moscow on 2 September 1937.21 Also working closely with Münzenberg was Louis Gibarti (real name: Laszlo Dobos, 1895–1967), a Hungarian communist and journalist. As a functionary

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of the IAH, Gibarti was a critical figure for initiating and coordinating the preparations for the Brussels Congress. Once the Congress was over, Gibarti established an LAI bureau in Paris, and oversaw contacts with the LAI national sections. In 1928, he suddenly resigned from his post as international secretary only to resurface in New York 1929. There, he assisted Münzenberg and the LAI in the US to send delegations to the LAI’s “Second International Congress Against Colonialism and Imperialism” in Frankfurt am Main on 20–27 July 1929. He also worked closely with Münzenberg to coordinate the preparations for the Amsterdam AntiWar Congress in August 1932.22 The British communist and journalist Clemens Dutt (1893–1974), brother of Rajani Palme Dutt, was another critical figure for Münzenberg. Dutt replaced Chatto and took on his functions at the international secretariat in Berlin in 1931, where he would remain until February 1933. His background included working at the CPGB’s Colonial Department. When he escaped from Berlin and arrived in Moscow in March 1933, he reported on his past as an expert on the colonial question, stating that he had “been clearly associated with the colonial work at the CPGB from its foundation” in the beginning of the 1920s.23 A more clandestine and shadowy character, Bekar Ferdi (real name: Mechnet Schefik, 1890– ?), was also closely associated with Münzenberg at this time. Ferdi had been one of the founders of the Communist Party of Turkey and was a Comintern emissary. He arrived in Berlin in 1930 for the purpose of monitoring and performing missions in Europe, and acted under the official title of LAI secretary. This implied visiting and assessing the colonial work of the communist parties and the LAI sections, evaluating plausible candidates from the colonies living in Paris and Berlin and transferring them to educational units in Moscow like the KUTV (Kommunisticheskii universitet trudiashchikhsia Vostoka, Communist University for Eastern Workers). Ferdi also played a crucial role in coordinating the preparations of the Anti-Imperialist Counter Exhibition in Paris 1931. Although some at the international secretariat described him as “nervous and phlegmatic,” it cannot be refuted that he functioned as a focal link between Berlin and Comintern headquarters in Moscow until his departure from the city (with Clemens Dutt) in February 1933.24 Beside Münzenberg and Chatto, the Czechoslovakian communist and Comintern emissary Bohumíl Smeral (1880–1941) held an authoritative position at the International secretariat. Appointed as LAI secretary by the Comintern’s Political Secretariat on 13 September 1929, Smeral was instructed to work together with Münzenberg and Chatto to reorganize the LAI in the chaotic aftermath of the “Second Congress

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against Colonialism and Imperialism” in Frankfurt am Main in July. However, Smeral’s appointment served a covert purpose, concealed from the others at the international secretariat, namely to observe and register how anti-imperialist work was carried out in Berlin. Smeral recorded these observations in confidential reports sent to “Michail” at Comintern headquarters in Moscow. “Michail” was the pseudonym of Osip Piatnitsky, the principal organizational leader at Comintern headquarters and supervisor of the secretive liaison service, OMS (Otdel mezhdunarodnoi sviazi, Department of International Liaison). Smeral’s investigation of the LAI culminated on 13 September 1930, when he presented the results of his examination to the Comintern’s Political Secretariat. On the one hand, his report definitely confirmed the LAI’s sharp turn to the left, while on the other Smeral admitted that it was unfortunate that the LAI had been established at the peak of the united front policy. Thus, Smeral concluded that it was illogical and wrong “to apply the policy of today [the third period; class against class] to the former.” In July 1931, Smeral declared that he had no intention of continuing his work at the international secretariat. At that point, the Comintern’s Political Commission approved his “resignation” and transferred him to Prague to work with the Friends of the Soviet Union section in Czechoslovakia.25 Assisting the work of the secretaries above, functionaries played a central role at the international secretariat in helping Münzenberg to advance the propaganda and networks of the LAI in Asia and the Far East. In 1927, the Chinese Guomindang representative and communist Liao Huanxing participated at the Brussels Congress and made a celebrated appearance. Shortly after the Congress and under the supervision and financial support of Münzenberg, Liao established the Chinese National Agency in Berlin, which worked closely with Reginald Bridgeman in London to disseminate propaganda against the Guomindang’s persecution of communists in China. The agency proved to be costly and it was abolished only a few months later. In the autumn of 1927 Liao was transferred to the international secretariat, with a promise from Münzenberg that he would be in charge of Far Eastern questions. This never happened for Liao at the international secretariat. On the contrary, he and Münzenberg developed a personal conflict over financial issues, Liao accusing Münzenberg of using him as “an oppressed colonial slave of the LAI.” In the end, Liao left Berlin for Moscow in the company of his wife Dora Dombrowski-Liau in 1928.26 A second functionary was the radical Japanese nationalist Teido Kunizaki (1894–1937). After arriving in Germany, Kunizaki turned to

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communism and joined the KPD, where he was in charge of the Marxist study group the Japanische Sprachgruppe der KPD in Berlin. After attending the LAI’s Frankfurt am Main congress, Kunizaki began working at the international secretariat in 1930, having been given the task of circulating Far Eastern anti-imperialist propaganda. Ferdi described him as a “valuable and accurate worker.” However, the increasingly tense sociopolitical milieu in Germany in the beginning of the 1930s, especially the violent political clashes between the far left (communists) and far right (national socialists), limited the ability of foreigners to remain in Germany, and a symptom of this was the restriction of visas. Kunizaki had his visa revoked in 1932, and travelled to the Soviet Union in September 1932 in the company of his wife Frieda Redlich. The couple became victims of the Great Terror after being arrested in Moscow in August 1937 (Frieda was arrested in September). He was sentenced to death as a “Japanese Fascist spy” because of his bourgeois background and was executed on 10 December in the same year.27 This constitutes the core of the LAI’s international secretariat.28 Part of Münzenberg’s task in Berlin was to stay in contact with the clandestine and secretive functions of the West European Bureau (the “foreign bureau of the ECCI” or WEB). The WEB must be seen as an institutional actor, established on the initiative of the Comintern’s Political Secretariat in 1928 for the purpose of strengthening the contacts between the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) in Moscow and the national sections in Western Europe. Indeed, the WEB proved pivotal in controlling and administering the relations of the LAI with Moscow. Functioning as the ECCI’s relay station in Western Europe, the WEB monitored whether or not the national sections implemented directives emanating from Moscow. The leader of the WEB in Berlin from 1929 to 1933 was the Bulgarian communist Georgi Dimitrov (“Helmut”; 1882–1949), a central actor not only for the LAI, but for the European communist movement more generally. Assisting Dimitrov was the German communist Richard Gyptner (“Alarich,” “Magnus”; 1901–1972), in the role of WEB secretary. Other distinguished European communists recruited to do work for the WEB included CPGB member Aitken Ferguson (“Neptun”), the German communist and Profintern representative Fritz Heckert, and Jacques Doriot of the Parti Communiste Français (PCF). The WEB’s contacts with the LAI were co-ordinated by Dimitrov and Gyptner through Münzenberg, Smeral, Ferdi, and Clemens Dutt.29 Frequent visits by Comintern representatives to Berlin and appointed liaisons at the Comintern headquarters in Moscow played a central role

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in the administrative system of the international secretariat, a system on which Münzenberg relied extensively despite frequent conflicts. The Indian revolutionary and communist, Manabendra Nath Roy (1887–1954), had a crucial position in the initial phase of developing both the anticolonial project and the LAI in 1926–1927. However, the Comintern’s Political Secretariat assigned Roy to travel to Hankou, China, in January 1927 to attend the Pan-Pacific Labour Conference. As a result, the Ukrainian communist and Comintern emissary David Alexandrovich Petrovsky (real name: David Lipetz, 1886–1937) took over Roy’s task of carrying out the highly secretive mission (using the pseudonym “Isolde”) of preparing the Brussels Congress together with Münzenberg and the German scholar and communist Karl August Wittfogel in Berlin in January 1927. Petrovsky was an actor with numerous aliases, all used in different contexts and for widely differing purposes. A similar character was the British communist, Robin Page Arnot (1890–1986), who was instructed to examine the colonial work of the European communist parties in 1929, a process which also influenced the course of events linked to the LAI and the Frankfurt am Main Congress. Arnot was succeeded by Alexander Bittelman (“Alex”, 1890–1982), a member of the Workers’ Party America (the WPA was the precursor to the Communist Party of the USA, CPUSA), who acted for a short period as liaison for the international secretariat in Moscow.30 But two individuals were particularly valuable to Münzenberg for advancing the idea of the LAI and the Brussels Congress and turning it into a reality in the first place, and for functioning as Münzenberg’s contact after the crisis of the Frankfurt am Main Congress in 1929. The first of these was the Finnish communist and Comintern functionary, Mauno Heimo (1894–1937), who had been appointed as Münzenberg’s liaison to oversee the preparations for the Brussels Congress.31 The second was the Hungarian communist and Comintern emissary, Ludwig Magyar (real name: Lajos Milgorf, 1891–1937), the acting deputy head of the Comintern’s Eastern Secretariat and specialist on Eastern questions. To monitor, assess, and deliver instructions on LAI work, Magyar visited Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris frequently between 1930 and 1931. The LAI was inescapably a part of the Comintern’s network of various mass and sympathizing organizations. It was discussed, assessed, and evaluated at various levels in the Comintern, from the bottom to the top. The authoritative departments of the Political Secretariat and its consultative organ, the Political Commission (established in 1929), regularly discussed the LAI. However, it was the ECCI Secretariat that addressed Münzenberg’s idea of pursuing an anticolonial and anti-

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imperialist agenda, a project that began in 1925–1926. After 1927, the Eastern secretariat functioned as the LAI’s connective point from an administrative and intelligence perspective. In the latter case this involved keeping a record on the development of the LAI’s national sections and the opinions of affiliated members, most prominently intellectuals and renowned politicians and anti-imperialist activists. In order to do so, the International secretariat in Berlin was aware of the demand to dispatch every form of intelligence and material to the Eastern secretariat for further evaluation. This requirement had been set in motion prior to the Brussels Congress and in conjunction with the formation of the LAI’s forerunner: the League Against Colonial Oppression in 1926. The instruction explicitly delineated how the flow of intelligence would function: “copies of all letters, printed matter and other documents received from the colonies, or organizations and individuals connected to the revolutionary movement in the colonies” should all be sent to Moscow.32 At a higher hierarchical level in Moscow sensitive or secretive matters were first assessed by Piatnitsky, and then transferred for further deliberation in the Small Commission (Malaja komissija Politsekretariata), where high-ranking Comintern secretaries assessed specific questions. Other departments, which either frequently or intermittently discussed the LAI, were the Standing Commission (Postoiannaia komissiia), the ECCI Bureau, the ECCI Organizational Bureau (Organizatsionnyi otdel; Orgotdel), and the ECCI Agitprop Department (Otdel propagandy i agitatsii), while temporary commissions (Raznye komissii) were also set in motion to examine the LAI.33 From Münzenberg’s perspective, all of the agencies mentioned above were crucial connective points in the LAI network, at least from an organizational point of view, and likewise he relied on the consent of authoritative individuals. Most importantly, these were the Finnish communist and Comintern secretary, Otto W. Kuusinen (1881–1964); Dmitri Manuilsky (1883–1959), the Ukrainian communist and coordinator of several secretariats at Comintern headquarters, and “Stalin’s eyes and ears” in the Comintern; Nikolai Bukharin (1888– 1938), the “informal” chairman of the Comintern in 1927–1928; and, finally, the Russian Grigorij Zinoviev (1883–1936), the Comintern’s first chairman, who was outmanoeuvred by Stalin and forced to resign in 1926. Thus, from an internal perspective, the historical trajectory of the LAI was largely defined by the relations flowing between Berlin and Moscow and vice versa. On the other hand, as several essays in this anthology suggest and outline, an external perspective discloses different narratives,

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which focus primarily on the connections and patterns developed outside the LAI’s international secretariat. These include the national sections, intellectuals, anti-imperialist activists in Europe, Asia, the US, Latin and South America, and to some extent various affiliated associations and organizations. However, Münzenberg was central from the point of view that he linked together the internal perspective with the external narratives of the LAI,34 above all in the initial stages, and later from a symbolic and historiographical position. “The idea makes me happy”: Willi Münzenberg, the LAI, and the Comintern, 1925–1933 The “Hands Off China” campaign which Münzenberg launched in Germany in June 1925 indicated a new direction for the IAH as a proletarian mass organization. The campaign focused primarily on developing the philanthropic activities of the IAH, but it also introduced the question of anticolonialism and provided political space for anticolonial activists living in Germany. The IAH acted with the consent of the Comintern to launch the campaign which, according to Münzenberg, turned into the “fourth largest international action” since the IAH’s establishment in 1921.35 The practice of setting up solidarity campaigns or associations in support of a particular issue was at the core of Münzenberg’s and the IAH’s activities.36 The “Hands Off Campaign,” then, was a reaction to the violent suppression of Chinese textile workers by the British concession police in Shanghai on 30 May 1925, which resulted in the deaths of thirteen individuals at a demonstration, and consequently sparked protests and reactions reaching all the way back to Europe. Moreover, the campaign was the seed that would later give birth to the LAI in Brussels 1927. For Münzenberg, the culmination of the campaign was the convening of a “Hands Off China” congress in Berlin on 16 August 1925. According to him, the event was attended by 1,000 delegates and was a demonstration of the “international success” of the campaign. In his report to Zinoviev, Münzenberg described how representatives of Chinese trade unions at the congress had introduced the idea of the IAH organizing “a real, allencompassing congress against imperialist colonial politics, in Brussels or Copenhagen.” After pondering the idea, Münzenberg declared to Zinoviev that “the idea makes me happy,” and that it could function as a gateway to connect the IAH with nationalist colonial groups existing in Berlin including, for example, the Chinese, Moroccan, Egyptian, and Indian communities.37

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Münzenberg’s enthusiasm for what could be described as the anti-colonial project was put to the test in December 1925 with the introduction of a new campaign and committee, Against the Cruelties in Syria. Receiving support from intellectuals in Germany willing to sign petitions against “the great imperialist powers” of France and Great Britain—including the author Ernst Toller, the artist John Heartfield, and the stage manager of the radical Weltbühne theatre Erwin Piscator38 — further convinced Münzenberg to organize an international congress against colonialism and imperialism, something that would have the potential of uniting various strands of political, national, and anti-colonial activists on a common platform. This required Münzenberg to strengthen his contacts with Comintern headquarters on this topic, especially as the Against the Cruelties in Syria committee/campaign had been designed in a collaboration between him, the KPD, and Manuilsky. Thus, by transforming the Syria campaign in January 1926, and retitling it the “Action Committee against the Colonial Politics of the Imperialists,” it became a platform from which to push ahead with Münzenberg’s project of organizing an international congress. According to Münzenberg, the general objective was to keep everything “steady in our hands,” to connect the project with the Comintern’s Eastern Department (later in 1926 its name was changed to the Eastern Secretariat), and to get Manuilsky’s approval.39 The conference and establishment of the League against Colonial Oppression (LACO) at the “Rathauskeller” in Berlin on 10 February 1926 confirmed again for Münzenberg the impact an international congress against colonialism and imperialism could have. Attending were fortythree delegates, representing a mixture of Berlin-based anti-colonial activists, socialists, pacifists, and foreigners. Gibarti acted as chairman of the conference, declaring to the attending delegates that the time had come to unify the anti-colonial movement first in Germany and then, in a second step, across Europe. At the end of the conference, the delegates approved of letting the IAH coordinate the preparations for what would result in the Brussels Congress.40 However, the formation of LACO also established a firmer organizational and administrative link between Berlin and Moscow. Its establishment, indeed, initiated the “Commission for the Examination of the Question of a Colonial Congress in Brussels” to observe and control the preparations, and also to stay in contact with Münzenberg and the LACO secretariat in Berlin.41 M.N. Roy was appointed as Münzenberg’s primary contact on matters relating to LACO and the Brussels Congress,

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a relationship that placed Münzenberg’s eagerness to push ahead with the congress at odds with Roy’s hesitation. Thus, the process leading up to the Brussels Congress consisted of Münzenberg alternating between asking Roy “what shall I do with this colonial movement,” and threatening to turn the Congress into “a genuine IAH affair” if the Comintern did not provide sufficient material (money) and ideological (resolutions, congress material) support.42 Regardless of the internal conflicts between Münzenberg and the Comintern, the Brussels Congress turned into a euphoric demonstration of international solidarity against colonialism and imperialism. Additionally, the Congress offered Münzenberg an opportunity to produce a majestic demonstration but, even more, to demonstrate for the Comintern his position as an entrepreneur of propaganda capable of reaching beyond party politics that could yield international reactions. Moreover, he explicitly explained in his report to the decision-makers at Comintern headquarters after the Brussels Congress that the event had produced propaganda material and a new set of connections to the colonies that should be utilized. Hence, the focal point was getting the LAI to remain “steady in our hands,” but at the same time Münzenberg wondered “what will happen now.”43 In 1927, leading up to the LAI General Council in Brussels on 9–11 December, one of Münzenberg’s main ambitions was to turn the LAI into an international organization. While national sections were established in Europe, the US, and Latin America, there were difficulties gaining footholds in Africa, Asia and the Far East, which became increasingly evident over the course of the year. At the same time, Münzenberg and the LAI’s international secretariat bided their time, waiting for the Comintern to provide a financial structure and ideological direction. As a result, it was not until June 1927 that Piatnitsky and the “Anti-Imperialist Commission” in Moscow were clear about the LAI’s future direction: to “vigorously support the Chinese revolution,” and to create and sustain “an energetic struggle against the war threat and imperialist preparations against the Soviet Union.”44 If we are fully able to explicate and understand Münzenberg’s relation to and involvement in developing the LAI, the organizational dimension is central. After the euphoria and international success of the Brussels Congress in 1927, the road ahead was characterized by internal and external obstructions, challenges, and, most importantly, the shift in Comintern policy in 1928 from advocating the strategy of the “united front” to prophesizing the harshness of “class against class,” something that was an upheaval not only for the LAI, but for the entire international

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communist movement. The political message of the Sixth International Comintern Congress in Moscow in August 1928 and the declaration of Kuusinen’s “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries” indicated this shift, and in 1929 the Comintern corroborated “the correctness” of adopting “class against class” as the only viable policy.45 This would prove decisive for the LAI’s future trajectory. The Sixth Congress in Moscow confirmed this, as some delegates told Münzenberg that the “abundance of such subsidiary organizations” as the LAI was “a heavy burden on small [national communist] parties.” This exposed an internal conflict of interest between Münzenberg and the communist parties, regardless of Münzenberg’s explanation that the initial purpose of an organization such as the LAI was to “awaken the apathetic, to build bridges to non-party people.”46 The LAI’s “Second Congress against Colonialism and Imperialism” in Frankfurt am Main on 20–27 July 1929 confirmed that the organization faced a serious challenge. The entire process connected to the Frankfurt congress was a challenge for Münzenberg, because it forced him to realize that the Comintern was in total charge of preparing the political agenda of the Congress. After having committed the mistake of issuing a “provisional agenda” and invitation to the Congress without consulting the Comintern’s Eastern Secretariat in February 1929, Münzenberg was warned that “any further instance of indiscipline will be more severely dealt with.” While Münzenberg provided a space for a plausible “anti-Communist colour” for the Congress,47 the Comintern moulded the Congress completely on the “class against class” policy, meaning that it aimed to expose and confront the non-communist delegates by accusing them of being “social fascists,” “agents of imperialism,” and “national reformists.” From the Comintern perspective, the whole idea was to “cleanse the ranks” of all kinds of reformists. The Frankfurt am Main congress was attended by 263 delegates from thirty-one countries and regions representing ninety-nine organizations, which at first seemed to repeat the success of the Brussels Congress. However, the Congress turned vitriolic when communist delegates behaved spitefully and harshly to non-communist delegates.48 The Norwegian socialist Bjarne Braatoy, a friend of the LSI secretary Adler, attended as an eyewitness and described how the Congress had been “very extreme” to observe.49 Münzenberg was the last speaker at the Congress. From the rostrum he declared the LAI to be “the first attempt … to uniting millions” by linking together “the proletarian strugglers in their ‘mother countries’ with the oppressed colonies,” and, therefore, it relied on the active support of nationalist independence movements like Nehru’s Indian

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National Congress. Regardless of his attempts to soften the blow made by other communist delegates, Münzenberg nevertheless admitted later that the Congress had been “a considerable step to the left.” This implied that the LAI no longer depended on the moral and material support of intellectuals or “liberal women and men” to establish connections with “workers and peasants in the oppressed countries.” Yet this was just the official version. In private, Münzenberg was devastated as he informed the KPD secretariat in Berlin that the “ordeal of the congress” forced him to take leave of absence for a couple of weeks.50 Thus, if we are to define a particular breaking point in Münzenberg’s leadership of the LAI, the Frankfurt am Main Congress and its aftermath are decisive from several perspectives. First, the Congress confirmed the Comintern’s authority over the LAI and, even more, it exposed itself and vindicated the public suspicion of the organization as intimately connected to the Comintern. This resulted in the loss of the LAI’s non-communist leadership (prominente Persönlichkeiten), including Jawaharlal Nehru, the British socialist James Maxton, the Indonesian nationalist revolutionary Mohammad Hatta, and Edo Fimmen, who all either resigned or were expelled. For Münzenberg, the shift was all about defending himself. Summoned to Moscow, he gave a statement to the Comintern’s Political Secretariat on 25 September 1929, where he made an effort to stand in juxtaposition to the “false information” issued by some individuals at Comintern headquarters and his own perception of the event. According to Münzenberg, the LAI faced the monumental task of contesting the existing ignorance of the European communist parties on colonial work, and the behaviour of the ECCI delegation in Frankfurt am Main had inflicted serious damage on the LAI. Münzenberg’s statement was an act of self-criticism, and after returning to Berlin he retreated from participating in the daily routine work at the LAI’s international secretariat, appearing in the office only when important issues had to be dealt with.51 The LAI then underwent another crisis in 1930 when Smeral’s report to the Comintern’s Political Commission in Moscow included suggestions for resurrecting and enhancing the activities of the LAI, for example, to act as an intermediary for anti-colonial activists and focus on developing antiimperialist propaganda. Even though Münzenberg was in Berlin at the time, he was in regular contact with Smeral and reacted with amazement and surprise at the general low level of trust the decision-makers had in reviving the LAI.52 From a hierarchical point of view, from 1930 to 1933 Münzenberg acted merely as an intermediary between the LAI’s international

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secretariat, Comintern emissaries visiting Berlin, and various institutional actors at Comintern headquarters. Despite his organizing and participating in the restoration of the LAI’s executive committee in June 1931, the period extending from the end of 1930 and the whole of 1931 witnessed Münzenberg’s definite separation from the LAI. The staff at the international secretariat wondered where he was from time to time, and demanded that Münzenberg visit the office a couple of times every month.53 But Münzenberg had other questions on his mind, for example, the completion and publication of his reminiscences of the communist youth movement in Die Dritte Front. Aufzeichnungen aus 15 Jahren proletarischer Jugendbewegung in 1930, preparing the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the IAH which culminated with a congress in Berlin in October 1931, and the publication of Solidarität. Zehn Jahre Internationale Arbeiterhilfe, 1921–1931, an essential account and source of the global ramifications of the IAH.54 Additionally, the new direction of the LAI—to function as the Comintern’s intermediary for anti-imperialist activists, and to funnel propaganda under the guise of acting as a united front against colonialism and imperialism—had been drawn closer to the activities of communist mass organizations like the International Red Aid and Münzenberg’s IAH. Thus, Münzenberg was instrumental in connecting the LAI with the AntiImperialist Exhibition in Paris in 1931 and the Manchurian campaign as a response to Japanese war aggression in 1931. Finally, Münzenberg used the LAI as an introductory vehicle to promote the idea of an anti-war campaign in 1932, which ultimately would result in the Amsterdam AntiWar Congress in August of that same year.55 The Amsterdam congress was a success, with 2,165 attending delegates representing twenty-seven countries, again confirming Münzenberg’s skills as an organizer. But for the LAI the internal decline at the international secretariat was by now an established fact. The communist parties in Europe acted indifferently towards the LAI, and as the political scenario in Weimar Germany was deteriorating daily in 1932, the road ahead did not have a positive outlook. A Polish communist and functionary at the international secretariat, Valnitsky, concluded that the unwillingness of the Zentral Komitte KPD to support the LAI had contributed to isolating the LAI within the European communist movement, and “the political hegemony” of each European communist party was “so huge and great that any initiative” of the LAI’s international secretariat “in the future and without the active support from the parties, will have no success.”56 Indifference towards the LAI from an internal perspective was confirmed

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as the communist parties refused to follow or even acknowledge the directives emanating from Comintern headquarters to support the organization in 1932. Meanwhile, the international secretariat succumbed to increasing pressure from the police authority in Berlin (Schutzpolizei). When the bureau was raided for a second time in August (the first raid took place on 21 December 1931),57 Münzenberg detached himself even further from the routine, daily work. However, the pivotal breaking point in Münzenberg’s relationship with the LAI and the international secretariat was connected to circumstances beyond his control. The rise to power of the Nazi party and Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933 signalled the definite end of not only the LAI in Germany, but of the entire socialist and communist movement in the country, a moment of destruction of the political and social landscape described by Eric D. Weitz as the onset of the anni terribili.58 In Berlin, as Hitler and the Nazi party forcefully manifested the power of the new regime, the LAI’s international secretariat held its last meeting on 30 January 1933. The meeting was convened by the leader of the Comintern’s West European Bureau, Georgi Dimitrov (“Helmut”), and held in haste. Present were Ferdi, Clemens Dutt, Dimitrov, and Allo Bayer, an IAH functionary from France. After the meeting, Bayer and Dimitrov wrote two separate reports that were sent to Comintern headquarters. According to Dimitrov, the LAI’s international secretariat was a defunct leader and “a terrible political impotence is present now.” Thus, it was necessary to create a “workable … [and] a living centre capable of taking the initiative.” Hence, Dimitrov stated that the relocation of the LAI’s international secretariat from Berlin to Paris was the only solution. Bayer could only observe that “the situation in Germany had made it objectively impossible” to continue.59 Consequently, this witnessed the literal end of the LAI’s international secretariat in Berlin, as Dimitrov instructed Bayer to dismantle and transfer the bureau to Paris, and to destroy everything not perceived as important.60 Münzenberg did not attend the meeting, and his whereabouts were unknown. According to Babette Gross, on the day the Nazi party came into power he did not return to his apartment. Instead, he was hiding “anonymously in a room” in the western part of Berlin.61 This came to an end at 21:14 pm on 27 February, as an alarm sounded across Berlin, declaring that the Reichstag was on fire. In the ensuing chaos, Hitler and the Nazi regime ordered the arrest of prominent communist leaders. Münzenberg’s name was on its most wanted list. However, he attended a KPD party meeting in Langenselbold on the outskirts of Frankfurt

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am Main and managed to avoid arrest. On 28 February, German national radio broadcast a warrant for Münzenberg’s arrest, accusing him of having committed high treason and, on 1 March, the Deutsches Kriminalpolizeiblatt published a picture of him.62 Münzenberg managed to cross the German-French border in the company of Babette Gross and his private chauffeur at the beginning of March 1933 and, shortly after having arrived in Paris, he realized how much the political landscape had changed. With respect to the LAI, he was still acting as secretary of the organization. However, other urgent matters called for his attention, like the conceptualization and publication of the public indictment against Hitler and the Nazi regime, The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag, and the convening of the “Salle-Pleyel” Anti-War congress in Paris on 4–6 June. After the congress, Münzenberg travelled to Moscow where he met Magyar, telling him that it was impossible “to find the suitable word” for his lack of engagement in the LAI, particularly as the Comintern seemed unable to provide him with “any notification, information and assistance” on how to proceed.63 The issue was not settled until August 1933 when Münzenberg wrote to Piatnitsky: “Dear Comrade P. [Piatnitsky]. After my proposal to move the headquarters and secretariat of the Anti-Imperialist League to London, I ask to be relieved from my former work in the League and to no longer be cited as secretary of the League. With party greetings / W. Münzenberg.”64 Thus, what had been partly conceptualized in Moscow ended partly in the same place: Comintern headquarters. However, Münzenberg’s wish to transfer the LAI’s international secretariat from Paris to London was approved, and in September-October the organization appointed Reginald Bridgeman as the new General Secretary of the international organization. Having separated himself from the LAI, Münzenberg could no longer be held responsible for what Bridgeman conceded a year later, which was that the only document sent from Paris to London was “a list of addresses which was not up to date and of so little value,” something that forced him “to reconstitute the work of the League from the beginning.”65 This, in turn, was a crucial turning point in the longer trajectory of the LAI’s history and the legacy it left behind after its dissolution in 1937, as it indicated an end but also a new beginning. The Persona of Münzenberg and the League Against Imperialism The historical perception of Münzenberg as a “mystery” needs to be further addressed. Today Münzenberg’s personality is either discussed from a scholarly point of view or conceptualized in the “Willi Münzenberg

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Forum,”66 an initiative established to advance thematic discussions connected to his life as an activist and propagandist. However, to avoid turning Münzenberg into a modern myth in the history of twentiethcentury communism and radicalism, we need to address the different layers of Münzenberg’s life, meaning his role as “the organization man” and political entrepreneur who spurred and created transnational networks but, even more importantly, his role as an activist and propagandist who invented new methods of political propaganda and attracted people outside the communist movement to become engaged and involved in anti-war, anti-fascist, and anti-imperialist campaigns. The LAI had a central position in advancing Münzenberg’s career. Above all, he used the success of the Brussels Congress in 1927 as a template for future congresses, including the Anti-Fascist Congress in Berlin 1929 and the Amsterdam Anti-War Congress in 1932. Münzenberg was pivotal in turning the LAI into a transnational organization. He connected individuals of various national backgrounds sharing common ideals and ideas. However, he carefully observed how the wind blew at Comintern headquarters in Moscow, especially tendencies relating to the attitude of the decision-makers and the shift in doctrinal policy. This became evident with the shift from the “united front” policy to “class against class” in 1928/1929, and how Münzenberg did his utmost to avoid getting caught in the ideological maelstrom that sent internal tremors throughout the Comintern and the national parties at the onset of the 1930s. On the other hand, Münzenberg demonstrated a need to maintain control over the LAI, something that sometimes resulted in personal conflicts, for example the fraught relationship with Liao Huanxing at the LAI’s international secretariat in Berlin. From a broader perspective, Münzenberg was not only a propagandist and an “organization man.” He was also a visionary in trying to create a united front against colonialism and imperialism. However, and regardless of being a visionary in the milieu of international communism between the wars, Münzenberg succumbed to Stalinization as it gained momentum and spiralled out of control with the Great Terror in the Soviet Union in 1937–1938. Ousted from the KPD and the Comintern, and in conjunction with the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939, Münzenberg nonetheless left a lasting historical imprint on 22 September 1939, stating in his last official publishing enterprise in Paris, the newspaper Die Zukunft (The Future), that “Der Verräter, Stalin, bist Du!” (“The traitor, is you Stalin!”)67 Münzenberg was the result of a new kind of political persona after the 1914–1918 war in that he was

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rooted in the political radicalism of pacifism, socialism, and, ultimately, Lenin’s communism, expressions that shaped his understanding of the injustice and oppression created by colonialism, imperialism, and fascism. Above all, Münzenberg’s life and career in the interwar period were shaped by the possibilities and limitations of the Weimar Republic and the ideological and organizational ramifications of the Comintern. It is from this perspective that it is possible to locate and understand Münzenberg’s role and position in the history of the LAI, specifically how he situated himself vis-à-vis the Comintern to introduce and advance anti-imperialist campaigns under the guise of the LAI as an international petitioner against colonialism and imperialism between the wars. Notes 1

2

3 4

5 6

Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (hereafter RGASPI) 542/1/69/37-49, Manuscript of Willi Münzenberg’s speech, Brussels, 14 February 1927. This chapter is based on some of my published work on the League Against Imperialism and Willi Münzenberg, for example Fredrik Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers.” Willi Münzenberg, the League against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925–1933 (Åbo Akademi University, 2013). Published as vol. I-II, Lewiston: Queenston Press, 2013; Fredrik Petersson, “Anti-Imperialism and Nostalgia: A Re-assessment of the History and Historiography of the League Against Imperialism,” in Holger Weiss (ed.), International Communism and Transnational Solidarity: Radical Networks, Mass Movements and Global Politics, 1919–1939 (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Fredrik Petersson, “Willi Münzenberg: A Propagandist Reaching Beyond the Party and Class,” in Ralf Hoffrogge and Norman LaPorte (eds.), Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933 (Chadwell Heath: Lawrence and Wishart, 2017). RGASPI, 542/1/69, 37-49, Manuscript of Willi Münzenberg’s speech at the Brussels Congress, 14/2–1927. Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont was issued by Münzenberg’s publishing company Neuer Deutscher Verlag in Berlin June 1927. The publication is still the most vivid and detailed account of the Brussels Congress. See Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850– 2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). The most authoritative account of Münzenberg’s youth leading up to his involvement in the international communist movement is Babette Gross, Willi Münzenberg: Eine politische Biographie (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-

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7

8 9

10

11 12

Anstalt, 1967), 19–124. For the foundation of the “Auslandskomittee” see Kasper Braskén, The International Workers’ Relief, Communism, and Transnational Solidarity (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). This is a perspective eloquently summarized by Michael Scammel in “The Mystery of Willi Münzenberg,” New York Review of Books, 3 November 2005. In it, he re-assesses the erroneous and sensationalist biographical studies of Stephen Koch and Sean McMeekin: Stephen Koch, Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Münzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals (London: Harper Collins, 1995); Sean McMeekin, The Red Millionaire:s A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Tania Schlie and Simone Roche (eds.), Willi Münzenberg (1889–1940). Ein deutscher Kommunist im Spannungsfeld zwischen Stalinismus und Antifaschismus (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995) is a good companion to Gross’ narrative in comparison to Koch and McMeekin’s biased and sensationalist accounts. For the IAH and Münzenberg, see Kasper Braskén’s doctoral dissertation The Revival of International Solidarity: The Internationale Arbeiterhilfe, Willi Münzenberg and the Comintern in Weimar Germany, 1921–1933 (Åbo Akademi University, 2014). Koestler later became well known for his deep critique of totalitarianism. Arthur Koestler, “Vorwort,” in Gross, Willi Münzenberg, 9–11. See also Koestler’s memoir, The Invisible Writing: The Second Volume of an Autobiography: 1932–40 (London: Vintage, 2005 [1954]), which outlines in detail his relation to and experience of Münzenberg on pp. 250–9. International Institute of Social History (IISH), Letter from Adler, Zurich, to Gillies, London, 19 January 1927; “Zur Geschichte der Liga gegen koloniale Unterdrückung,” Internationale Information, IV:52 (Zürich: LSI, October 1927), 438–448. Internationale Information was a circular newsletter for the member parties of the LSI. The political conflict between the LSI and LAI, and Adler’s critique against Münzenberg is analyzed in my chapter “The Labour and Socialist International and ‘The Colonial Problem’: Mobilization by Necessity or Force, 1925–28,” in Stefano Bellucci and Holger Weiss (eds.), The Internationalisation of the Labour Question: Ideological Antagonism, Workers’ Movements and the ILO since 1919 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Brigitte Studer, The Transnational World of the Cominternians (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 3–5. The understanding of Münzenberg as “the organization man”, or as a conjurer of political enterprises established in a multitude of different shapes and contexts were introduced in a Western context in the 1950s and 1960s.

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13

14 15

16

17

18 19

See, for example, Jorgen Schleimann, “The Organisation Man: The Life and Work of Willi Münzenberg,” in Survey: A Journal of Soviet and East European Studies, 55 (1965). In the West, following the Cold War division of the world, Koestler’s The Invisible Writing (London, 1954) and Gustav Regler’s Das Ohr des Malchus (Köln, 1958) introduced readers to the enigmatic life of Münzenberg. Koestler and Regler, both authors, had worked with Münzenberg in Paris with different publication enterprises. For example, Koestler acted as editor of Die Zukunft in 1939. Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1989), 402. The prosopographical approach has been used constructively in Kevin Morgan, Gideon Cohen and Andrew Flinn, Agents of the Revolution: New Biographical Approaches to the History of International Communism in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005). Karl Schlögel, Das Russische Berlin: Ostbahnhof Europas (München: Pantheon, 2007), 179–208. While RGASPI is the central documentary resource on the LAI, materials on the organization have been located across the world, for example in Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Stockholm, and New Delhi. For the archival challenge to assess and analyze an organization with links to the LAI, see Holger Weiss, “The Road to Moscow: On Archival Sources Concerning the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers in the Comintern Archive,” in History in Africa, vol. 39 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 361–93. The “solar system” theory is further discussed in Petersson, “Anti-Imperialism and Nostalgia,” 200–6. See also Bernhard Bayerlein, “The ‘Cultural International’ as the Comintern’s Intermediate Empire: International Mass and Sympathizing Organisations beyond Parties” in the same volume, 28–88. RGASPI 495/205/7000, Cadre file: Willi Münzenberg. One document tells how “Ercoli”, pseudonym of Italian communist and Comintern functionary Palmiro Togliatti, authorized the request from Münzenberg and Babette Gross to leave Moscow on 14 October 1936. The ordeal and anxiety connected to this crucial episode, which in turn contributed in Münzenberg’s conversion against his former party comrades in the KPD, is given in Gross, Willi Münzenberg, 300–3. Studer, The Transnational World of the Cominternians, 16. Fredrik Petersson, “Hub of the Anti-Imperialist Movement: The League against Imperialism and Berlin, 1927–1933,” Interventions 16:1 (2014), 49–71. For other constructive interpretations of space and anti-imperial metropolises between the wars, see Holger Weiss, Framing a Radical African Atlantic:

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20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29

30

31

African American Agency, West African Intellectuals and the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Jennifer Anne Boittin, Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010); Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis. Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Gross, Willi Münzenberg, 196–8. For Chatto’s life as a nationalist revolutionary, see Nirode K. Barooah, Chatto: The Life and Times of an Indian Anti-Imperialist in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). For the accusation against Chatto in 1931, see Petersson (2013), 422–5; RGASPI 495/213/186, 226, Autobiography: V. Chattophadyaya, Moscow, to the ICC, Moscow, 15 October 1931. Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 91–2, 218–9, 464–5; RGASPI 495/205/6048, L. Gibarti, Cadre File. RGASPI 495/198/1140, 29-30, Lebenslauf Clemens Palme Dutt, Moscow, 1933. RGASPI 495/266/38, B. Ferdi, Cadre File. Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 348–50, 379–94, 441–2; RGASPI 495/272/3640, B. Smeral. Cadre File. Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 169, 196–200; RGASPI 495/225/1043, Liao Khuan’sin (Liao Huanxing/Hansin Liau). Cadre File. Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 415; RGASPI 495/205/4516, Teido Kunizaki. Cadre File. It is also worth noting these individuals connected in various ways to the LAI’s International secretariat: Swiss communist and IAH functionary Federico Bach (real name: Fritz Sulzbacher, 1897–1978); Japanese-Danish communist Hans Thögersen (pseudonyms: “York”, “Miller”, b1902); German communist and Sinologist Karl August Wittfogel (1896–1988); CPGB member Emile Burns (1889–1972); German communist and IAH functionary Allo Bayer; Swiss communist and IAH functionary Otto Schudel (1902–1979); and German communist and steno-typist Ella Windmüller. Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 36–7, 220–1; RGASPI 499/1/33, 132, (Vertraulich) Entwurf eines Beschlusses des EKKI über die Errichtung eines Westeuropäischen Büros, Moskau, 1928. Fredrik Petersson, “The ‘Colonial Conference’ and Dilemma of the Comintern’s Colonial Work, 1928–29,” in Vijay Prashad (ed.), Communist Histories, vol. 1 (New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2016). Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 121–2.

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32

33

34

35 36 37

38 39 40

41

RGASPI 542/1/3/10-11, (Confidential) Letter from ECCI Secretariat, Moscow, to Münzenberg, Berlin, 29 May 1926. The author of the letter was M. N. Roy. For the Comintern’s organizational structure, see for example, Niels Erik Rosenfeldt, The “Special” World: Stalin’s Power Apparatus and the Soviet System's Secret Structures of Communication, vol. 1–2 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009); Peter Huber, “Structure of the Moscow Apparatus of the Comintern and Decision-Making,” in Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe (eds.), International Communism and the Communist International 1919–43 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); Grant Adibekov and Eleonora Shakhnazarova, “Reconstructions of the Comintern Organisational Structure,” in Michail Narinsky and Jürgen Rojahn (eds.), Centre and Periphery: The History of the Comintern in the Light of New Documents (IISH: Amsterdam, 1996), 65–73. This has also been interpreted as the endogenous (internal) and exogenous (external) perspective, taken from Hermann Weber’s groundbreaking research on the KPD’s relation to the Comintern, hence, it is partially explained through the center-periphery debate when it comes to assess and understand the Comintern, see further in Norman LaPorte, Kevin Morgan and Matthew Worley (eds.), Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Comintern: Perspectives on Stalinization, 1917–53 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 1–3. Willi Münzenberg, Fünf Jahre Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 1926), 104. For the transnational campaigns of the IAH, see Braskén, The International Workers’ Relief. RGASPI 538/2/27/110, Letter from Münzenberg, Berlin, to ECCI, Moscow, 18 August 1925; RGASPI 538/2/27/108-09, Letter from Münzenberg, Berlin, to Zinoviev, Moscow, 18 August 1925. Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 80–3. RGASPI 538/3/47, 9–13, Letter from Münzenberg, Berlin, to Karl Müller/ IAH, Moscow, 26 January 1926. RGASPI 542/1/4/2-4, Protokoll der im Berliner Rathauskeller Konferenz der deutschen Organisationen und der Kolonialvertreter, Berlin, 10 February 1926; for the LACO’s activities in 1926, leading up to the Brussels Congress, see Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 91–134; Ulrich van der Heyden and Joachim Zeller, “Macht und Anteil an der Weltherrschaft”. Berlin und der deutsche Kolonialismus (Münster: Unrast Verlag, 2005). RGASPI 495/18/425/28-32, Protokoll Nr.63 der Sitzung des Sekretariats des EKKI, Moskau, 19 March 1926.

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42

43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56

57

RGASPI 542/1/3/6, Letter from Münzenberg, Berlin, to Eastern Secretariat, Moscow, 23 April 1926; RGASPI 542/1/3/13-14, Report from Münzenberg, Berlin, to Roy, Moscow, 24 June 1926. RGASPI 542/1/7/120-23, Report from Münzenberg, Berlin, to ECCI Secretariat, Moscow, 21 February 1927. RGASPI 495/3/18/136-39, Decision by the ECCI Anti-Imperialist Commission, Moscow, 15 June 1927. For a cursory overview of the Sixth Congress, see Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin (Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1996). Kuusinen’s “colonial thesis” was, in fact, the product of Stalin’s active involvement in shaping the document. See Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 233. The Tenth ECCI Plenum in July 1929, which convened prior to the LAI congress in Frankfurt am Main, is the episode that confirmed the “class against class” policy. Documents on the plenum are filed in RGASPI 495/168. Jane Degras, The Communist International, 1919–1943: Documents, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 465. RGASPI 495/60/134a/28: Protokoll der Ostsekretariatskommission zur antiimperialistischen Liga, Moskau, 30 March 1929. For the Frankfurt am Main congress, see Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 319–45. IISH, LSI Collection, 3050/61, Letter from Braatoy, Berlin, to Adler, Zurich, 6 August 1929. Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 336–8. RGASPI 495/3/120/72-75, Erklärung des Gen. Münzenberg, Moskau, 25 September 1929; Petersson “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 351–3. RGASPI 542/1/37/98: Letter from Münzenberg, Berlin, to Smeral, Moscow, 22 August 1930. RGASPI 542/1/40/26-37: (Vertraulich) Brief Nr.1, Liga gegen Imperialismus, Berlin, to Eastern Secretariat, Moscow, 18 October 1930. For the IAH congress in Berlin 1931, see Braskén, The International Workers’ Relief, 195–205. Braskén suggests that this was Münzenberg’s “finest hour.” Die Dritte Front and Solidarität were both released through Neuer Deutscher Verlag. Petersson “We Are Neither Visionaries.” RGASPI 542/1/54/54-55: Report from Valnitzki, Berlin, to Eastern Secretariat, Moscow, 14 April 1932. The Amsterdam congress is outlined in Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 470–4. Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, Zentrales Parteiarchiv (SAPMO BA-ZPA, Lichterfelde,

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58

59

60 61 62

63 64 65

66 67

Berlin), 1507/279, 79–93: Der Polizeipräsident, Berlin, and den Herrn Minister des Innern, Berlin, 19 August 1932. An account of the first raid on 21 December 1931 was described by youth secretary “Hans” (Hans Thögersen, “York”) at the LAI’s International secretariat in a letter to Chatto in Moscow. According to “Hans”, the only thing Münzenberg provided in terms of support was a lawyer by the name of “Dr. Apfel” at the expense of the International secretariat. RGASPI 542/1/56/2: Letter from “Hans”, Berlin, to Chatto, Moscow, 21 January 1932. Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism: From Popular Protests to Socialist State, 1890–1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 280. RGASPI 542/1/59/29: “Report from Helmut/Dimitrov, Berlin, to L. Magyar, Moscow,” 6 February 1933; RGASPI 542/1/60/39-49, Bericht über Lage und Tätigkeit des Intern. Sekretariats der Liga, Allo Bayer, Paris, to L. Magyar, Paris, 1 April 1933. Bayer handed over his report to Magyar in person in Paris. Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries,” 491–3. Gross, Willi Münzenberg, 244. Ibid., 246; Harald Wessel, Münzenbergs Ende: Ein deutscher Kommunist im Widerstand gegen Hitler und Stalin, Die Jahre 1933 bis 1940 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1991). RGASPI 542/1/59/45: Letter from Münzenberg, Moscow, to Magyar, Moscow, 8 June 1933. RGASPI 495/4/260/72: Note from Münzenberg, Moscow, to Piatnitsky, Moscow, 20 August 1933. RGASPI 542/1/61/1-43: Report from Bridgeman, London, to Shapurji Saklatvala, London, December 1934. Saklatvala dispatched the report to Comintern headquarters, where it arrived on 10 March 1935. The Willi Münzenberg Forum organized its first congress in Berlin in 2015: https://www.muenzenbergforum.de. Bernhard H. Bayerlein, “Der Verräter, Stalin, bist Du!.” Vom Ende der linken Solidarität, Komintern und kommunistischen Parteien im zweiten Weltkriege, 1939–1941 (Berlin: Aufbau Verlagsgruppe). Taken from the Russian edition (Moscow: Rosspen, Moscow, 2011), 159, 164.

Chapter 7

British Passport Restrictions, the League Against Imperialism, and the Problem of Liberal Democracy Daniel Brückenhaus In August of 1927, six months after the official founding of the League Against Imperialism (LAI) in Brussels, an unprecedented situation confronted prominent League member Shapurji Saklatvala: the British passport office cancelled the endorsement of his passport for journeys to India, which meant that, despite being of Indian origin, he was no longer allowed to travel to his home country from Britain, where he then resided.1 This had serious implications for his political work, as it prevented him from going on propaganda and fact-finding missions to India. Moreover, the authorities’ decision also affected him deeply on a personal level; as his daughter remembered in her memoirs decades later, “it was, without doubt, the greatest hurt that was ever inflicted upon him.”2 The LAI is widely seen as one of the most important organizations challenging imperial rule during the first half of the twentieth century. The League and its leaders played a crucial role in developing an inherently internationalist vision of anti-imperialism, which was aimed at ending colonial rule not just in one specific colony or empire, but across the globe. This strategy meant that international travel came to be a defining feature of the lives of most leading LAI members. Delegates from various countries came together at the League congresses in different European cities, which created contact zones that allowed them to forge connections across the world that they often retained until the period of decolonization after 1945. In addition, LAI members travelled from one European country to the next to coordinate the work of the various European LAI branches with the League’s international headquarters, located in Berlin from the founding of the League in 1927 until the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933, and then in Britain until the dissolution of the League in 1937. Finally, they tried to carry out the League’s work beyond Europe’s borders, travelling to colonized territories to give political speeches and create additional League branches within the colonies.3

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Faced with these movements of activists, the imperial governments of Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands used the existing passport system—which had been modified and expanded during the First World War—to control them through denying visas to those whom they wished to keep out of—or within—certain locations. This chapter uses the example of the British government’s employment of this strategy to undercut the mobility of two prominent League leaders: Shapurji Saklatvala, a member of the League’s Executive Committee who was born in India but lived in Britain in the interwar period, and Willi Münzenberg, a German communist member of parliament based in Berlin who between 1928 and 1933 was one of the League’s two international secretaries. These two case studies allow us to explore a number of different contexts in which the British used the passport system to control activists. In Saklatvala’s case, the goal was to prevent him from travelling from Britain to India to undertake political work there, as well as to keep track of his journeys to continental Europe. In Münzenberg’s case, the goal was to bar him from entering the British metropole and fomenting anti-colonial sentiment in the very centre of the British Empire. In addition to reconstructing the authorities’ intentions in instituting these bans, this chapter shows that the travel bans did not go unchallenged. It demonstrates the considerable ability of both Saklatvala and Münzenberg to activate support for their cause from prominent allies among both the moderate and the radical Left in the British press and Parliament. Moreover, bringing together the spheres of foreign and domestic politics, the chapter shows that these passport restrictions were discussed not only in the context of imperial strategy, but also in debates in Britain about whether conservative pro-imperial and anticommunist strategies were undercutting cherished liberal ideals, including the freedom of movement and speech, and whether the Labour movement, in power under Prime Minister MacDonald during much of the period under discussion, was being taken over by the institutions and traditions of conservative imperialism. Earlier historical developments were of central importance in shaping the British passport system as it existed at the time of the League’s founding. The first of these was the expansion of passport controls during the First World War in Britain, India, and many other countries around the world. The years between the 1860s and the First World War had in fact been characterized by an unprecedented level of freedom of movement in Europe, spurred, in part, by the dominance of free trade ideology. By the 1870s, people of all nationalities had unrestricted access to Britain,

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which mirrored developments in most other European nations in the same period.4 After this had been undermined to some extent by the 1905 Aliens Act, directed at reducing the influx of Eastern European Jewish immigrants,5 the Aliens Restriction Act of 1914 allowed the government to impose even greater restrictions on the entry of foreigners,6 and an Order in Council in 1915 added a requirement that all foreigners entering the United Kingdom needed a valid passport issued by their home country.7 Similarly, the war led to the extension of passport regulations in India; in 1917 the Government of India made passports compulsory, with some exceptions, for entering and leaving India by sea.8 This newly extensive passport system was preserved beyond the end of the hostilities. In Britain the Aliens Order of 1920 extended the wartime regulations into peacetime and imposed the need for a passport or similar identification document on anyone entering or leaving the UK,9 which again mirrored developments in continental Europe.10 Similarly, in part out of fear of Bolshevik agents slipping into the country, the Indian Passport Act of 1920 ensured that passports remained mandatory for entering India.11 As these regulations had been portrayed as temporary emergency measures during the war, their continued existence remained highly controversial in Britain throughout the interwar years, becoming one of the symbolic issues pitting the Left and the Liberals against the Conservatives. Conservatives were driven by their apprehension of international communism to defend these regulations, while liberals and moderate left-wingers saw these measures as dangerous in undermining people’s personal liberties. The extension of the passport system was tied in many ways to the rising hegemony of the nation state model at the end of the First World War. In India, however, this process was complicated by the country’s ambiguous status as a colonial territory, which, from the point of view of Britain, was neither part of the same country nor foreign territory. This was exacerbated by the fact that India did not have its own immigration legislation: decisions about whether a passport was endorsed for India had to be made by the authorities in Britain, and not those in India. While at various points the Government of India considered the introduction of such immigration legislation, it was afraid of the outcry this would cause among the Indian public and legislature. Given that there was hardly any in-migration to India, such a law would immediately be recognized as aimed at keeping out political undesirables.12 This put the Government of India, to some extent, at the mercy of politicians in Britain. As Peel, the

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Conservative Secretary of State for India, put it in 1929, there was a “very constant grumble amongst the [British] public against the maintenance of passport restrictions in peace-time,” meaning that a future left-wing government “might find itself driven to relax these restrictions very considerably and would not be inclined to pay much attention to India’s claim that no relaxation is possible as the passport system is her only means of keeping undesirables out.”13 Saklatvala’s Attempted Trip to India in 1927 The government’s 1927 decision no longer to let Saklatvala into India was a reversal of its earlier policies. Although he was born in Bombay in 1874, the British authorities were aware of his presence in Britain as early as 1908, and shadowed him closely over the next decades, chronicling his activities as a radical Indian nationalist, socialist, and trade union activist, which culminated in his joining the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1921. In 1922, he was elected as a member of Parliament for North Battersea on a Labour ticket and, after a defeat in 1923, was re-elected in 1924 as a Communist MP, a position he would retain until 1929.14 In spite of these radical activities, however, before 1927 he had been repeatedly allowed to go back to India. Some officials, such as John Wallinger of the Indian Political Intelligence Service (IPI), had in fact argued that, given the more draconian laws against sedition in India, it was in their interest to let him go there. This led Wallinger to support his application for a passport to go to Bombay in 1917, because “they are more able to deal with him there than we are here.”15 Another reason for British leniency was the fact that during this period, in spite of his radical left-wing politics, Saklatvala was able to make use of his family connections to the Bombay Tata family, one of the wealthiest in India, and well connected to the British government. His uncle, J.N. Tata, had founded the famous Tata cotton, iron, and steel firm, which had sent Saklatvala to Manchester as a representative in 1905. In this context, we can observe an inherent tension between the British authorities’ commitment to both preserving imperial rule through mobility restrictions and upholding a global capitalist order that necessitated the movement of people across borders for business reasons. In late 1916, Saklatvala’s invoking of his role as the personal secretary of Sir Ratan Tata led the authorities reluctantly to allow him to go to France in order to meet Tata there, making an exception to the otherwise strict restrictions on travel for political subversives to that country under

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wartime conditions.16 When applying for a passport in 1917, he again cited business reasons, helping him to get the approval of the authorities.17 His trip to India in 1926 turned out to be his last. His openly communist activities in Britain had already undermined the Tata firm’s support of him, having led to his resignation in 1925 (though he continued to receive an annual pension from them).18 By July of 1926, his name could be found on a Passport Office list of “British subjects who should not be given facilities for travelling to any part of the British Empire (except the United Kingdom) without reference to the Government of the State concerned or to this Office.”19 While Saklatvala was eventually allowed to land in India in January of 1927, after having sent a letter to Prime Minister Baldwin in which he defended his right as a Member of Parliament to travel freely,20 the Egyptian Legation in London denied him a visa to land in Egypt on the way,21 and the lengthy consultation between the authorities in London and the Government of India considerably delayed the visa. One after-effect of this delay (which may well have been intended by the Government) was that, as the Bombay Chronicle reported, “It rendered impossible any pre-arrangement of meetings … So Mr Saklatvala goes to India unheralded.”22 The denial of his endorsement the next time he tried to go to India later in 1927 seems to have been due to a number of factors. During his 1926–1927 journey he had given many political speeches which the Government of India saw as “inflammatory” and a “breech of tranquility.” He was also accused of having written the preface to a seditious pamphlet published in India.23 The large crowds he attracted during that trip had shown his power to influence the local population, which made the British apprehensive.24 Most importantly, his deep involvement in the LAI, founded while he was in India, had further enhanced Saklatvala’s status as an activist of global importance. Initially, the India Office had difficulty persuading the Foreign Office to carry out the ban in mid1927, which conflicted with the accepted principle that no country could refuse to take back one of its own inhabitants; but in the end the Foreign Office gave in, based on the tenuous argument that Saklatvala had had no connection with India for nearly twenty years and that he saw himself as a “fully domiciled British subject.”25 Meanwhile, if this episode showed the willingness of the authorities to use the existing passport rules to undercut the global network of the LAI, the resulting debates also demonstrated the resistance by leftwing and liberal parts of the British public to what they saw as an undermining of valued liberal traditions by a growing imperial security state. The fact

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that Saklatvala had been elected to Parliament was in itself a sign of the tensions of Empire. While the British authorities tried to combat the double challenge of global communism and anti-imperialism through extended police surveillance, censorship of letters, and the use of travel regulations, Britain’s constitution allowed an activist who combined communism and radical anticolonialism to become part of a small and powerful group in charge of decision making in the Empire. This status at the very centre of British power gave Saklatvala influence in several ways. First, he had excellent access to the British press, which immediately printed his protest against the ban. The Morning Post, for instance, included a statement of his that pointed to the bizarreness of denying “an Indian born subject of Indian parents,” who was moreover a Member of Parliament and thus a member of the British ruling elite by will of the British people, access to his own home country.26 Second, his status as an MP allowed him to participate in the forum of parliamentary debates which were reported on by newspapers nation-wide, even beyond those sharing his political views; the conservative The Times, for instance, reported on 7 December 1927 about a speech he had given in Parliament challenging the passport ruling.27 Moreover, in Parliament he was able to connect his case to much broader issues beyond, as he put it, the “personal aspect of the matter,” pointing to wider implications for the undermining of British democracy. These resonated not only with his allies among the communists, but also with more moderate left-wing people, mirroring the simultaneous strategy of the LAI in those years, when it included both communists and members of the moderate Left. He argued that the ban was indicative of an undermining of the rule of law by illiberal forces, as the British authorities were using the passport system to circumvent the courts of law, where an appeal would have been possible. He also warned his peers of all factions about a potential loss of power for Parliament as a whole, arguing that “members of parliament were obliged in order to carry out their duty to travel in various parts of the British Empire to investigate into certain matters,” and “they ought not to be debarred [from doing so] simply at the discretion of a minister, especially in a country where there was a party system.”28 Finally, his status as a communist with connections abroad allowed him to further castigate the British authorities by lending ammunition to the Soviet Union’s propaganda claiming that British democracy was a sham. When he stayed in the Soviet Union for some days in the autumn of 1927 for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, he highlighted the

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absurdity of his situation as someone who, as an MP, sat “in Westminster … making laws for India,” while at the same time, as a colonized person, he was being treated as “the despised slave of that Parliament” and, under the orders of an “autocratic and idiotic minister like Chamberlain,” was “told not to go back to my own country.” As he commented sarcastically, “That is parliamentary democracy.”29 Internal Debates about Passport Rules Among British Administrators It is useful, at this point, to contextualize Saklatvala’s story by examining the broader internal debates among British officials about the use of the passport system against the LAI. Saklatvala’s case was unusual in so far as it concerned an Indian trying to return to his home country; but at the same time, it was one of the more straightforward ones in terms of denying an activist with outspoken communist views access to India. A consensus emerged quickly among British officials that communist LAI members should automatically be denied endorsements to India. By February of 1929, the Secretary of State for India noted that members of the Communist Party and the National Minority Movement, a communist-inspired trade union organization, were refused Empire-wide endorsements “as a matter of course.”30 However, communist LAI members still slipped into India at times, including John Wilson Johnstone, an American communist whose true identity the British authorities realized only after he had already arrived in India, leading to his arrest right after he had given a speech to the 1928 All India Trade-Union Congress in Jharia, “advocating affiliation to the League.”31 Beginning in December of 1927, officials of the India Office made repeated attempts to bar access to India even to some non-communist LAI members. This project was initiated after a number of such noncommunist activists succeeded in getting approval to travel to India in late 1927 for meetings of the Indian National Congress and the AllIndia Trade Union Congress, at the same time as Saklatvala and other communists were already being denied entry. The British left-wing activist Fenner Brockway, a member of the LAI’s Executive Committee, the British Labour MP Thomas Mardy Jones, also affiliated with the LAI,32 and most prominently Jawaharlal Nehru, who had been in Europe working for the League in its early months, all made it to India successfully.33 Certain representatives of the India Office, including Arthur Hirtzel, advocated for the most wide-ranging extension of the existing system, namely that all members of the League should be barred from entering India.34 However, given the resistance that denying even a communist

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like Saklatvala entry to India had already caused, other officials were more cautious. This led to debates in which various officials situated themselves between prioritizing civil liberties on the one hand and imperial security on the other. A member of the Indian Political Intelligence Service pointed out issues with excluding all League members. Beyond the more practical concern that membership of the League was “rather nebulous,” as members generally did not pay subscriptions and people were “roped in” on occasion who might not regularly take part in the League’s activities,35 the main issue was that such a wide-ranging ban would lead to a high level of opposition among the British public—especially when it came to the various leading British League members who were not communists but rather Socialist MPs, including the League’s International President James Maxton. As these officials argued, extending the existing “very secret” “Politically-undesirable Suspect-list” for British communists to those of “varying shades of ‘pink’” would immediately cause alarm among the many MPs who might themselves be affected. Given the tenuous status that the extension of the passport system had in post-war Britain, this might provoke “an agitation which would result in the abolition of the passport system” as a whole,36 which would severely undermine the authorities’ power to control movements to India. Thus, IPI suggested the compromise of focusing on a shorter list of “those persons (other than Indians) associated with the work of the League who have been more or less consistently active in its interests,” with the names of six British people and seventeen foreigners on it. However, among the six British people, the Indian authorities thought that only those who either were communists or were not British MPs could be prevented from coming to India without too much resistance. And even in their case IPI suggested avoiding unnecessary conflict by moving against them only if they showed some concrete sign of intending to visit India. From the point of view of the Government, when it came to some of the non-British citizens on the list, which included Willi Münzenberg and the prominent French writer Henri Barbusse, things were easier, as they were already on the Passport Control “Blacklist” when it came to visits to Britain; the suggestion was to ask the Home Office not to grant them visas for India without prior reference to the Indian authorities.37 Over the course of the next year, this list of especially committed League members was kept up to date, with new names being added from time to time.38 Ultimately, the government followed the logic of excluding from India those on the list who were communists, not British citizens,

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or not British MPs. For instance, Madame Sun Yat-sen, who was not a communist but on the list of leading LAI members, was denied entry to India for both the Madras Congress in 1927 and the INC Congress in Calcutta in 1928.39 British non-MP LAI member Reginald Bridgeman’s passport had been marked “not valid for India” by February of 1929.40 Another attempt by Peel to institute a blanket ban against any League members entering India in early 1929 ultimately failed.41 Foreign Secretary Chamberlain did confirm in a letter to Peel that he was “prepared to instruct the Chief Passport Officer not to endorse as valid for India the passports of persons whom you may signalize as dangerous.” However, there was one important caveat that shows how the threat of being attacked publicly for illiberal measures was always on politicians’ minds: Chamberlain made sure that Peel understood that it would be him [Peel] who would “if necessary defend the action taken in Parliament.”42 The Second Denial of Saklatvala’s Passport Endorsement for India in 1929 In late 1929, Saklatvala again applied to visit India in order to attend a conference of the Indian National Congress. He was once more denied the necessary endorsement on his passport, based on a decision of the Secretary of State for India.43 This fitted the blanket ban on communist League members entering India, yet the authorities were still well aware of the unusual nature of a ban on someone returning to his own home country. One official explained the British justification, which was in line with the arguments that the Government had used in 1927: “Although it is not ordinarily possible to prevent a British Indian going to India by refusing a Passport, Saklatvala has put himself outside this proviso by claiming, on a previous occasion and for another reason, that his domicile was in this country [i.e. in Britain].”44 Once more, this decision led to broad discussions about its implications for British democracy, with a key difference being that after the May 1929 election a Labour government had come to power. Many observers had wondered whether this would lead to a relaxation of imperial control, and maybe even to the abolition of the entire passport system. The renewed denial of Saklatvala’s entry to India, in contrast to these expectations, became symbolic of the unwillingness of the Labour administration to introduce more liberal rules. The press was quick to stress that the second decision to deny Saklatvala a passport endorsement had been made “by the Socialist Government” which “apparently, sees no reason to alter” the decision of its Conservative predecessors.45 As others in this volume note, communists

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had turned to aggressive attacks against the “social fascist” moderate Left during the “Third Period” of the Comintern. As a result, this decision quickly became emblematic of what the radical Left interpreted as Labour politicians spinelessly adapting to the imperialist structural logic of the government positions they had now assumed. Similar arguments would be used by Saklatvala and other LAI members in the campaign against the Meerut Conspiracy Trial of 1929–1933.46 Addressing the Labour Foreign Secretary, Arthur Henderson, Saklatvala argued that the actions taken against him constituted nothing less than “a betrayal of all that the Labour Party has professed in the past.”47 Even though Saklatvala was no longer an MP at that point, his case still created waves in parliamentary debates. Even some left-wing Labour politicians took the step of questioning their own government. In December of 1929, a Labour MP confronted William Wedgewood Benn, the Labour Secretary of State for India between 1929 and 1931, about Saklatvala’s case, asking whether he did not “think it is extremely harsh to prevent this ex-member of Parliament going back to his native land,” and brought up the charge of government officials giving up earlier positions, claiming that Benn was “rebuked by his own [earlier] speeches on the subject.” Showing his personal unease with the choice he faced, Benn replied that he did “not like doing it at all,” but that he had to “consider the very delicate situation in India.”48 The Government’s decision-making was shaped in part by the history of the earlier, first Labour Government that had been in power in 1924 under the same Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald. That government had fallen after conservative attacks on its supposed leniency towards international communism—exemplified by its decision not to prosecute a British communist who had asked the military to refrain from attacking strikers—and after the publication of a letter (since shown to be a forgery) by Comintern leader Zinoviev that seemingly proved successful Soviet interference in the radicalization of the British working class and in British politics. Given this pre-history, members of the new Labour Government felt special pressure to continue the regulations of the intervening Conservative government directed against those with connections to the Comintern. They continued to enforce the ban against Saklatvala’s entry to India in 1930,49 and the following government under the same Prime Minister denied an endorsement of his passport for the British Empire in 1933.50

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Saklatvala’s Detention in Belgium in 1929 Saklatvala’s ban on entry to India would last until his death in 1936. During the same period, however, he continued to be able to travel to other countries beyond the British Empire. As noted above, he went to the Soviet Union in 1927. While the Indian travel ban was in place, he travelled frequently to meet with the LAI’s international secretaries and the other members of the LAI’s Executive Committee, including several trips to LAI meetings in Berlin in 193051 and 1931.52 The British did still try to assert informal, secret influence on other governments when it came to either giving or denying political subversives from the British Empire access to their countries. There was a long record of British officials secretly intervening with continental European ones in order to convince them to make life difficult for anti-colonialists abroad.53 In Saklatvala’s case, secret documents show how in 1925 the British authorities had successfully put pressure on the US not to admit Saklatvala, and how they asserted similar pressure in 1933.54 An episode in 1929, however, sheds light on the strategies that Saklatvala and his LAI allies were able to use in undercutting such potential government cooperation against them, and in even getting the British authorities to intervene in favour of their freedom of movement in continental Europe. It shows, once more, the power of access to the British public sphere, and of personal connections to the British elite. On 14 January 1929 Saklatvala planned to travel through Belgium to an LAI conference in Cologne, alongside other leading LAI members such as James Maxton and Reginald Bridgeman. But as soon as they arrived in the Belgian city of Ostend they were arrested by the Belgian authorities, who planned to send them back to England.55 The first strategy that the members of the delegation used in reaction was to activate the power of the press, using the Reuters news agency as a multiplicator that immediately sent their protest to newspapers all over the United Kingdom.56 The delegation accused the British Government of secret involvement in the difficulties they faced. Saklatvala argued in a phone call to the press that the British Foreign Office must have exerted pressure on the Belgian Foreign Office: “Any schoolboy could see that. They [the British] don’t do things themselves; they allow others to do things for them.”57 The British trade unionist and LAI delegation member A.J. Cook similarly stated his disgust and alarm about the Belgians holding up “British citizens who have been granted a passport” and who, after all, desired only “to travel through the Belgian country to another country.” Invoking the First World War, when Britain had intervened

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in Belgium’s favour after the German invasion, he stressed his disbelief “that a small country like Belgium, that owed so much to Great Britain in regard to the last war should dare to insult British citizens without the British Government knowing about it and acquiescing with it.”58 It is unclear from the existing record whether there was anything behind these allegations. It seems that at least part of the reason for the Belgian authorities’ actions had been that the LAI had initially planned to hold its meetings in Brussels, similar to the earlier Brussels Congress. However, the Belgian Government had made use of its right to deny certain foreigners entry into its territory and had refused visas to the delegates from the Soviet Union. It was in reaction to this course of action that the location had been changed to Cologne.59 It seems possible that the Belgian authorities were unaware of the change in venue, thinking that the LAI was still going to try to hold the meeting in Brussels without the Belgian authorities’ assent.60 Whether true or not, the public accusation of secret government cooperation against the free travel of British citizens held significant power in the British public sphere. It allowed the members of the delegation to appeal to British national pride—a line of argument likely to win the support not only of left-wing, but also of conservative Britons. Saklatvala’s daughter argued that “many of the [British] papers would no doubt have been quite delighted to see left-wing politicians get what might be considered to be their comeuppance, but on the other hand, an insult from a foreign power to representatives of the British parliament was an insult to the nation, so feelings were confused on the issue.”61 This sentiment was echoed by the LAI’s international secretary, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, in a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru: “even the British Conservative Press was enraged!”62 The North Mail & Newcastle Chronicle pointed out that more conservative and upper-class Britons should be afraid of the precedent that might be set by a foreign government detaining British subjects: “[h]ow do we know that Belgium may not some day regard the [conservative British] Primrose League as a dangerous society and prevent one of its most respected members from taking the best route to his favourite spa?” In addition, the article also pointed out that Mr Maxton, in spite of his radical views, adhered to middle- and upper-class norms of personal behaviour: “[h]e is a likeable man, a teetotaler, and exceedingly well behaved, and, despite his long hair and a theatrical manner, a very sincere man.”63 The above quotation alludes to another method that the detained LAI delegates could use, namely their surprisingly high class standing (which Saklatvala had employed earlier through his relationship with the wealthy

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Tata firm), which provided them not only with considerable economic but also with much political and social capital. Like Saklatvala, Reginald Bridgeman had already been denied access to India. On the European continent, however, he could make use of his status as a former highranking diplomat. The personal connections he had retained made it easy for him to get access to the British Embassy in Brussels, which was able to put pressure on the Belgians.64 LAI members contacted the British Ambassador in Brussels, “who promised to take the matter up immediately with the Belgian Government,” and James Maxton contacted Prime Minister Baldwin, “requesting the intervention of the British Foreign Office.”65 This was an ironic strategy, given that these LAI members used their status as British subjects who had the right to protection by their government, in spite of the fact that all three of them spent their lives criticizing the imperialistic actions of that same government and often called into question its legitimacy. The fact that Bridgeman was the cousin of the First Lord of the Admiralty, as well as of Viscount Lascelles, the son-in-law of King George V, further aided these interventions. As Saklatvala’s daughter put it, he was “not only an Englishman, you see, but a well-connected English gentleman.”66 The words in which the Belgian official eventually told Saklatvala that the delegation was allowed to proceed to Germany testify to the importance of upper-class networks: “[h]e said that they had just received a telegram from Brussels that we were, after all, gentlemen and that we could do what we liked.”67 Willi Münzenberg’s Attempted Voyage to Britain in 1930 Saklatvala’s example shows the ways in which the British tried to use passport regulations to restrict the movements of an LAI activist within the British Empire, while also demonstrating the continued ability of LAI members to reach the European continent from Britain. The example of Willi Münzenberg, in turn, demonstrates how the British reacted to a third kind of attempted border-crossing by a high-ranking LAI activist, namely from a continental European country into the British metropole. If the authorities saw Saklatvala through the double lens of communism and anti-imperialism, the same was true for Willi Münzenberg. He was one of the main initiators behind the founding of the LAI in addition to being, from 1928, one of its two international secretaries at the League’s headquarters in Berlin.68 The British also restricted his access to India after his involvement in the founding of the LAI, with a 1928 circular that he “should not be granted a visa for India without prior reference.”

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This decision could be justified more easily in this case, as he was neither of Indian origin nor a British subject.69 Even before Münzenberg had decided to focus on fighting imperial rule, his prominent position in the communist movement had resulted in a 1922 circular according to which “he should not be granted a visa for or be permitted to land in the United Kingdom.”70 In 1930, Münzenberg attempted to enter Great Britain in spite of this circular. Like Saklatvala, he used his own contacts among British MPs. In January 1930, Labour MP William John Brown, who had recently joined the British Section of the LAI,71 sent a letter to Home Secretary J.R. Clynes, stating that Münzenberg wished to come to England for a few weeks in March or April, and was “anxious to know whether there would be any difficulties regarding his passport.” And like Saklatvala had done in the past, Münzenberg promised to “abstain from any kind of political propaganda” while on his journey, wishing only to go to Britain “for business purposes” related to his publishing firm in Germany.72 The internal communications and debates show that this kind of argument was still taken seriously among sections of the British administration. The case was discussed at the highest levels of government. Through the British authorities’ extensive surveillance network, the Home Office under Clynes was well aware of Münzenberg’s position “at the centre of the spider’s web of Communist activity in Germany,” and of his determined and continued efforts to undermine British imperial rule. Among the League’s many efforts to “foment unrest and sedition in Colonial countries” it stressed its focus on encouraging and supporting the creation of revolutionary trade unions in India.73 Clynes described his dilemma to the Foreign Secretary: given these activities, “it would save risk of embarrassment to the Government if this rather notorious character were not allowed to come to this country.” At the same time, Clynes acknowledged that, given the fact that Münzenberg pleaded business interests and his promise to abstain from political activities in Britain, “it may be difficult … to advance substantial arguments against allowing him to pay a temporary visit.”74 The debate revolved around the boundary between political and nonpolitical activities. This distinction was especially difficult to draw in Münzenberg’s case. He did indeed earn large amounts of money through his business empire, but it was heavily subsidized by the Comintern.75 The newspapers he printed were of an inherently political nature, attacking both imperialism and capitalism, and were connected with communist newspapers in Britain. One official warned that “it seems fairly certain

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that Münzenberg’s proposed visit, as the ‘proprietor of more than one newspaper,’” would be connected with the business of the communist Daily Worker. Another official’s statements brought up the complex question of what exactly counted as political activity. What about potential conversations behind closed doors? And what about networking? As the official put it, “even if he [Münzenberg] abstained from open propaganda he would no doubt be busy in less obvious ways.”76 Clearly, in the lives of transnational activists of this period the borders between personal friendships and acquaintances and political contacts were fluid. In spite of these reservations, however, the arguments of another official that, given Münzenberg’s promises, it was difficult to not to allow him a temporary visit77 initially prevailed. The Home Office allowed Münzenberg to come to Britain for one month.78 Up to that point it looked like liberal principles, and the logic of free movement in the interest of business, had won out. Meanwhile, the autocratic, colonial side of the British state—represented by the political police and the colonial ministry—launched a counter-attack, which eventually tipped the scales in the opposite direction. First, the London Special Branch used information obtained through intercepted letters by and to Münzenberg to cast doubt on the honesty of Münzenberg’s promises—thus using secret information to undercut Münzenberg’s public statements to the authorities. These letters showed Münzenberg’s intention to meet a British leader of the Workers International Relief (WIR) while in Britain, and a proposal by Bridgeman to have Münzenberg “meet as many of our friends as possible while you are here,” which the Special Branch interpreted as Münzenberg wishing to meet with members of the British section of the LAI.79 Most decisive, however, was the intervention of Sidney Webb, the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Writing to Clynes, he stressed that he viewed “the prospect of this visit with some alarm and should be very much relieved if it could be prevented.” Münzenberg’s LAI work was the prime concern. Webb pointed to his role as joint secretary of an organization “which devoted almost all its energies to the overthrow of the British Empire,”80 and, more specifically, was creating a network linking activism between Europe, the British colonies, and the metropole. First, he cited the LAI’s involvement in the 1929 riots in Palestine, then a British Mandate territory. He claimed to have direct evidence that Hamdi Husseini, “the principal Communist emissary in Palestine,” owed this status entirely to a recent visit to Europe, after which he had returned to the Near East in March 1929 “under the auspices of the League.” Now,

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Münzenberg’s proposed visit to England might easily lead to another instance of world-wide anticolonial activities being coordinated in Europe: “[w]e are anticipating that a Palestine Arab delegation may visit England shortly, and I am afraid that Münzenburg’s [sic] visit may be timed to coincide with theirs, so that his area of contacts with elements in Palestine which are, at any rate potentially, disaffected may be considerably enlarged.”81 The second area of concern for Webb was the effect that the personal charisma of an experienced agitator such as Münzenberg might have on colonial students in England. Pointing to the “large number of African, Ceylonese, Palestinian and other students in London” he claimed to have “direct evidence that the League has devoted a lot of time and trouble to attempting to get into personal touch” with them, as “these boys are at an impressionable age and are always susceptible to flattery.” Using the language of colonial paternalism, Webb stated that “it is fatally easy for a trained agitator like Munzenberg [sic] to induce them to think that they have a mission to emancipate their fellow countrymen, and that the way to do it is to carry out the instructions of the League, and it is just from this kind of personal influence that I am anxious to protect them, more particularly since they are in a strange country and not directly under their parents’ control.”82 This intervention of the Colonial Minister eventually convinced Clynes to change his position. On 26 March he wrote to Brown that he had received evidence that, in contrast to Münzenberg’s promises, “his proposed visit would be used for quite other purposes which would be, in the Government’s view, contrary to the public interest.” Under these circumstances, he had “no option but to cancel the permission for Mr. Münzenberg’s visit to this country.”83 Münzenberg’s and Barbusse’s Visa Denials in 1932 A final episode in 1932 involved Münzenberg trying to get to Britain once more. It also involved the prominent French writer, Henri Barbusse, who had been a supporter of the LAI as early as the Brussels Congress and in 1928 was listed as one of the members of the Executive Committee of the French section of the League.84 On 14 March 1932 the Daily Worker announced two London “monster mass meetings,” organized by the WIR, at which Münzenberg, Barbusse, Saklatvala, Bridgeman, and other prominent LAI members in Britain would speak. The meeting would combine an anti-war message with an anti-imperialist one, in the context of the communist-led “Hands off China” campaign that was directed

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against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.85 This time the Home Office was quick to affirm the 1922 circular against Münzenberg, as well as a similar circular from 1924 concerning Barbusse, and alerted the border officers to “ensure that neither of them gets in.”86 This case led to renewed debates in the British Parliament which, again, showed how the persecution of LAI members became connected to domestic controversies within Britain about the future of liberalism and democracy in the metropole. The LAI and the WIR still had several allies among British MPs. Once more, the entry restrictions on Barbusse and Münzenberg evoked protests from beyond the radical Left. At this point, the lines of conflict in Parliament had shifted yet again: Ramsay MacDonald was still Prime Minister, but after the fall of the second Labour Government he had founded a “National Government” opposed by most Labour MPs. One line of attack against the Government’s decision, brought forward by the Independent Labour Party MP, George Buchanan, revolved around the contradiction between the fact that communism was legal in Britain and the Government’s decision not to allow foreign suspected communists into the country. Even if one thought that Münzenberg and Barbusse stood “for the overthrow of the established order by unconstitutional means” the precedent set by the British authorities towards the German Nazis should still compel them to allow them to speak. After all, Hitler certainly stood for the overthrow of the democratic German regime, yet, nevertheless, “his lieutenant and first in command was over here a few months ago running about the whole country,” and Spanish fascists were equally allowed to enter Britain.87 The prominent Labour MP, George Lansbury, himself an LAI member in the League’s early days, focused on Barbusse’s literary reputation and on the issue of free speech in Britain. “Surely we have not reached the point in this country when we are afraid of allowing people to make speeches upon subjects of which we happen to disapprove.”88 Another line of argument, brought forward by Labour MP George Wilfrid Holford Knight, focused on Münzenberg’s status as a German member of parliament, implying that this was a position that had to be honoured out of respect for democracy as such, independently of Münzenberg’s individual political views.89 The Liberal MP Herbert Samuel, Home Secretary under Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government, attempted to affirm his continued support simultaneously for British liberal traditions and for the suppression of international communist agitators. A central part of his rhetorical strategy consisted of creating a stark distinction between the domestic

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sphere and the foreign/global sphere. On the one hand, he affirmed that in Britain it was “perfectly legitimate for those who hold Communist views” to “express their opinions, to publish their newspapers and leaflets, to stand for Parliament and to advocate their policy by such means as are generally open, in this land of free speech to all citizens, provided that they do not advocate or assist in carrying out measures of disorder and tumult or any other definite offence against the law.” However, the term “citizen” was central here: his argument, in essence, was that British subjects were allowed to advocate communism in Britain, but not necessarily foreigners. He then chose to interpret the activities of Münzenberg and Barbusse, and the organizations they represented, as representatives of “a definite political [communist] force at work in very many countries organised and subsidized from a centre.” Against this force “the nations must protect themselves, for this movement is not native and spontaneous in each country but it is promoted from elsewhere.” Finally, in a line of argument that echoed the scandal leading to the first Labour Government’s fall from power, Samuel argued that these international organizations had now turned to the strategy of seducing “from their allegiance, if they could manage to do so, the armed Forces of the Crown.” Implying that Münzenberg and Barbusse aimed to engage in precisely such work, he stressed that this was “not a legitimate form of political propaganda.”90 Maxton, in his final reply, argued that the Home Secretary’s attitude was a sign of exaggerated nervousness and lack of trust in the stability of the British liberal, democratic system. “The people are supposed to be so feeble-minded, so easily influenced, so easily swayed, that if two distinguished foreigners come here and talk about Communist theories, of which we have heard before, they will be contaminated. … It is assumed that these men upset the whole balance of our body politic.” Taking up earlier arguments about leftwing and liberal government members being drawn into defending conservative positions through the logic of their office, Maxton argued that “that may be good Home Secretaryship, but it is not good Liberalism, and it is far from being good democracy.” Ultimately Maxton invoked, a final time, the code of gentlemanly behaviour among political elites: referring once more to the British authorities’ practice of letting in continental European fascists but denying international communists entry, he concluded, “That is not fair play. It is not democracy, and it is not decent or gentlemanly.”91

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Conclusion This chapter shows both the forces pushing towards, and those working against, the British Government’s use of passport regulations to curtail the work of LAI activists. When it came to communist members of the League, the British government was willing to go as far as banning them from India even if, like Saklatvala, they had been born there. Similarly, Willi Münzenberg’s communist ties and the danger of his engaging in antiimperialist intrigues with people from the colonies in Britain were sufficient reason for the British Government to ban him from the metropole. The travel restrictions that the British imposed point to the ambiguous position that empires occupied when it came to the newly created passport regime during the interwar years. As John Torpey has shown, among individual nation states in that period there was a clear contrast between the Western democratic countries and authoritarian regimes. While all countries moved towards policing their outer boundaries through passport restrictions, restrictions on citizens leaving a country and on travel within a country became the sole province of authoritarian states such as Stalinist Russia.92 This distinction, however, becomes more ambiguous if we choose to regard the British Empire as one political unit. From that point of view, Saklatvala’s experiences clearly show the existence of not just external, but also internal restrictions on movement. When it came to the freedom to travel, the British authorities’ efforts to fight global communism had the ironic effect of making their empire more, rather than less, similar to Soviet Russia. Meanwhile, left-wing activists had various tools at their disposal in challenging the decisions of the British Government to restrict their ability to travel. Many of these tools were based on their excellent personal networks and their surprising amount of social and economic capital. In spite of their communist views, both Saklatvala and Münzenberg could make use of their connections with large companies, which provided them with income and to some extent with cover when travelling abroad. LAI members such as Bridgeman could activate professional and family ties that reached the highest levels of British society. In both Saklatvala’s and Münzenberg’s cases, moreover, their connections to the press allowed them to broadcast their protests across the British metropole, and their access to the British Parliament, either in person or through allies among MPs, enabled them to make their arguments heard both by the British public and by the British Government. This was reinforced by broadening the circle of those who felt threatened by what the travel restrictions on LAI members might mean for their own future freedom of movement.

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Saklatvala and Münzenberg argued that the Government’s actions against them were an attack not just on communist outsiders, but on the very heart of Britain’s liberal, democratic order. One way in which Saklatvala and his allies, when detained by the Belgian authorities, were able to defend his right to travel to continental Europe was by appealing to the interest of all British citizens in being able to access European countries, thus pulling even the conservative press into their community of interest. In the end, conservative fears of a global communist conspiracy proved strong enough to prevent the British from rescinding the travel bans against Saklatvala and Münzenberg. Yet one might argue that even though their protest campaigns were not successful in an immediate sense, they nevertheless had an important effect. In making it clear to the British authorities that a further limiting of the freedom of movement would not be possible without pushing liberal and moderately left-wing Britons to the point at which they might break down the passport system entirely, the efforts of these activists may well have prevented an even more radical crack-down by the British authorities on the global form of anti-imperialism that the LAI represented. Notes 1 2

3

4

The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), KV 2 614: “Shapurji Saklatvala, M.P.,” 26 August 1927. Sehri Saklatvala, The Fifth Commandment: A Biography of Shapurji Saklatvala and Memoir by his Daughter (First Digital Edition, July 2012), 380, https:// archive.org/details/TheFifthCommandment (accessed May 30, 2019). On the broader history of the LAI, in addition to the chapters in this volume, see Michele Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Fredrik Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, The League against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925–1933 (Lewiston: Queenston Press, 2013); Daniel Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal Imperialism and the Surveillance of Anticolonialists in Europe, 1905–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 139–68; Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York and London: The New Press, 2007), 16–30; Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 199–215. Martin Lloyd, The Passport: The History of Man’s Most Travelled Document (Stroud: Sutton, 2003), 115–18; John C. Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 111f.

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5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Torpey, The Invention of the Passport, 138. Ibid. Edward Higgs, Identifying the English: A History of Personal Identification 1500 to the Present (London and New York: Continuum, 2011), 157. Radhika Singha, “The Great War and a ‘Proper’ Passport for the Colony: Border-Crossing in British India, c. 1882–1922,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 50:3 (2013), 289–315: 292, 298. Torpey, The Invention of the Passport, 143. Ibid., 138f., 143. Singha, “The Great War,” 308–11. British Library (BL), India Office Records (IOR, L/P&J/12/280: Private Secretary (through Under-Secretary of State), 28 March 1929. BL, IOR, L/P&J/12/280: Draft Paragraph of private letter to Viceroy, 11 April 1929. TNA, KV 2 611: Re. Shapurji Saklatvala, 20 February 1918; Shapurji Dorabji Saklatvala, 11 October 1918; Shapurji Dorabji Saklatvala (without date); Rozina Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain 1700–1947 (London: Pluto Press, 1986), 144–50; Panchanan Saha, Shapurji Saklatvala: A Short Biography (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1970), 6–11. TNA, KV 2 611: Letter to J.A. Wallinger, 26 October 1917; Letter by Wallinger, 29 October 1917. TNA, KV 2 611: Letter to J.A. Wallinger, 19 January 1917; Letter to A. Marr, 6 November 1916; Letter to A. Marr, 1 November 1916; Minute paper on the question of the issue of a passport to Shapurji Saklatvala, 1 November 1916. TNA, KV 2 611: Letter to J.A. Wallinger, 26 October 1917; Letter by Wallinger, 29 October 1917. Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes, 152; Marc Wadsworth, Comrade Sak: Shapurji Saklatvala MP, A Political Biography (Leeds: Peepal Tree, 1998), 28. TNA, KV 2 614: Extract relating to Saklatvala, Shapurji, 6 July 1926. Saha, Shapurji Saklatvala, 22f. TNA, KV 2 614: Note (361B) (undated); “Saklatvala Ban: Passport to India Cancelled by Foreign Office,” The Morning Post, 5 September 1927. Quoted in Saklatvala, The Fifth Commandment, 360. “A Passport to India: Mr. Saklatvala’s Explanations,” The Times, 7 December 1927. Saklatvala, The Fifth Commandment, 378f. Wadsworth, Comrade Sak, 68. “Saklatvala Ban: Passport to India Cancelled by Foreign Office,” The Morning Post, 5 September 1927.

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27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35

36 37

38 39 40 41

42 43

44 45 46

“A Passport to India: Mr. Saklatvala’s Explanations,” The Times, December 7, 1927. Ibid. Quoted in Saklatvala, The Fifth Commandment, 380. BL, IOR, L/P&J/12/280: Peel to Chamberlain, 27 February 1929. TNA, HO 144 10693: The League against Imperialism, stamp: 4 March 1929; Michele Louro, “The Johnstone Affair and Anti-Communism in Interwar India,” Journal of Contemporary History 53 (2018), 38–60. TNA, HO 144 10693: The League against Imperialism, stamp: 4 March 1929. Louro, Comrades, 103. BL, IOR, L/P&J/12/268: To Mr. Ferard, 5 December 1927. BL, IOR, L/P&J/12/268: Minute Paper: Action to be taken against members of the League against Imperialism, 21 December 1927; IPI to Peel, 20 December 1927. BL, IOR, L/P&J/12/268: IPI to Peel, 20 December 1927. BL, IOR, L/P&J/12/268: IPI to Peel, 20 December 1927; BL, IOR, L/P&J/12/268: Minute Paper: Action to be taken against members of the League against Imperialism, 21 December 1927. BL, IOR, L/P&J/12/268: IPI to Peel, 12 April 1928; IPI to Peel, 11 May 1928. Louro, Comrades, 133–35. BL, IOR, L/P&J/12/280: Peel to Chamberlain, 27 February 1929. BL, IOR, L/P&J/12/280: R.T. Peel to Arthur Hirtzel, 21 February 1929; Peel to Amery, 27 February 1929; Peel to Chamberlain, 27 February 1929; Private Secretary (through Under-Secretary of State), 28 March 1929. TNA, HO 144 10693: Austen Chamberlain to the Right Honourable Viscount Peel, 15 March 1929. TNA, KV 2 614: Note on Saklatvala’s application for an endorsement for India, 14 November 1929; “Not Allowed to Go to India: Ban Placed on Communist Ex-M.P.,” The Daily Herald, 20 November 1929; “Mr. Saklatvala’s Passport: Visa Refused for India,” The Times, 20 November 1929. TNA, KV 2 614: Note on Saklatvala’s application for an endorsement for India, 14 November 1929. “Mr. Saklatvala: Permission to Visit India Refused,” The Morning Post, 20 November 1929. On Saklatvala’s engagement in that campaign, see Susan D. Pennybacker, From Scottsboro to Munich: Race and Political Culture in 1930s Britain (Princeton and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 146–99.

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47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54

55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67

“Mr. Saklatvala: Permission to Visit India Refused,” The Morning Post, 20 November 1929. “Mr. Saklatvala and India,” The Times, 10 December 1929. “Mr. Saklatvala’s Passport,” The Times, 25 August 1930. TNA, KV 2 614: Passport Office to Miss D.B. Saunders, 7 September 1933; Note sheet on Saklatvala, 1933. Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, 3slotfom150: Note sur la propagande révolutionnaire intéressant les pays d’outre-mer, 31 May 1930; TNA, KV 2 614: Extract from Scotland Yard Report No. 505, 22 May 1930. Extract from the Weekly Bulletin of Communist & Socialist Activities, 23 June 1931. For various examples of this strategy see Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest. J.A. Zumoff, “‘Is America Afraid of the Truth?’ The Aborted North American Trip of Shapurji Saklatvala, MP,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 53 (2016), 419–24; TNA, KV 2 614: Sir Vernon Kell to Ray Atherton, 18 February 1933. TNA, KV 2 614: Extract relating to Saklatvala, 12 March 1929; Saklatvala, The Fifth Commandment, 466. Saklatvala, The Fifth Commandment, 466–69; “M.P.s Held Up: Action by Belgian Authorities; British Party Allowed to Proceed,” Cork Examiner, 16 January 1929. Quoted in Saklatvala, The Fifth Commandment, 467. “M.P.’s Documents Seized at Dover: Thorough Search Ordered by Detective,” Manchester Evening News, 19 January 1929. Saklatvala, The Fifth Commandment, 467. “M.P.’s Documents Seized at Dover: Thorough Search Ordered by Detective,” Manchester Evening News, 19 January 1929. Saklatvala, The Fifth Commandment, 468. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru Correspondence, Vol. XII: Virendranath Chattopadhyaya to Jawaharlal Nehru, 23 January 1929. “Belgians Must Be Talked To: Ostend Comedy Raises Serious Point,” North Mail and Newcastle Chronicle, 16 January 1929. Saklatvala, The Fifth Commandment, 468. “M.P.s Held Up: Action by Belgian Authorities; British Party Allowed to Proceed,” Cork Examiner, 16 January 1929. Saklatvala, The Fifth Commandment, 468. Quoted in ibid., 469.

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68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

On Münzenberg’s political and organizational work for the LAI see Babette Gross, Willi Münzenberg: Eine politische Biographie (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1967), 196–210; Petersson, Willi Münzenberg. TNA, HO 144 22304: Circular by the Passport Department on Willi Münzenberg, 4 June 1928. TNA, HO 144 22304: W. Haldane Porter on Wilhelm Münzenberg, 23 March 1922; Special Branch to Haldane Porter, 7 March 1922. TNA, HO 144 22304: Minutes on the Münzenberg case, January–February 1930. TNA, HO 144 22304: W.J. Brown to J.R. Clynes, 20 January 1930. TNA, HO 144 22304: Secret report on Wilhelm Münzenberg, 29 January 1930. TNA, HO 144 22304: J.R. Clynes to Arthur Henderson, 21 February 1930. See Sean McMeekin, The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 204–21. TNA, HO 144 22304: Minutes on the Münzenberg case, January–February 1930. Ibid. TNA, HO 144 22304: To W.J. Brown, 3 March 1930; E. Davies on Wilhelm Münzenberg (undated). TNA, HO 144 22304: Special Branch to Robinson, 12 March 1930; Willi Münzenberg to J.V. Leckie, 7 March 1930; Reginald Bridgeman to Willi Münzenberg, 7 March 1930. TNA, HO 144 22304: Passfield to Clynes, 19 March 1930. Ibid. Ibid. TNA, HO 144 22304: Clynes to Brown, 26 March 1930. BL, IOR, L/P&J/12/268: List “F”, 1928. “Preparing in London and Glasgow: Big Demonstrations for March 20,” Daily Worker, 14 March 1932. TNA, HO 144 22304: Circular on Barbusse and Münzenberg (without date). TNA, HO 144 22304: Record of House of Commons Debate on 23 March 1932. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Torpey, Invention of the Passport, 151, 154, 161.

Chapter 8

No More Slaves! Lamine Senghor, Black Internationalism and the League Against Imperialism David Murphy On the evening of 11 February 1927, on the second day of the inaugural meeting of the League Against Imperialism, the tall, gaunt, figure of Lamine Senghor strode to the podium to deliver the penultimate speech of the session.1 Senghor was a decorated veteran of the First World War who had risen to prominence in the mid-1920s as a leading figure in the emerging communist-inspired anticolonial movement in France. In his speech he denounced imperialism as a modern form of slavery and called on the workers of the world to unite and overthrow the entire capitalistimperialist system. By all accounts, his rousing speech was received rapturously by the delegates gathered at the Château d’Egmont, some of whom rushed to the podium to embrace the Senegalese militant who would continue to be feted over the remainder of the Congress. In many photographs from the event, Senghor is clearly the centre of attention: other delegates drape their arms around his shoulders, broad grins etched on their faces. It does not seem an exaggeration to claim that he was one of the stars of the show: a posed photograph of Senghor in profile, fist clenched standing at a lectern, was reproduced in the conference proceedings and was used to illustrate various articles about the Congress over the months to come.2 The novelty and the exoticism of his status as a black African, for a largely European audience, also surely played a part in this rapturous response. Senghor had been invited to participate in the inaugural meeting of the League against Imperialism in his capacity as President of the Committee for the Defence of the Negro Race (Comité de Défense de la Race Nègre, CDRN).3 The CDRN, launched by Senghor in March 1926, was a broad church in which he sought to bring together both moderate and radical members of the black community in France while also reaching out to subjects in the colonies, primarily through the circulation of the movement’s newspaper (sent overseas in small packets with sympathetic sailors). The CDRN was working, like many of the other delegations in 211

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Brussels, within a “complex political landscape” that operated between the local (as expatriate communities in Europe), the national (representing their countries of origin), and the international (operating as representatives within a transnational political network, as Klaas Stutje demonstrates so clearly in his chapter on Mohammad Hatta and Indonesian nationalism). Prior to the creation of the CDRN, Senghor had been a prominent member of the far more radical Intercolonial Union (l’Union Intercoloniale, UIC).4 Although nominally an independent group run by and for representatives of the colonized peoples (Nguyen ai Quoc, the future Ho Chi Minh, was one of its most active members in its early stages), the UIC was in fact controlled by the Colonial Studies Committee of the French Communist Party (Parti Communiste Français, PCF).5 The UIC had been launched by the PCF within months of the latter’s creation after the historic split between French Socialists and Communists at the Congress of Tours in late 1920. The UIC was designed to demonstrate the PCF’s commitment to the Communist International’s anti-colonial agenda. In reality, though, the PCF’s support for the UIC and the anticolonial cause was inconsistent, to say the least. Senghor’s decision to leave the UIC, a shift from a communist-inspired to a black movement, appeared to assert the primacy of race over class: as with so much of Senghor’s career as a militant, though, appearances could be deceptive, with genuine and potentially contradictory motives hidden in a tangled web of ideological leanings, personal connections, gut feelings, and underhand political tactics, typical of both the anticolonial movement (in its far-left and nationalist guises) and the colonial state’s security forces that sought to undermine them. There were very real tensions between Senghor and the PCF, but there are ample reasons to believe that any break with his communist allies was largely strategic: not least amongst these is the fact that Senghor announced the creation of his new movement in an article, “The Negroes have Awoken,” in the UIC’s own newspaper, Le Paria (The Pariah), in April 1926. It is difficult to imagine that the UIC and its PCF handlers would have permitted this declaration of black independence within one of their own publications for anything other than strategic reasons: French communism in the mid1920s was not renowned for its tolerance of dissenting internal voices.6 We must thus treat with caution the notion that the “racial” turn in Senghor’s thinking is evidence of his complete disillusionment with communism: on the contrary, the publication of such an article in the columns of Le Paria makes it clear that in many respects the break with his former communist allies was at best partial. Indeed, the most productive way

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of viewing Senghor’s entire career as a militant is that of a balancing act in which he veered between radicalism and reformism, communism and black internationalism. He consistently kept both his friends and his enemies guessing about his true motives and allegiances, as he sought to carve out a political discourse in which both race and class might carry equal weight.7 After the CDRN’s creation in early 1926, Senghor had criss-crossed France in a successful recruitment drive seeking to draw members of black collectives, often constructed on an ethnic or regional basis, into a single movement. Visiting the port towns of Marseilles, Bordeaux, Le Havre, and the major colonial military base at Fréjus (where trainee African officers were a primary target of his propaganda), he had, by late 1926, recruited, it was estimated by the agents of the Ministry for the Colonies’ surveillance unit (the CAI8), close to 900 members (in a black population numbered at fewer than 20,000).9 By early 1927, however, the broad coalition that had come together within the CDRN was already beginning to fragment. Even as the first issue of its newspaper, La Voix des Nègres (The Voice of the Negroes) proudly and insistently proclaimed the unity of “les nègres,” the CDRN was in fact in the middle of a long and protracted schism that would a few months later lead to the break-up of the organization, with Senghor and his fellow radicals deserting en masse to create the League for the Defence of the Negro Race (Ligue de Défense de la Race Nègre, LDRN). The split in the organization was the result of complex personal, political, and cultural issues but appears primarily to have divided the CDRN on ideological lines, with the more assimilationist members remaining within a rump CDRN and the more radical, communist-leaning members departing for the LDRN. As a result, Senghor arrived in Brussels at the head of a seemingly united black movement that was, in fact, rapidly fragmenting. The demise of the CDRN did have one positive effect though: in the absence of the need to exercise the type of rhetorical restraint that had just about held the body together for a year, Senghor now found once again the radical voice that had brought him to prominence as a key member of the Intercolonial Union, and this is what made his speech in Brussels so powerful. In many ways, the League Against Imperialism, a body which, in its initial phase, sought to realize the Comintern’s 1924 call for alliances between communists and nationalists, was the perfect home for Lamine Senghor, as he moved between reformist and radical, communist and black internationalist groupings. This chapter will thus examine Senghor’s contribution to the Congress as a case study of the complex ways in which

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issues of race, class, and anticolonialism were intertwined in this period. It will also explore the importance of the Brussels Congress as an event at which personal as well as political ties could be forged. In order better to comprehend Lamine Senghor’s political position at the time of the Congress it is important to understand the context in which he emerged as an activist and the evolution that he underwent over the short period during which he became central to French anti-colonial politics. The analysis of his speech in this chapter will thus focus on certain key motifs that reveal the central ideas that motivated Senghor, as well as the ways in which these were shaped by various powerful forces and significant events that occurred during his brief career as an activist between 1924 and 1927. Essentially, Senghor’s experiences act as a telling case study of the opportunities and dangers of intercolonial cooperation for black groups in the interwar period. Senghor at the Brussels Congress Lamine Senghor travelled to Brussels in February 1927, accompanied by the young Guadeloupean radical, Narcisse Danaë, as part of a two-man CDRN delegation. Also present in Brussels was the Martiniquan lawyer and communist, Max Bloncourt, who, the CAI reported, had invited himself along as the representative of the Intercolonial Union. He was accompanied by fellow UIC member, Camille Saint-Jacques, a Haitian engineer with whom Senghor endured a rather fractious relationship, the Haitian consistently expressing doubt about the CDRN leader’s left-wing credentials. During his own time in the UIC, Senghor had worked closely with both Bloncourt and Saint-Jacques, regularly sharing a platform with them during the PCF’s campaign against the Rif war in Morocco in 1925 (which will be discussed further below).10 Liberated from the moderation that had marked most of his public contributions to the CDRN, Senghor delivered a fiery speech that delighted his audience. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he found space in his speech to denounce (without actually naming him) his sworn enemy, Blaise Diagne, French parliamentary deputy for Senegal. In January 1918, Diagne had accepted an invitation from French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, desperate for the extra troops that might finally bring the war to a successful conclusion while limiting the loss of further French lives, to lead a recruitment tour in French West Africa. Given the title of High Commissioner for the Republic, Diagne was greeted in the colonies with the pomp and ceremony normally reserved for white dignitaries from the imperial centre, which initially enhanced

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his reputation amongst France’s many black subjects and its few black citizens. For Senghor and other black militants, however, Diagne was simply doing the dirty work of his colonial masters. In his speech, he declared, “You saw, during the war, that as many negroes as possible were recruited, and led off to be slaughtered. So many were recruited that the French governors had refused to recruit any more as they feared the people would rise up in revolt. But, as recruitment had to continue at any cost, a special negro was found and garlanded with honours. This celebrated negro recruited 80,000 men, to add to the 500,000 already fighting in France.”11 Blaise Diagne, this “special negro” occupied a special place in Lamine Senghor’s cast of colonial villains, regularly evoked in his writing and speeches. The origins of this animosity go back to November 1924, when Senghor, then completely unknown outside black and anti-colonial activist circles, appeared as a witness for the defence in a libel trial featuring Diagne as the chief litigant. In October 1924, the black newspaper, Les Continents, had published an article, “The good disciple,” in which Diagne was accused by the Caribbean novelist René Maran of having received “a certain commission for each soldier recruited” to take part in the war.12 The Parisian media were predictably thrilled at the whiff of scandal that clung to the case but, more significantly, for a few days at least the trial placed the politics of France’s black colonial populations at the forefront of public debate, and in particular the issue of the participation of colonial troops in the First World War.13 Lamine Senghor’s testimony projected the African colonial infrantryman, the tirailleur sénégalais, as a man radicalized by his experiences who would now devote himself to the denunciation of colonial injustice. Shortly after the trial Senghor would write a general account of it for Le Paria: “[i]nstead of attempting to prove precisely how much the great slave trader [Diagne] received for each Senegalese he recruited, they should have brought before him a whole procession of those blinded and mutilated in the war … All of these victims would have spat in his face the infamy of the mission that he had undertaken.”14 Senghor’s views on the suffering endured by colonial soldiers were given authority by his own status as a “mutilé de guerre” [war wounded], which was typically the self-description he used on the official public documents produced by the movements to which he belonged. In April 1917, his battalion of the tirailleurs sénégalais had been gassed near Verdun, and Senghor had suffered terrible injuries, losing one of his lungs, from which he never fully recovered.

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In the period since the Diagne trial he had grown increasingly gaunt and frail, periodically suffering breathing problems, coughing up blood, his body wracked by the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him late in 1927. Senghor could speak with first-person conviction about the suffering caused by the war and the duplicity of the French authorities in their dealings with those colonial soldiers who had fought to save France. A constant refrain in his speeches and writings, one to which he returned again in Brussels, was the iniquity and double standards involved in the treatment of colonial veterans of the First World War and, in particular, the pensions paid to them: “[y]ou have all seen that, during the war, as many Negroes as possible were recruited and led off to be slaughtered. … The Negro youth are now more clear-sighted. We know and are deeply aware that, when we are needed, to lay down our lives or to do hard labour, then we are French; but when it’s a question of giving us rights, we are no longer French, we are Negroes.”15 Senghor’s position as a “mutilé de guerre” opened up a space within 1920s France in which otherwise radical ideas could be given a hearing. Could a man who had loyally served France, sacrificing his health, really be dismissed as an enemy of the state? The question of why this once loyal colonial soldier had become a leading anticolonial militant in the first place is difficult to answer with certainty, but it is clear that the Diagne libel trial was a turning point in Senghor’s career. The young militant was persuaded by the UIC to stand as a witness for the defence and he suddenly found himself face to face with the man who had promised so much to the African soldiers who had fought in the First World War. Indeed, for Olivier Sagna Senghor’s testimony during the trial reveals that “more than the UIC militant, it is the war-wounded veteran whose wounds have been reopened who speaks.”16 Beyond his own personal circumstances, Senghor happened on to the political scene at a potentially fruitful moment of strategic alliances for the anticolonial movement. The UIC sent one of its newest recruits to speak in defence of a bourgeois, reformist newspaper at the Diagne-Les Continents trial largely because, as was mentioned above, in 1924 the Comintern had called on communists to seek alliances with all anticolonial nationalist movements. The trial was thus perceived as an opportunity to create a united anticolonial front between (bourgeois) reformers and (communist) radicals. This united front would last only a few years but it is in this context that we must situate Lamine Senghor’s activism.

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No more slaves! At the heart of Senghor’s Brussels speech was an impassioned denunciation of European imperialism in Africa. Early on, he responded angrily to the preceding intervention by an Egyptian delegate who had claimed that his homeland had escaped colonial rule, declaring that the “English” presence in Egypt could be understood only as a form of colonisation: “[w]hat is colonisation? It is the violation of the right of a people to organise itself as it sees fit.”17 Senghor here sought to forge a unity between those suffering from each of the many distinct forms of Western domination of “colonized” lands. He also tested a vocabulary for defining colonialism that he would most likely have been developing at the time for his anticolonial fable, La Violation d’un pays (The Rape of a Land) (1927), which would be published just a few months later. In the remainder of the speech he went on to deploy virtually all of the attack lines available in the playbook of the radical anticolonial left in the mid-1920s. As we saw above, he attacked the injustice in the treatment of those colonial soldiers who had fought for France in the First World War. He denounced the cruel treatment of the colonized, citing examples from colonial reports of extreme physical punishments meted out to Africans. Inverting the trope of African savagery, he identified French imperialism as the true source of barbarism: “[w]ho could fail to shudder at the thought that today, in the twentieth century, the French are still committing such horrific acts, worthy of the ferocity of the middle ages?”18 Imperialism cannot hope to bring civilization to the colonies for it is an inherently unjust system of domination and French claims of a civilizing mission are, in fact, deeply insincere: “[the French] say ‘Oh no, we must not teach the negroes’ because, if they are educated, they will be civilized and we will no longer be able to do what we wish with them.”19 The use of forced labour was perhaps the clearest evidence of the colonizer’s true feelings regarding the worth of the colonized: “[y]ou are forced to work ten hours a day under the burning sun of Africa and all you earn is two francs! Women and children work the same hours as men and, despite all that, we are told that slavery has been abolished, that the negroes are free, that all men are equal.”20 Forced labour was a lynchpin in his argument that European imperialism was merely a renewed form of slavery: “Slavery. We are told it has been abolished. We might accept that the retail sale of individuals has been outlawed … But we can see that the imperialists reserve the very democratic right to sell an entire negro people to another imperial power.

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It is not true, slavery has not been abolished. On the contrary, it has been modernised.”21 The trope of twentieth-century colonialism as a modern form of slavery sought to undermine the civilizing rhetoric of the European powers and, in the black world, to promote a transcolonial unity between Africans and members of the diaspora. The advent of communism now meant that the international brotherhood of the black world was complemented by the inter-racial unity of all workers. Senghor thus concluded by proclaiming in Leninist terms that imperialism is a product of capitalism which imposes its domination on the colonized “over there” and the workers “over here” (as Sartre would later write in Colonialism and Neo-colonialism): “[t]hose who suffer from colonial oppression must take each other by the hand and walk shoulder to shoulder with those who suffer from the misdeeds of metropolitan imperialism; they must bear the same weapons and destroy the universal evil of global imperialism. Comrades, we must destroy [imperialism] and replace it with the union of free peoples. No more slaves!”22 Senghor’s speech was in effect a distillation of the key ideas he had developed since the Diagne trial. During the eighteen months he spent on the executive of the Intercolonial Union it was the PCF’s campaign against the Rif War in Morocco that appears to have most shaped not only Senghor’s political thinking but also his confidence and his skill as an orator. It would be misleading to make claims for Senghor as a groundbreaking political theorist, for he did not seek to explore the links between capitalism and empire at length in his writing. He was, rather, a brilliant communicator of ideas, driven by moral outrage at the injustices of capitalist imperialism. A passionate public speaker, he was able to energize audiences, large and small, and distill complex political ideas into a series of resonant images. The Rif campaign of 1924–1925 was the arena in which Lamine Senghor would hone his skills as an orator, as well as the crucible in which the Comintern’s call for an alliance of communism and nationalism was put to the test in France.23 This short-lived but fascinating experiment— in which UIC members, Lamine Senghor in particular, played a central role—saw French Communism finally attempt to prove its internationalist, anticolonial credentials to an increasingly impatient Comintern, which regularly berated the PCF for failing to tackle French imperialism.24 Scholars have justifiably claimed that the PCF hierarchy was not fully committed to the Rif campaign, which it largely perceived as a form of gesture politics that might appease the Comintern.25

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However, there were important individuals within the campaign—not least Jacques Doriot, head of the PCF’s Colonial Commission, which oversaw the UIC, and Paul Vaillant-Couturier, editor of the PCF newspaper L’Humanité—who were fully committed to the anticolonial cause. Also, the message that the struggle of the colonized was also the struggle of the proletariat appealed to significant numbers within the Communist movement: for instance, two rallies at the Luna Park in the Paris suburbs in May and November 1925 attracted crowds of over 15,000, while 60,000 attended a huge anti-war rally in the Parisian suburb of Clichy at which Senghor appeared.26 Senghor threw himself wholeheartedly into the campaign and appeared at countless rallies alongside other prominent UIC members, such as the Antillean Max Bloncourt and the Algerian Hadj Ali. He also shared a platform with French communists: in addition to Doriot (who led the campaign), prominent PCF speakers at these rallies included Vaillant-Couturier and the novelist, Henri Barbusse, who would later deliver the opening address at the Brussels Congress. Vaillant-Couturier and Barbusse were war veterans who had gravitated towards Communism via the virulently anti-war French veterans’ organization, the Association Républicaine des Anciens Combattants (ARAC). It is possible that Senghor may have encountered these prominent PCF members through ARAC, but at the very least it seems clear that their shared experience as war veterans created a bond between them. This first-hand experience of the war was also what drove their anti-militarism.27 Barbusse’s story provides a compelling illustration of the complex ways in which pacifism combined with calls for a global revolution within the Communist movement in the aftermath of the war.28 Already in the years before 1914, Barbusse was a respected poet and novelist, and a confirmed pacifist. However, when the war broke out he rushed to enlist, for he argued that in order to defeat imperialist militarism, incarnated by the Central Powers, it was necessary to take up arms against it. The devastating violence that he witnessed in the first two years of the war soon led him to change his mind, for now he had experienced first-hand that modern, technological warfare was hell on earth. The only positive he drew from his experiences was the profound humanity and camaraderie of the troops, which he fictionalized in his most famous novel, Le Feu (Under Fire). In this bond between soldiers, which crossed lines of class, identity, and colour, lay hope for a peaceful future. In order to bring about that future, however, there would have to be a global revolution that would destroy the forces of capitalism and imperialism. In a left-wing

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twist on his thinking from the start of the First World War, there was a need for one last struggle that would finally bring an end to war forever. It was this same thinking that appears to have driven Lamine Senghor’s anticolonialism. In this utopian vision the coming global revolution would destroy the European empires and create a universal brotherhood of man that would bring the capitalist war machine to its knees. This revolutionary war to bring peace might scare off some moderates, but the fact that these calls for peace and universal brotherhood were delivered, within the LAI, by passionate war veterans such as Barbusse and Senghor, had the potential to win these moderates over to their cause. In defence of the “negro race” Although Senghor’s speech contained many elements designed to illustrate the unity of the entire colonized world in the face of European imperialism, he made it clear from the start that he was speaking on behalf of “the negro race” who shared a distinctive historical experience: “[w]hat is the Committee for the Defence of the Negro Race? It is a universal organisation of the negro youth who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the liberation of the entire race. You are aware that the negro race has been humiliated more than any other race on the planet; the world’s imperialists hold the right to life or death over them. However, we are taking on the struggle to seize our right to equality from those races that claim to be superior to us.”29 Senghor claimed that imperialism was a universal ill, but that the “negro race” had endured very specific forms of oppression that bound it together. As was seen in the quotation cited above regarding the recruitment of African soldiers during the war, Senghor sought to argue that a new consciousness of their shared plight would create a radicalism amongst young black people: “[y]ou have all seen that, during the war, as many Negroes as possible were recruited and led off to be slaughtered. … The Negro youth are now more clear-sighted.”30 In the final stages of the Congress, the LAI placed Senghor at the head of the working party asked to draft the “Resolution on the Negro Question” and the finished document bore all the hallmarks of his fiery rhetoric. The blacks in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas were brought together within a history of oppression dating back five centuries: “[f]or more than five centuries, the negro people of the world have been made victims and been cruelly oppressed.”31 If the “nègres” of the world united amongst themselves and then joined forces with other colonized groups, they would finally bring such oppression to an end.32

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The radicalism of Senghor’s fusion of racial solidarity with a wider call for a transcolonial front against empire stands in stark contrast to the apparent reformist assimilationism of the pre-split CDRN. Throughout 1926, Senghor and other CDRN figures deployed the reformist language of the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme and parts of the French Socialist Party. In early CDRN documentation there was no mention of capitalist imperialism; instead, the group diplomatically positioned itself within the lineage of France’s great humanitarians and philanthropists. In retrospect, though, the most evident sign of the radicalism veiled by the CDRN’s surface moderation was its critical reflection on the language of race, its exploration of the modes of self-definition available to black people.33 The CAI records indicate that there had been much internal discussion within the CDRN about whether to use the term “noir” (black) or “nègre” (negro) in their title, and Lamine Senghor played a decisive role in pushing the committee towards the latter term.34 In “The Negroes have Awoken” he articulates a racial identity that is based not on shared racial characteristics but on a shared sense of oppression: “[o]ne of the great questions of our age is that of the awakening of the Negro … To be a Negro is to be exploited until one’s last drop of blood has been spilt or to be transformed into a soldier defending the interests of capitalism against those who would dare try to stop its advance.”35 The references to “one’s last drop of blood” and “a soldier defending the interests of capitalism” clearly echoed Senghor’s comments elsewhere equating exploitation in the colonies with the sacrifice of so many African lives during the First World War. However, the call for “the awakening of the negro” was inspired by another context entirely: the racial radicalism of Marcus Garvey. I have written at length elsewhere (building on the work of Miller and Edwards) about the ways in which Senghor and the CDRN enacted a transnational process of translation of Garvey’s ideas, using the term “Nègre” as a proud badge of self-identification, just as Garvey had proclaimed himself a “Negro” (always with a capital “N”).36 In an era when the term “noir” was widely gaining prominence as a more dignified replacement for “nègre,” seen as derogatory and demeaning, Senghor and the CDRN deliberately chose “Nègre” as the term that encompasses all black people: “[i]t is our honour and our glory to call ourselves Negroes with a capital N. It is our Negro race that we wish to guide along the path towards its total liberation from the yoke of slavery. We want to impose the respect due to our race, as well as its equality with all of the other races of the earth; which is our right and our duty.”37

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According to Senghor, the “nègre” is an individual who has been downtrodden and oppressed through slavery, colonialism, segregation: the terms “noir” and “homme de couleur” (coloured man) were to him merely escape routes for educated blacks seeking to carve out a place for themselves in a dominant white society. The first step towards liberation is to embrace one’s identity as a “nègre”: for that allows one to perceive the true nature of Western oppression of the black world.38 A decade later, the Negritude school of writers—in particular, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire—would tie the celebration of difference into what was, initially at least, a reformist politics of empire. But for Lamine Senghor, one’s identity as a “nègre,” forged in the suffering of colonial exploitation or in the carnage of the battlefields of the First World War, could lead only to a radical anti-colonial politics. Reactions to the Congress Unsurprisingly, the CDRN was delighted at the impact made by its President through his participation in the Congress. Its newspaper, La Voix des Nègres (The Voice of the Negroes) devoted much of its second issue to coverage of the event, including a full reprint of Senghor’s speech, which was described as “masterly,”39 as well as the full text of the “Resolutions on the negro question.” The CDRN’s enthusiasm was shared by black and civil rights activists on both sides of the Atlantic: the speech was immediately translated into English and reproduced in various journals in the United States.40 W.E.B. DuBois’s The Crisis reported Senghor’s words approvingly in its July 1927 edition, the author having discovered a translation of the speech in the 15 May edition of The Living Age.41 The author states that Senghor “vigorously challenges the superiority of Caucasians and says that their present colonization of Africa is nothing more or less than the usurpation of the right of a nation to direct its own destinies.”42 In a fascinating article published just a few months after the Congress, Roger Baldwin, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union, who was present in Brussels and, like Senghor, elected to the executive of the LAI’s international committee, cited the Senegalese as one of the most eminent of the “men without a homeland,” those political exiles who had made Paris their home. Little more than two years after his first public appearance this young man from Senegal had managed to carve out a position as a radical spokesman for black people not only in France but also internationally. If the Brussels Congress inspired hope and enthusiasm amongst anticolonial radicals, it provoked a very worried response from the colonial

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authorities. Every month the CAI prepared a round-up (note mensuelle), drawing together the main points from the irregular bulletins provided by its network of informers. Typically a document of thirty to forty pages, it was distributed to the French Minister for the Colonies and all of the Governors-General in the French Empire. The note mensuelle for February 1927, however, ran to over eighty pages, illustrating the degree of concern generated by the inaugural meeting of the League. In the preface to the long section on the Brussels Congress, the report declared ominously, “We announced in the previous report the decision to hold this Congress, whose importance should not be underestimated. It appears necessary to explain the origins of this meeting, which has led to the creation of an organisation whose existence will no doubt lead to some regrettable consequences.”43 The French colonial establishment and various right-wing forces had a habit of transforming even the mildest call for reform into a radical call for the overthrow of empire. In this context the League Against Imperialism appeared particularly menacing, as it briefly united nationalists and communists from across Europe and the colonized world. Gustave Gautherot, an obsessive anticommunist journalist and scholar, wrote in Le Bolchévisme aux colonies et l’ impérialisme rouge that the LAI was “the most formidable bolchevist anti-colonial organisation” and Lamine Senghor was presented as one of its most important members.44 The emergence of Lamine Senghor as a key figure in Brussels had not gone unnoticed by the CAI. In the lengthy résumé of the event within the February 1927 report—including a summary of all the major speeches—the CAI agent comments that “Senghor’s speech had a visible influence on the audience who applauded it vigorously.”45 More generally, the February 1927 report is deeply revealing of the official mind of the interwar French colonial apparatus and what it genuinely feared as a potential threat to the future of the Empire. The report was dismissive regarding “Bolshevik” attempts to stir up a Marxist critique of empire within the colonies. What the French did fear, however, was a potential union between international communism and nationalist anticolonial movements: indeed, communist support for nationalist movements, it stated, had already produced (unspecified) “tangible results.”46 A group solely made up of colonized peoples was not seen as a danger; it was the alliance with more centrist and socialist groups in metropolitan centres that might create difficulties for colonial governments. The report accused the Bolsheviks of playing the pacifist, humanitarian card in order to lure European socialists such as Georg

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Lebedour and George Lansbury into the orbit of the League.47 The success of the LAI was attributed to a general international revulsion towards foreign intervention in places such as Morocco, Syria, and China. (The report also posited that the LAI played cleverly on German anger at the loss of its colonies: Germans, it stated, were only too glad to see other colonial powers criticized.) The main French organizations backing the LAI included Communist-affiliated groups—the veterans’ movement, ARAC; the trade union, CGTU; and Senghor’s CDRN—which constituted the usual “undesirables,”48 but it had also attracted the Ligue des droits de l’homme and the Ligue internationale des femmes pour la paix: “these are the ones that are being deceived.”49 The February report was also deeply conscious of the significance of the Brussels Congress on both a symbolic and a human level. The event allowed militants from around the world to share ideas and strategies, to gain strength from the sense of belonging to a global movement. It also allowed them to develop personal friendships, forging the type of close personal connections that can grease the wheels of more high level, strategic alliances. As was mentioned at the start of this chapter, photographs of the event indicate a degree of personal warmth from many other delegates towards Senghor. In one particular photo a Chinese nationalist delegate has his arm draped around Senghor’s shoulder, acting as a personal illustration of the type of anticolonial solidarity that Anna Belogurova posits, in her contribution to this volume, as central to Chinese nationalist thought in the wake of Sun Yat-sen. As Dónal Hassett’s chapter demonstrates, Senghor also appears to have developed close ties to the Algerian delegation from the Etoile Nord-Africaine, based on bonds of religion and a shared colonial oppressor. The Congress can thus be seen as a site where the political and the personal coalesced, a venue in which one’s own often lonely struggle against the might of empire could find support from like-minded souls. Indeed, the CAI report notes ruefully that the Congress had been an inspirational event for many of those present: one delegate described it as “the dawn of the great day” that they had been waiting for.50 A month later in the March 1927 report, the CAI mulled over with some irritation the Belgian government’s decision to allow the Congress to take place in the first place: the Belgians’ alleged claim that they had nothing to fear from the LAI, as there was no communism in their colonies, was met with incredulity.51 Seeking to burnish their own liberal credentials, the Belgians had created a forum that might undermine the entire European imperial project. Fortunately for the colonial powers,

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the unity that had been on display in Brussels was already starting to look temporary. As the CAI sifted through the various links that had been made at the Brussels Congress, they noted with quiet satisfaction a growing Socialist distrust of the League as a Communist initiative. The threat/promise of global anticolonial revolution was already receding due to deep splits within the anticolonial movement. Afterlives: the “martyrdom” of Lamine Senghor In June 1927 Lamine Senghor published La Violation d’un pays, a short, illustrated, polemical work, an anticolonial fable of sorts, in which he developed many of the ideas and tropes that had been at the heart of his Brussels speech. The volume also marked a clear desire to take the anticolonial struggle into the cultural sphere, a strategy that would become far more pronounced just a few years later when the young colonized intellectuals at the heart of the Negritude movement would assert the primacy of the cultural in anticolonial debate. In the wake of Negritude’s cultural and later political successes, the achievements and significance of 1920s black radicalism were almost entirely airbrushed from the historical record. Black Paris in the interwar period would now follow a teleological development from jazz to Josephine Baker to Negritude, and I would argue that Lamine Senghor’s early death clearly played a key part in this process. Shortly after the publication of La Violation d’un pays, Senghor’s health faltered: he retreated to the south of France in the hope that its drier, warmer air would give him some respite, but on 25 November 1927 he succumbed to the illness, almost exactly three years to the day after his appearance at the Diagne-Les Continents trial. Almost 100 years later, the black community in France has arguably yet to see a more effective and charismatic political leader. In the aftermath of his death it suddenly seemed, at least in the context of black French activism, as if this influential figure had never existed. This was most likely due in large measure to the tensions that had threatened to destroy the LDRN in the second half of 1927. As Senghor’s poor health obliged him to remain in the south of France, the other members of the executive committee became increasingly concerned about the LDRN’s finances and organization. Senghor was accused of embezzling funds, and his continued absence from Paris was interpreted as proof of his guilt.52 On 25 November 1927, the very day that Senghor died in the southern French town of Fréjus, in the home of a Senegalese shopkeeper, accompanied solely by two PCF members, the printer of La Violation d’un pays arrived at the LDRN offices demanding payment, which further

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incensed the committee. They would learn of their President’s death only when his obituary appeared in the pages of L’Humanité a week later.53 In the circumstances, they decided to draw a discrete veil over their suspicions regarding Senghor’s alleged embezzlement of LDRN funds. The whole sorry story of the final few months of the LDRN President’s life is symptomatic of the fragility of the black movements of the interwar period. Association with larger bodies such as the PCF and the LAI was alluring, for it offered a degree of visibility as well as organizational and financial stability: there remained persistent fears, however, that the “black cause” would be lost from view in a more general anticolonial movement. For its part, the League Against Imperialism viewed Lamine Senghor’s untimely death as a useful propaganda opportunity. Shortly after his return from the Brussels Congress, on 18 March 1927, Senghor had been arrested after an altercation with a police officer in the southern French town of Le Muy, near his family’s home in Roquebrune sur Argens, and he was imprisoned in the nearby town of Draguignan. Senghor’s growing celebrity, clearly enhanced by his speech in Brussels, meant that his incarceration quickly led to national and international demands that he be released. In particular, an account of Senghor’s arrest and a call for his release were published in L’Humanité the very next day on 19 March.54 The only problem was that, by the time his imprisonment became a matter of international concern, Senghor had, in fact, already been released and he appears to have spent only a single night in prison. Senghor’s comrades in the anticolonial movement believed that his arrest was clearly linked to his speech in Brussels and perceived his release as a victory. The CAI’s March 1927 report is irked by this reading of events: Senghor had not been arrested at its behest and, from its inquiries, the incident had arisen as a result of the Senegalese’s angry response to a random police request to identify himself (reading between the lines, it does not take a huge leap of the imagination to read the incident as an over-zealous and potentially racist police officer carrying out identity checks on a visible minority). The CAI’s internal correspondence on the matter reveals that, in the 1920s, the French colonial approach to anticolonial militancy in mainland France was primarily one of containment and disruption rather than a concerted policy of harassment and repression although, as Dónal Hassett demonstrates elsewhere in this volume, when a group such as the Etoile Nord-Africaine was seen to have become too successful in terms of reach and recruitment the repressive power of the state was quickly deployed: the movement was dissolved and its leaders imprisoned. (In the colonies, the state had no such qualms about using brute force and arbitrary colonial laws.)

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In an illustration of how even perceived repression might play to liberal audiences and be used by radicals as a way of winning over moderates, the facts of Senghor’s brief imprisonment did not get in the way of the League’s desire to turn Lamine Senghor into a martyr whose death had been caused, it claimed, by vile French imperialists. Willi Münzenberg is surely the source of the myth wilfully spread by the League that Senghor had died in prison after months of incarceration, arrested as “punishment” for his part in the Brussels Congress. Writing in the first issue of the LAI’s journal, The Anti-Imperialist Review, in 1928, Münzenberg stated that “[s]ome Governments became nervous and irrational as a result of the Congress. In France, the African Lamine Senghore [sic], the brave representative of his suffering race, who was elected a Member of the Executive Committee of the League Against Imperialism, and whose speech at the Congress was a passionate and mordant denunciation of French imperialism, fell a victim to the rancour of the authorities. He was arrested and cast into prison, where he died a few months later of tuberculosis.”55 Elsewhere in the same issue of the journal, an unsigned report on the development of the League repeats this myth: “[t]he terrible denunciation of French imperialism by the Negro Lamine Senghor cost the latter both his freedom as well as his life, for he died in prison of tuberculosis at the end of last year.”56 Given Munzenberg’s close connections with communists across Europe, it is inconceivable that he was unaware of the true circumstances of Senghor’s death: indeed, Senghor’s obituary in L’Humanité clearly stated that he had passed away in a friend’s home in the southern town of Fréjus and not while languishing in a prison cell. Apparently working from the adage that “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” Munzenberg and the League continued to disseminate this false version of Senghor’s death. A flyer in French and German from the Service de la Presse et d’Information for the LAI’s second congress in 1929 once again presents Senghor as a martyr (and even manages the same misspelling of his surname): “[t]he front constituted by the League Against Imperialism is solid. Thousands of its militants have made great sacrifices, some, such as the unforgettable Senghore [sic] … have paid with their lives for their fidelity and devotion to the anti-imperialist struggle.”57 Munzenberg’s propaganda has certainly had some long-lasting effects, and the myth was spread so assiduously that the legend has become fact even for some highly respected contemporary scholars who had the misfortune of becoming interested in Lamine Senghor via the League Against Imperialism and its archival and printed sources, and have taken Munzenberg’s words at face value. For instance, a brief history of the League

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Against Imperialism, published in 1996 by the UK Socialist History Society, repeated Munzenberg’s claims about Senghor’s martyrdom: “[m]ost tragic was the case of Lamine Senghor, who was imprisoned upon his return to France from the Brussels Congress and died of tuberculosis in November 1927, whilst still in detention.”58 In assessing the significance of the League Against Imperialism scholars must constantly be aware of the self-mythologizing dimension of the LAI’s propaganda efforts. The League’s members and its executive rightly stressed the violence and exploitation at the heart of the modern, capitalist, imperialist project: and these were lines of attack that could gain support from moderate reformist groups. By the interwar period, however, empire had become a fact of life and, although its excesses might be condemned, calls for independence had largely been relegated to the radical fringes. The colonial state apparatus could use openly repressive measures in the colonies but, in the metropolitan centre of empire, it more regularly deployed a range of tactics from containment to disruption to cooptation. Conclusion Lamine Senghor’s participation in the inaugural congress of the League against Imperialism provides a fascinating case study of the possibilities that were opened up by the creation of this body and, in particular, the equal space that international communism appeared to offer to the “black question” both in the colonies and in racially segregated societies, the US chief amongst them. The celebration of Senghor as a “star” of the Congress and what appears to be the genuine human warmth evident in photographs from the event augured well for the future of the League, and for the position of the “black question” within it. As is demonstrated by many of the contributions to this volume, personal connections forged at events such as the Brussels Congress often helped to forge longstanding political alliances.59 The promise of a long-lasting alliance between communists, socialists, and nationalists would prove illusory, however, as the Comintern flipflopped its way through the interwar period, promoting alliances between communists and nationalists that it would often promptly break within months. Throughout the interwar period, black activists from the US, the Caribbean, and Africa were drawn to the communist movement as a potential ally, but many eventually became disillusioned by what they perceived as the lack of attention paid to the specificity of the racism endured by black people: it is unlikely that any of the white delegates in Brussels suffered the indignity of being turned away from their hotel

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rooms due to the colour of their skin, as reportedly happened to Senghor.60 If he had lived, Senghor may not have fared any better than the likes of George Padmore, denounced in the 1930s by the Comintern for his refusal to toe the party line, or he may, like Aimé Césaire, eventually have split definitively with the PCF over its Stalinism and its failure to engage with black issues.61 Senghor’s attempts to marry communism and black internationalism remain, nonetheless, an experiment that merits far greater historical attention.62 The broad coalition of the League against Imperialism in its early incarnation, at least, may well have been the type of forum in which Senghor’s black internationalism would have flourished alongside a broader set of anticolonial alliances. Senghor had been a committed member of the Intercolonial Union and, as Michael Goebel has argued, after the Brussels Congress “the LAI continued to play a role akin to that fulfilled earlier by the UIC in bringing together anti-imperialists of various backgrounds, who exchanged and compared their viewpoints.”63 Senghor had eventually abandoned the UIC, not due to its internationalism, but rather due to the lack of interest in black issues that he attributed to its PCF paymasters: and he continued to display solidarity with other anticolonial movements when he became leader of both the CDRN and the LDRN. The simple fact of the matter was that, in the interwar period, the Communists were the anticolonial movement’s surest and wealthiest allies, and it was difficult to steer a path that avoided them entirely. Philippe Dewitte illustrates this dilemma succinctly through the case study of Lamine Senghor’s deputy, Tiémoko Garan Kouyaté, who would replace the former after his death. In late 1927, Kouyaté received an invitation to an LAI meeting in Brussels but, desperate to trace a more moderate and independent line than his predecessor, he hid the letter from the executive and made no reply;64 just eighteen months later, however, starved of cash and with the LDRN running out of steam, he accepted an invitation to attend the LAI’s second congress in Frankfurt.65 Black and African issues were given greater prominence in Frankfurt—in addition to Kouyaté, George Padmore, Jomo Kenyatta, and James W. Ford were also in attendance—and a decision was taken there to create an International Congress of Negro Workers which was eventually launched in Hamburg a year later, in July 1930. The contribution of such individuals to the LAI waxed and waned through the 1930s, but the League continued to be an important facilitator of black and African initiatives—for example, providing the funding for the International African Services Bureau which saw Padmore, Kouyaté, and C.L.R. James collaborate on anticolonial campaigns, particularly

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in opposition to the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. Lamine Senghor’s participation in the Brussels Congress and the foundation of the LAI were thus key early instances of the often contradictory desires for unity and autonomy that would mark the relationship between black radical groups and the LAI from its inception to its demise. Notes 1

2 3

4

5

6

7

For more in-depth analysis of Senghor’s anti-colonial activism, see my articles: “‘Defending the Negro Race’: Lamine Senghor and Black Internationalism in Interwar France,” French Cultural Studies, 24:2 (2013), 61–73; and “Tirailleur, facteur, anticolonialiste: la courte vie militante de Lamine Senghor (1924–1927),” Cahiers d’ histoire, 126 (2015), 55–72. See, in particular, Roger N. Baldwin, “The Capital of the Men without a Country,” The Survey, 1 August 1927, 460–8. According to a report from the Ministry for the Colonies’ surveillance unit, the CAI, it was in fact the far more moderate figure of Georges Satineau who had initially been invited to attend the Brussels Congress but he turned down the invitation (perhaps fearing that this was a hidden Communist initiative), thereby opening the door for Lamine Senghor (and Narcisse Danäé) to attend. Archives Nationales d’Outre-mer (ANOM), Aix-en-Provence (henceforth ANOM), 3 Slotfom 24: Note by Agent Désiré, 27 February 1927. In the mid-to-late 1920s, the UIC began to split into separate national, regional and ethnic movements for independence. See Dónal Hassett’s chapter in this volume on the creation of the Etoile Nord-Africaine, also in March 1926, with tacit support from the PCF. For a detailed account of black involvement in the UIC, see Philippe Dewitte, Les Mouvements nègres en France 1919–39 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985), 95–122. For a more general account of the UIC’s activities, see Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 187–99. “The Negroes have Awoken” was later revised slightly and published as “The Word ‘Negro’” in the first issue of the CDRN’s newspaper, La Voix des Nègres, in January 1927. The latter article has received by far the greater critical attention, but, in fact, the two pieces are almost identical, the latter essentially a minor reworking of the former. We must also remain conscious of the possibility of Senghor’s personal duplicity, as the archives reveal that he probably served for a short period as an informer for the CAI. For a further discussion of these issues, which are beyond the scope of this chapter, see my article, “Tirailleur, facteur, anticolonialiste.”

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8

9

10 11

12 13

14 15 16

17

The full title of the Service de Contrôle et d’Assistance aux Indigènes (generally known as the CAI) indicated its twin mission to police (contrôle) and to assist (assistance) the ‘indigenous’ populations from the colonies resident in France; however, the primary, unspoken mission of the CAI was to carry out surveillance on colonial subjects. The CAI consistently cast doubt on the CDRN membership numbers cited by Senghor and other members of the executive and it appears evident that there was a problem in ensuring that signed-up members actually paid their membership dues. A monthly CAI report for October 1926 accepts, however, that a figure of 900 members is probably only ‘slightly inflated’. ANOM, 3 Slotfom 144: CAI monthly report, October 1926, 8. Other black and African delegates in Brussels included the South African, J.T. Gumede and the African American, R.B. Moore. Lamine Senghor, La Violation d’un pays et autres écrits anticolonialistes, edited by David Murphy (Paris: L’Harmattan, “Autrement Mêmes,” 2012), 61; emphasis in original. All translations from the French are mine. The figure of 500,000 black African soldiers fighting in France is a significant inflation of the now historically accepted figure of approximately 130,000 men who saw active service. In the interwar period, there was no historical consensus on these figures, and they were consistently inflated by black nationalists and communists. Ibid., 109–10. For a comprehensive account of this landmark trial, see Alice L. Conklin, “Who Speaks for Africa? The René Maran-Blaise Diagne Trial in 1920s Paris,” in Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall (eds.), The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 302–37. For an in-depth account of African participation in the war, see Marc Michel, Les Africains et la grande guerre: l’appel à l’Afrique (1914–1918) (Paris: Karthala, 2003). Senghor, La Violation d’un pays, 33–4. Ibid., 63. Olivier Sagna, Des pionniers méconnus de l’ indépendance: Africains, Antillais et luttes anticolonialistes dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres (1919–1939) (Paris 7: PhD Dissertation, 1986), 311. Senghor, La Violation d’un pays, 58. To support his argument, Senghor claimed that the Egyptian members of the CDRN would back his position but it seems unlikely that the CDRN would have had many, if any, Egyptian members. In the monthly note for February 1927, the CAI agent adopts a rather irked tone in commenting on this passage from the speech, stating that these Egyptian members were a pure invention on Senghor’s part. ANOM, 3 Slotfom 145: CAI monthly note, February 1927, 49.

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18 19 20 21

22 23

24

25

26

27

Senghor La Violation d’un pays, 60. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 60. Ibid., 60–1. The reference to ‘the very democratic right to sell an entire negro people to another imperial power’ alludes to fears at the time that France might sell its Caribbean colonies to the US in order to pay off part of its war debts. Ibid., 63. This was also the period when he began his political education. In 1925, the PCF opened a ‘Colonial School’ for its growing band of colonised activists in the UIC, designed to improve their knowledge of Marxist ideology. Very few activists attended the classes and the ‘school’ closed after a few months but, while its doors were open, Lamine Senghor was one of the most assiduous students and his writing for Le Paria bears the imprint of this ideological training. For the content of the classes, see the series of CAI reports in ANOM, 3 Slotfom 63. Many historians of French communism have signalled “the imperial patriotism which coloured the colonial policies of the French Communist Party.” J.D. Hargreaves, “The Comintern and Anti-Colonialism: New Research Opportunities,” African Affairs 92 (1993), 255–61. Dewitte and Sagna are also very critical of the PCF. See David H. Slavin, “The French Left and the Rif War, 1924–25: Racism and the Limits of Internationalism,” Journal of Contemporary History 26:1 (1991), 5–32. At least two rallies against the war were held at Luna Park in 1925, one on 20 May and a larger event on 26 November. The CAI acknowledged that both had audiences in the ‘thousands’: for the later event, L’Humanité claimed an audience of 20,000. Senghor definitely spoke at the May rally and it is likely he spoke in November also. For the May rally, see ANOM, 15 Slotfom 282/110. For the November rally, see CAI monthly report, November 1925, 3–4, 3 Slotfom 144. Senghor did not speak at the Clichy rally but he appeared before the crowd arm in arm with an unnamed ‘Arab’ in a choreographed display of inter-racial, communist-inspired unity. See article by Senghor in L’Humanité on 13 August 1925. Gregory Mann has studied the ways in which a shared experience of the battlefield had the potential to bring French and African veterans together. The possibility that ARAC played a role in forging bonds between left-wing French and African militants is a topic that requires further exploration. Gregory Mann, Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).

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28

29 30 31 32 33

34

35

36

37 38

39 40

For a compelling account of Barbusse’s political and intellectual trajectory from the First World War until his death in 1935, see Frank Field, Three French Writers and the Great War: Studies in the Rise of Communism and Fascism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 19–78. Senghor, La Violation d’un pays, 57–8. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 63–4. See Disha Karnad Jani’s contribution to this volume for further analysis of the ‘Negro’ resolution. Christopher, L. Miller, Nationalists and Nomads: Essays on Francophone African Literature and Culture (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1998); Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). There was far from unanimity within the CDRN, however, regarding the use of the term ‘nègre’. At the first general assembly of the CDRN (from which Senghor was absent) on 4 July 1926, a Malagasy member (later tentatively identified by the CAI as Samuel Stéfany) asks that ‘nègre’ be replaced by ‘noir’ in the group’s title, a motion approved by the meeting. From then on, the CAI refers to the group in its files as Comité de Défense de la race noire but the CDRN executive itself appears largely to have ignored the decision taken on 4 July. Certainly, Lamine Senghor consistently used the term ‘nègre’ in his writings and speeches. ANOM, 3 Slotfom 144: CAI monthly report, July 1926. Senghor, La Violation d’un pays, 41. Once again, Senghor identifies military service for Africans as part of a continuum linked to other forms of colonial exploitation. See, for example, Senghor’s articles for La Voix des Nègres: “Ce qu’est notre comité de défense de la race nègre;” “Le mot ‘nègre’”; and “Nègres, en garde!” in Senghor, La Violation d’un pays, 46–52. Ibid., 43. Garvey is never named directly as an inspiration in CDRN/LDRN writings but his influence is nonetheless clearly visible in various ways. The Jamaican’s anti-communist stance clearly played a part in the lack of direct acknowledgement by Senghor, and it is striking that the Resolution on the Negro Question produced by the Brussels Congress criticises Garvey’s racial vision. Senghor, La Violation d’un pays, 56. For details on the reception of the speech, see Brent Hayes Edwards, “The Shadow of Shadows,” positions: east asia cultures critique 11:1 (2003), 11–49.

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41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53

54 55 56 57

58

“A Black Man’s Protest,” The Living Age, 332:4306 (15 May 1927), 866–8; “The Browsing Reader,” The Crisis (July 1927), 160. “The Browsing Reader,” 160. ANOM, 3 Slotfom 145: Monthly CAI report, February 1927, 34. Gustave Gautherot, Le Bolchévisme aux colonies et l’ impérialisme rouge (Paris: Alexis Redier, 1930). Though Gautherot’s text was published three years after Senghor’s death, he seems unaware of this fact. ANOM, 3 Slotfom 145: Monthly CAI report, February 1927, 50. Ibid., 34. Ibid., 35–6. Ibid., 40. Ibid. Ibid., 73. ANOM, 3 Slotfom 145: Monthly CAI report, March 1927, 42–5. It is impossible to know for certain if Lamine Senghor did steal from LDRN funds. What is clear from the archive is that the LDRN’s finances were chaotically organised with Senghor often using his own personal funds from his military pension in order to pay expenses and then being reimbursed by the treasurer. In addition, a hidden PCF subsidy was paid directly to Senghor, which only became apparent to the rest of the executive during the Senegalese’s final illness. Dewitte, Les Mouvements nègres, 166. Senghor’s obituary was published in L’Humanité on 2 December 1927. See Senghor, La Violation d’un pays, 144–45. The LDRN would not get round to publishing an obituary for its late President until May 1928 due to ongoing financial difficulties which delayed the publication of its newspaper, La Race Nègre. Senghor, La Violation d’un pays, 145–9. ANOM, 3 Slotfom 145: CAI monthly surveillance report for March 1927, 16–8 and 38–41. Willi Münzenberg, “From Demonstration to Organization,” The AntiImperialist Review, 1:1 (1928), 4–10. “Report on the Development of the League Against Imperialism,” The AntiImperialist Review, 1:1 (1928), 83–93: 88. See the archives of the League: International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, Box 2, File 100. The flyer also lists the Cuban communist, Julio Antonio Mella, who was murdered in January 1929, as another martyr. Jean Jones, The League Against Imperialism (Preston: The Socialist History Society, Occasional Papers Series, 4, 1996). Jones explicitly cites Münzenberg’s article in The Anti-Imperialist Review as her source. More recently, Vijay Prashad states that “a leading light, Lamine Senghor of the Committee for the Defense of the Negro Race, died in a French prison shortly after the

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59 60 61

62

63 64 65

conference.” Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (NY and London: The New Press, 2007), 23. Robert Young’s version is slightly closer to the established facts: “While Senghor’s speech impressed the delegates, it also impressed the French authorities, and he was arrested after his return to Paris from Brussels. Later released on account of his health, he died of tuberculosis before the end of the year.” Robert J.C. Young, Postcolonialism: A Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 260. Edward T. Wilson, for his part, repeats the idea that Senghor was imprisoned due to his speech: “Representing the French African colonies, Lamine Senghor delivered a violent denunciation of imperialism, for which he was incarcerated by the French government.” See Edward T. Wilson, “Russia’s Historic Stake in Black Africa,” in David E. Albright (ed.), Africa and International Communism (London: Macmillan, 1980), 67–92: 80. See, for example, Carolien Stolte’s chapter for a discussion of Nehru’s support for Hatta and the Indonesian nationalist movement. In his contribution to this volume, Dónal Hassett cites Messali Hadj’s Mémoires as the source for this incident. See James R. Hooker, Black Revolutionary: George Padmore’s Path from Communism to Pan-Africanism (London: Pall Mall Press, 1967), and Aimé Césaire, Lettre à Maurice Thorez (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1956). In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the interface between “black” and “red” politics: see, for example, Minkah Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917– 1939 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Margaret Stevens, Red Internationalism and Black Caribbean: Communists in New York City, Mexico and the West Indies, 1919–1939 (London: Pluto, 2017). Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis, 210. Dewitte, Les Mouvements nègres, 174. Ibid., 193.

Chapter 9

Unfreedom and Its Opposite: Towards an Intellectual History of the League Against Imperialism, 1927–1929 Disha Karnad Jani The participants in the League Against Imperialism’s founding conference professed solidarity across their respective struggles, an aim to coordinate their campaigns, and the ultimate goal of bringing about an end to empire. Empire’s sites included European overseas possessions in Asia and Africa, mandate territories in the Middle East, the international black population de-territorialized by slavery, Latin American victims of American “semicolonialism,” and European workers exploited by the elite in their own nations. If all this was what the League’s members recognized as oppression, what could it mean to overcome it? In the following essay, I venture an attempt to grasp at this elusive object through the language of the League’s conference proceedings and printed materials. Identifying the ways in which imperialism and capitalism made someone unfree meant making explicit the contours of that other condition. The shared condition of unfreedom had its elusive antonym in the political and intellectual object of many (if not all) political projects since the Atlantic Revolutions of the eighteenth century. And indeed, the condition of unfreedom appears all over the League’s archive. It was in the specific activities endorsed, the kind of subject pre-supposed, and the political form called for that the League laid out its intellectual world. The League’s inaugural conference in 1927 bore the marks of the period’s prominent political vocabularies for discussing this object (save the fascist one), from the liberal anti-imperialism of metropolitan humanitarians, to the trade unionists’ aspirations for an international workers’ movement, to the pacifists’ anti-war anti-imperialism, to the colonial nationalists’ desire for independence, to the Communist vision in which national independence was a precursor to world revolution. The initial excitement about the League was in large part due to the unprecedented participation of so many people of colour, and the sense that a true alliance between peoples against imperialism was being forged, with great promise for the future. In an article in The New Leader, the British socialist and 237

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International Labour Party politician Fenner Brockway praised what he considered the truly international character of the League.1 His piece was entitled “The Coloured Peoples’ International,” a reference to the socialist Internationals of Europe. These “Internationals” were here writ larger than ever due to the involvement of “26 associated organizations [that represented] Nationalist or working class movements from Korea to South America.”2 The way in which these two divides—Communist and nonCommunist, white European and “coloured”—were talked about and talked around in the founding documents of the League allows us to see an unlikely object emerge: the purported aim of every single person at the conference and, indeed, the people they took great pains to represent. The historiography of interwar anti-imperialism has largely tracked the movement of activists from the colonies and imperial metropoles in their efforts to gather and mobilize. Places and networks function as critical analytics, with the European capitals of Paris, London, and Berlin as “contact zones” for activists from a wide-ranging set of locales, pursued by metropolitan police and moving in and out of international organizations, student groups, debating societies, and press offices.3 In unspooling the political thought generated out of these exchanges historians have emphasized the extraordinary range of visions for a world after empire, ones that did not necessarily enshrine aspirations for a future free of imperial domination in the nation-state.4 The League put most of their rhetorical and material efforts in the early years (1927–1929) towards making a case for the structural relationship between the various forms of injustice being protested by the array of groups assembled under its auspices, and attempting to “coordinate” the efforts against them. In the resolutions, speeches, and pamphlets produced out of the Brussels Congress of 1927 and the Frankfurt Congress of 1929, readers were called upon to participate in the ongoing struggle. Reports of the conditions under colonial rule, updates on specific nationalist and labour movements, histories of ancient nations now living under foreign rule, and book reviews of the latest publications were, at least in theory, meant to stir up radical sentiment and agitate readers into joining a local League section or starting one. Thinking anti-imperialism At the 1927 founding congress in Brussels, the particulars of imperial domination were addressed through position papers on various nationalcolonial situations.5 The “competing imperialisms” that met along the fringes of each imperial power’s sphere of influence were understood as

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distinct, yet part of one overarching oppressive force.6 The prevailing notion was that an attack against any one of these enemies would weaken the other, because empire as a force had a stake in racism, economic exploitation, and the withholding of political self-determination. The ideological dilemma of a combined capitalist and imperial oppression was central to the Comintern’s strategy as well as to the League’s professed goals.7 In debates over the precise strategy necessary for social and political revolution (or even more reform-minded changes in governance) that extend to the present day, the logic by which a polity should be organized and led meant navigating criss-crossing lines of identity and belonging. For instance, in building up a national identity class solidarities appeared to fall by the wayside, and vice versa. The role played by the Soviet Union and the Communist International was also critical in structuring and disseminating the idea of a socialist world order brought about by nationally based revolutions, which would then coalesce into world revolution. Alongside, and sometimes intertwined with a Soviet-oriented left internationalism, were the networks created by black intellectuals and activists.8 The regionalisms that grew out of these networks include pan-Africanism, Asianism, and pan-Islamism, each of which have been worked over in rich historiographies that trace the dynamism of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century travellers and imperial subjects through the socialist and nationalist activism of the 1920s and 1930s to the decolonization movements and international organizations of the second half of the twentieth century.9 For the group assembled in Brussels in 1927 rhetorical and practical choices had to be made.10 The printed materials of the League are a site for thinking because the internationalist, middle- and upper-class, lettered strata from which its own members came were supposed to respond to information about imperialism with action. At the initial congresses in Brussels and Frankfurt workers and peasants were often invoked and lauded, and while delegates sometimes came from working-class backgrounds, they were not the poorest or most marginalized of their particular struggles. This is not to dismiss their thinking or activism, nor should it suggest that their work exists in a stratum of “theory” distinct from practice. As Minkah Makalani notes in his study of black internationalism and the “cause of freedom,” textual analysis of the overseas conference and printed word lays bare ideas also produced and contested by “workers in places such as Chicago, Milwaukee, Liverpool, Gambia, the Gold Coast, Cleveland, Baltimore, Birmingham, Oklahoma, Bogalusa, Hamburg, Rotterdam, and Elaine, Arkansas, who lacked the time and possibly the inclination to

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put their ideas on paper but whose activism nonetheless produced a rich black radical political and intellectual tradition.”11 Indeed, later meetings of the League sections and joint efforts at organizing with nationalist groups or trade unions drew large crowds and included the “workers and peasants” so often called upon in the documents of the Brussels Congress. At any rate, representing the problem of imperialism and showing the relationship between “local struggles” and structural change required intellectual work. Information and agitation Many of the League’s efforts during its early years and into its twilight in the 1930s were dedicated to presenting and disseminating information about the colonial situation to its networks, with the often unspoken conviction that the truth of the atrocities under colonial administrations and the figures on economic exploitation and waste would agitate readers and bring them into the fold of the international anti-imperialist milieu. The political resolutions in 1927 are full of statistical tables and testimonies; indeed, one register in which anti-imperial internationalism operated was reportage. Reporting from the far-flung places where capitalism and imperialism caused harm and bearing witness to these crimes was one aspect of the display of the Brussels conference, where men and women made declarations on the suffering taking place where they came from and brought this suffering to bear on a coordinated effort against the overarching cause. The organization’s journal, The Anti-Imperialist Review, as well as its bulletin, Colonial News, contained accounts of riots, strikes, trials, changes in government, and graphics depicting numerically the scale and distribution of resources and population, in an effort to show the extent of imperialist violence. In his speech at the Brussels Congress, José Vasconcelos, the Mexican writer and politician, noted, “The situation in Latin America is not very well-known in Europe. It is perhaps more ignored in Asia. They have their own troubles in Asia and Europe has very limited interests in Latin America.”12 Born in Mexico, and at Brussels as a representative of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, Vasconcelos took the opportunity at the Congress to make the case for the centrality of the region to the entire system of imperialism: “[f]ew people take pains to look at the map and see how that tremendous Empire, U.S.A has been built up—through robbery, through bravery, through cruelty, and through cleverness, but this miracle endangers the whole of humanity .... We are in the centre of the world conflict.”13 In a pamphlet on Persia the authors note the following:

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Persia has an area of 1,645,000 kilometres squared and a population of around 10 million inhabitants, half of which are of the peasant class. The petty artisans, the merchant bourgeoisie, and the large landowners constitute around 1 to 2 million. 1.5 million to 2 million inhabitants constitute the dispossessed and pauperized in Persia. These numbers show the interests of small artisans, the peasantry, and the dispossessed masses must play the decisive role in the social and political life of a country.14

The pamphlet describes the situation in Persia as “imperial,” because of the economic and political domination of Britain in the region. It described the rule of Shah Reza Pehlavi (who had come to power recently, in 1925) as “aristocratic and feudal,” making clear the overlapping types of political structures the authors opposed.15 They laid out the ways in which Persia came under the influence of foreign powers, and how, despite the control of the government by Persians, the conditions were those of domination and exploitation rather than those of self-government. The suffering of the Persian workers and peasants began with economic exploitation, which then brought political domination: “the market and the source of raw materials are the decisive factors in the expansionist tendencies of countries with high capitalist development.”16 The argument for a future governed by the desires of the “dispossessed masses” was thus made by showing their sheer numbers. In the “resolution syndicale,” there was a similar gesture: “the undersigned delegates represent 17 trade unions forming 7,962,000 members of all the races participating in the [Brussels congress] affirm their complete solidarity with all the oppressed peoples of the universe in the struggle for their liberation … from imperialism and commit the support of all their forces and by all the means in their power.”17 Delegates advocated for an international organization of workers regardless of race, nationality, or type of work. The practicality or immediate implementation of such a call for mobilization notwithstanding, the gesture itself was analogous to (and accompanied by) calls for world revolution, in that it imagined both a mechanism and political form for the solution to social and political ills on a universal scale.18 In a pamphlet on Korea, Japanese settlement in the country was shown visually, to show, once more, the scale of native dispossession.  The authors tell us that a long history of piracy along the Korean coast culminated in Japanese victory because of a decisive change: “[s]uch events strengthened the enmity between the two peoples from year to

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Fig. 19. “The Korean Problem”. IISH, League Against Imperialism Archives, File 38.

year, till at last the Japanese, who had learned enough of the modern European methods of warfare, ended the war which had continuously lasted for thousands of years, and Korea with an area of 220,000 sq km and 20,000,000 inhabitants became the property of the Japanese.”19 Alongside these tables and graphics, there is a caveat: other than figures on agriculture, “unfortunately, we do not possess any sure and correctly compiled statistics for the other branches of economy. We maintain, however, that we do not exaggerate when we assert that at least half of the total Korean economic products are taken by the Japanese.”20 A reference to the “old statistics” and the fact that they will have to do also suggests that, despite the surefooted presentation of figures meant to strengthen the argument that the Japanese were an exploitative and foreign occupier, the authors of the pamphlet were in doubt about their own data and admitted as much—but this was accounted for as another reality of living under occupation. Getting anti-Japanese reports and information out of Korea and to the rest of the world was the goal: “[t]hose who are misled by Japanese diplomacy believe that the Koreans are satisfied with the Japanese policy. They are wrong. The Koreans have always been enemies

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of Japanese rule … It is not known to the world that many revolts have taken place against Japanese military despotism in Korea.”21 The distinction between the non-Communists and Communists in League circles was a crucial one, as was the distinction between the white European delegates and delegates of colour from Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The Comintern-funded League began in 1927 as a place where non-Communists were invited and, indeed, celebrated. The League eventually came apart as a result of the changing Soviet policy towards such a coalition and the anti-Communist socialists’ own anxieties about the involvement of the Soviet Union. There was frequent emphasis at Brussels that discrete struggles for national independence connected with the struggle for workers’ rights or peace, but also that that they coalesced into a single struggle for world revolution. The enemy was coordinated too: technologies of modern warfare, much like global capitalism, had forcibly incorporated “the whole of mankind” into a singular state of danger.22 The International Antimilitarist Commission’s declaration included specific instructions for the white working class and colonial peoples: the former were to “break [their] union with the dominant class and to destroy the military apparatus of the state by personal and mass refusal of service, by determined stoppage of war industries and through blocking every move toward war upon colonial peoples.”23 Colonial peoples were to “seek their power in the first place in the effective economic means of revolutionary struggle—the boycott, strike, refusal to pay taxes, and non-cooperation.” Information was also meant to bring colonial workers into the joint struggle: “[imperialism] is doomed because of the rising of working class intelligence. This imperialism … cannot overcome the boycott which it is within the power of the workers to enforce.”24 And, crucially, the boycott could be a real tactic among the “Comrades of Asia and Africa” only once they had been taught to think in terms of imperialism’s international reach: “[t]each [the colonial workers] that wars are the means for keeping the workers in subjection and when this is done … we shall establish a true International.”25 The anti-imperialist internationalist, then, was someone tasked with making a political subject out of the colonial worker, a person whose labour was being exploited, but who lagged behind his European counterpart in his usefulness to the international effort. Middle- and upper-class comrades of colour were to go home and teach the working poor of Africa and Asia what it meant to grasp at freedom. In these concrete and material demands on its members we can read a particularly patronizing sort of didactic anti-imperialism.

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Colonial difference and anti-imperialism Understanding what the League made of colonial difference when pursuing a world revolution requires re-visiting the exchange between Lenin and M.N. Roy at the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920. The resulting theses focused primarily on the “difference between the oppressed and oppressor nations.”26 First and foremost, the theses communicated the need for a differentiated policy for the Comintern when operating in colonial settings. This was a practical and ideological complication of the notion of fundamental unity in the struggle of the world proletariat and the assertion that it was in protracted conflict with the forces of world capital. Recognizing the uniqueness of the colonial condition, Lenin and Roy sought to approach all colonial and national questions not from the abstract, but from “the concrete point of view.”27 In his 1917 pamphlet, Lenin asserted that imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism. “In its economic essence imperialism is monopoly capitalism,” which results in the overlapping divisions of the world between various capitalist associations (economic units) and great powers (political units).28 Thus, part of world revolution was the inclusion of colonized peoples in the struggle against this interconnected system. To this end the Comintern organized conferences on the colonial situation, and at its own gatherings debated the right course of action. This did not, however, preclude the amalgamation of singular liberation struggles and injustices into the Soviet model. At the Second Congress, Lenin asserted that integral to the correct engagement with “a single national or colonial question even in the most distant part of the world” was the understanding that, after the imperialist war, the world system of states had been divided into the small number of imperialist nations against the Soviet movement and the Soviet powers with Soviet Russia at the head.29 The colonial countries operated under the yoke of European imperialism, and so would eventually join the ranks of the latter group. The objective of the Comintern with respect to the non-European world was to ensure that this occurred. Roy’s intervention in this debate had been to clarify the counterrevolutionary role of the national bourgeoisie and, paradoxically, their usefulness. Roy’s view of his own historical moment required the “correct conception of this mutual relationship [between the Comintern] and the revolutionary movement in the politically oppressed countries dominated by their own capitalist system.”30 Being doubly dominated was thus a special condition in the eyes of Soviet revolutionaries from 1920 onwards, and the Second Congress of the Comintern tasked itself with establishing

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a base-line policy with which to approach the fomenting of social rearrangement in the colonial countries, with the colonial proletariat at the helm (at least in theory). Lenin argued that there existed elements that were social reformist or social democratic, or merely bourgeois and in control: the “bourgeois democratic” forces. In the colonial context they could be dubbed the “national revolutionary” elements. In his supplementary theses, Roy acknowledged that the national liberation struggles in countries such as India and China were led by agents of capitalism who sought to co-opt emerging proletarian-led resistance. However, Roy’s interpretation of the teleology of world revolution involved the creation of stages specific to the colonial situation. “In the first period the revolution in the colonies will not be communist,” he argued, but placed the function of the Comintern and Soviet-inspired revolutionaries at this point nonetheless. Roy argued that the communist vanguard had to take its place in the leadership of the revolutionary masses—the revolution would be protoproletarian because it would be composed of peasants and workers, but in its infancy it would be a non-communist revolution. The revolution would then unfold in stages, with its first stage carried out “according to the programme of purely petty-bourgeois demands, such as distribution of the land and so on.”31 In parallel, however, the proletarian parties would carry out a programme of propaganda and organization, thereby working to resolve the dual domination suffered in the colonial situation—that of a domination by European empire and by capital. The understanding that the colonial situation was somehow unique, and would unfold according to its own, modified teleology, was central to the operations of the League, and the relationship of the League’s aims to those of the colonial nationalists involved. The dual domination of empire and capital was taken for granted in the League’s early programme, but was discussed at length nonetheless. Less explicit was the apparent necessity of the momentary cooperation with “petty-bourgeois aims” for national liberation and the insidious but necessary “national revolutionary” element in the colonial struggle.32 The 1920s were characterized by an openness in international Communist circles, and for the first years of its operation the League embodied the Second Congress’s emphasis on organization in the colonial countries. It is clear that the League and international Communist movement more broadly were building an infrastructure in the 1920s—laying the groundwork for their plans to move revolutionary persons, information, and organizational models to the “oppressed peoples.”33

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National independence and world revolution The way in which the colonial situation was supposed to be different is not always clear. Was it just like Europe, with its nation-states and its transition from feudalism to capitalism merely delayed? Was it fundamentally and eternally alien, because of the nature of its people and climate? Or was it, as many argued, an unassimilable part of the world economy and system that required a distinct yet integrated approach to revolutionary agitation? An account of this last approach was explained in the pamphlet on Persia. The Persian delegation most likely prepared it for circulation at Brussels, and the resolutions on political and social revolution in Persia written at the congress draw on the analysis therein. Produced by the Revolutionary Republican Party of Persia, the pamphlet emphasized that “when a country is under the economic dependency of foreign capital, it falls inevitably into a certain political dependency.”34 The world economy was more than the sum of individual national economies, because “one of the most important laws of this modern [capitalist] economy is the tendency to liberate itself from a narrow national frame and to conquer under its influence the largest possible economic domains.”35 Proceeding first from the dynamics of this global economy, a global politics followed: “the laws of Euro-American modern capitalism lead to a politics of their own, and are designated in general under the name of imperialism.” A brief history of the “system of terror and oppression” came next. According to this, the “system of terror” under which Persians were living began in 1614 (during the Ottoman-Safavid Wars) and continued after 1761, when English imperialism succeeded in gaining a monopoly over trade and customs via “an economic violence reinforced by a political violence.”36 This point is not unique to the Persian situation; the resolution on the Negro Question detailed a periodization of global history that provided an explanation for the present situation: “the political economic enslavement of the Negro peoples has extended over a period of 300 years which may be divided into three stages: the period of merchant capitalism … the period of industrial capitalism … the epoch of imperialism.”37 Many anti-imperial claims at Brussels and Frankfurt were built on calls for national independence and social revolution that employed a range of devices to justify their existence. Claims for an independent nation-state (often on the basis of an older political form) sat alongside the claim for the global liberation of black people (that was non-national in form) and the realization of world revolution via the cooperation of workers from around the world. There was a difference between a call for freedom for all people and a call to freedom for all peoples. The former, freedom for all

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people from capitalist and imperialist exploitation, was a political object without political form. The former was configured around the material condition of no longer being exploited: no longer being forced to serve in the army, no longer being taxed to starvation, no longer worked until death. Freedom for all “peoples,” however, could only come about by one mechanism inside the world laid out in the League’s proceedings: independence. In the wake of the Treaty of Versailles, the language of Wilsonian self-determination co-existed with the minority question in Europe, along with the problem of statelessness. Leninist anti-imperialism was the basis for the League’s conceptual framing, which co-existed with the Soviet Union’s project of political consolidation and internal nationalization.38 The claim to political sovereignty, then, hinged in the public sphere of the European left (broadly conceived) on the one-to-one relationship between a “people” (or nation) and a “state”—a logic that, in reality, had applied only to the states created out of the land empires of Europe after 1918 but one which carried weight nonetheless. Claims to peopledom, furthermore, could not be made in a universal register— though all peoples deserved freedom, they deserved it for different, historically contingent, and geographically bounded reasons. Koreans argued that the Japanese were foreign imperialists because they were attempting to govern a people that were racially distinct, with a culture of their own: “[f]rom time immemorial, as far back as history reaches, Korea has belonged to the Koreans, an ancient Uralaltaic race, which can not be considered as being immediately related either to the Chinese or to the Japanese. The Koreans enjoyed unbroken freedom in both their internal and their foreign politics for over four thousand years. They knew to create and develop a culture of their own, to assimilate that of foreigners and to carry their own into neighbouring countries.”39 For Indian and Chinese delegates, the language of civilization was just as useful here as it had been for nineteenth-century imperialists. “India and China stand on equal footing; these two great peoples whose civilization is older than that of any other country represented at the Conference.”40 Madame Sun Yat-sen (Soong Ching-ling) wrote in the League’s journal, “Nowhere in the world do the people suffer so intensely as those of China, oppressed as we are by native reaction and foreign imperialism.”41 In his foreword to that issue, the British MP James Maxton made another comparison: “[l]ife under capitalism is bad enough for the Working Class in the highly developed industrial countries of Europe, but it is infinitely worse for the subject peoples, and particularly the coloured races, subjected as they are to the double tyranny of foreign government and

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foreign capitalism.”42 Two distinct kinds of political subjects are presented here: the “working class” and the “subject peoples”; the one defined by what they do, the other defined as what they are. The work of subject peoples was doubly oppressive because they were doubly oppressed. The League urged its members to bring people to the “joint struggle” and was specific about what sorts of people they were. In the report of the International Anti-Militarist43 Commission at Brussels delegates warn of “permanent war”: “[c]olonial oppression and modern imperialist wars are only possible by the union of the white proletariat with their governments, oppressing them too, by the same imperialism—when they serve as sailors on men-of-war, as soldiers in the army, and as workers in war industries.” The only way to avoid another world war, they argued, was through world revolution; “real freedom” would come “not only through national independence, but especially through economic liberty—the ending of all forms of exploitation of the working class.”44 Thus the categories of persons who were the target of anti-imperialist organizing sometimes overlapped in reports and speeches, and were sometimes treated as geographically distinct. These two terms, working class and subject peoples, appeared side by side in many places in the initial documents put forward by the League, and I suggest we follow these directives in pursuit of the kind of political subject assumed and the kind of transformation called for by its form of anti-imperialism. When national independence appeared as the aim of the League (indeed, in its full name) in 1927, a future free from imperialism hovered, mirage-like, as one composed of “free” nations. The place of capitalism in that world was murkier still. Non-national politics At the Comintern Congress of 1929 the organization adopted its “classagainst-class” strategy, and entered its so-called Third Period, which sought to expel or discredit any activists who were not directly involved in communist initiatives and were henceforth considered bourgeois collaborators with capitalism. The impact of this shift in the activities of the League was neither total nor uniform, though it certainly accounts for the denunciations of trade unionism, reformism, and nationalism that appear in League documents after 1929. But even in the Communist vision, and especially in the non-Communist socialist one, national independence was politically necessary. The trouble arose when independence or, rather, some form of self-government was approaching in the hands of leaders who might scupper the two-step revolution before it even got started. In 1927, the so-called colonial bourgeois nationalist was a welcome guest at

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the League’s table, and so the caution was directed at “reformists” and “reactionaries,” terms that would balloon in the Comintern’s approaching closing-in to include everyone but the Communists.45 These “internal allies of imperialism … feudal elements and military authorities” were among the pre-modern residues of colonial polities, to be sloughed off in the wake of the “advanced revolutionary working class organizations.”46 Among the alternatives to the nation-state for a world after empire, delegates presented two in the League’s early proceedings. They are brought up in the plans for the liberation of black people and in the trade unionists’ solidarity statement of 1927.47 In both resolutions, a different sort of political subject and a different sort of political form cut into the model of freedom-making put forward by the liberal anti-imperialists, the Communist anti-imperialists, and the colonial nationalists alike. This is to say nothing of visions of Pan-Asianism or the Islamic world, which poked through the orthodoxy of the two-step world revolution.48 The trade unionists’ vision was one of an international trade union, without racial or national barriers. The strike tactic in Bombay and the organization of “trade unions of native workers” in South Africa were held up as proof that organizing as workers in the colonies cut the capitalistimperialist nexus precisely where it met. Here, it was more difficult to dismiss any challenge as reformist or reactionary, because the source of the challenge included the white worker—the political subject that throughout the League’s early years members had been encouraged to bring to the truth of the joint struggle. The “terror” of imperial repression was the “the exploitation of national and race prejudices among the workers, and workers of various races etc. being played off against each other (South Africa and the West Indies: Indians and natives the USA; Negroes and white workers, native and foreign born).”49 When the political subject eluded the political form of the nation-state, as in the case of the formation of an international trade union or the Negro question the world over, markers of difference were no longer the raison d’ȇtre (as with national independence) but an obstacle to be overcome. Whereas for the cause of national independence the contours of “a people” designated them sovereign, in a necessarily transnational political form, the League’s delegates argued that the political subject needed to be protected from any divisions that would thwart the worldwide scale on which liberation was meant to be realized. At Brussels, the Committee on the Negro Question drafted a resolution that cast the history of capitalism in terms of the slave trade and imperial expansion. The committee was chaired by Lamine Senghor,

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a former colonial soldier and Senegalese activist, and Richard B. Moore, the African American Communist, and included J.T. Gumede of the African National Congress, Guadaloupean lawyer and organizer Max Bloncourt, and others.50 The resolution drew on their “global biographies and corresponding sense of race” and acted as “an idiom through which to imagine a struggle centered on ‘the emancipation of the Negro peoples of the world’.”51 They designated the political subject of that query “the Negro masses.” They were not a “people” in the same sense as had appeared elsewhere in the League’s proceedings, in that they were owed a nation-state. But they were many, and a many qualified by a marker of their particularity under capitalism and imperialism: a coherent racial and political identity. The League designated them as one among “other oppressed peoples”: a political collective but not the pre-condition for a state. In this case, it was capitalism’s fundamental reliance on the institution of slavery and the carving up of the African continent itself that created a shared experience: “[t]he drawing of Africa into the orbit of world capitalism and the development of the Negro peoples in America has led to the formation of a Negro proletariat and a nascent bourgeoisie.”52 The “drawing of Africa” into capitalism led to “ class differentiation taking place in the environment of racial and national oppression, intensified a hundredfold in the era of imperialism, has strengthened a trend of the Negro peoples towards political emancipation.”53 Much like with the “bourgeois” elements of struggles for national independence, the effects of modern capitalism were separating out the “unsafe” elements of the polity, which posed a threat to the true revolutionary core. For the League what this threat looked like differed by the kind of political subject being discussed, but among the delegates on the Committee on the Negro Question it was clear where it lay. In a section entitled “Tendencies Hostile to the Negro Liberation Movement” they listed the “social reformism of the Second International,” its “counterpart in certain sections of the Negro middle classes and intellectuals,” and Garveyism. This claim was based on the experience of oppression, unlike the claims of India and China (whose claims to peopledom relied on the so-called ancient civilizations from which they came) or Korea (with its population apparently descended from a single “Uraltaic race”).54 However, the history of “revolutionary struggles of the Negroes” in the resolution detailed experience of a different kind: “the negro peoples are by no means lacking in revolutionary tradition. The heroic struggles of the natives of Africa, the innumerable slave revolts in the Americas and the victorious slave revolutions of Haiti constitute a great history.55 The authors grounded the claim to a political tradition common

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to the “150 million Negro toilers of the world.”56 This figure, much like the numbers of Koreans or Persians, suggested a claim to a shared political life and revolutionary sovereignty, if not a claim to territorial sovereignty: a revolution in which they were the revolutionary subject. The right to carry out a revolution on their own terms and in their own name was part of what was being resolved in this document, but it was not congruent with a claim to territory or state-making. Claims to coherence as a political community were in this way refracted through the League’s proceedings, and came out the other side in a formula for revolutionary demands that nonetheless revealed the extraordinary particularities of an ostensibly universal freedom struggle. Conclusion With these terms laid out and their temperature taken, what can the League tell us about thinking and doing something called “anti-imperialism” in the first decades of the twentieth century? The tasks the League set its members tell us what opposing imperialism meant at the intellectual register, because it details the not-yet of their present situation. When delegates explained how the people they were there to represent came under imperial rule and became beholden to the capitalist economy, they were putting their histories to use. When they discussed the specific injustices they lived with or described the numbers of poor “natives” relative to the number of settlers, a claim to territorial sovereignty hung in the air. When delegates invoked the work stoppage, or strike, or mass organization as one of the methods by which they might get free, they made explicit and immediate the relationship between their labour and global imperialism. The gulf between where people were and where they needed to be in order to achieve revolution or independence or both was at the centre of the League’s demands on its members, whom the executive addressed as the architects in the making of the anti-imperial subject. The anti-imperial subject was a person who understood the relationship between their local situation and the world economy. It was the job of League members to make workers, peasants, intellectuals, and fellow travellers understand this. This was an idealized (and patronizing) approach to bringing about world revolution, and of course the short life of the League shows, among other things, that exhortation and information can take you only so far. Other essays in this volume compellingly show the striking and sometimes idiosyncratic trajectories of many of the League’s members through and beyond the Brussels and Frankfurt congresses. For our own purposes, it is striking that two great critical traditions of the twentieth century are

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dedicated to the critique of capitalism and the critique of imperialism/ colonialism respectively. These critiques have formed the agenda of political thinking for two centuries, and taken root in state formation, international ordering, localized revolts, and experiments in governance. People acting in the name of these critiques have drawn lines, sometimes literally, between groups of people and their pasts, presents, and futures. In the body of the League’s initial gatherings, we can read the ferment and precarity of the decades between the world wars, written along the global fault lines of wealth, empire, race, and power. Twinned and named in tandem, capitalism and imperialism appear in the League’s proceedings as adversaries made universal by the nineteenth century’s most expansive forces and made manifest in the twentieth via war, poverty, and the denial of the right to govern oneself. The above is an attempt to read the outlines of an object at the place where these concerns met, without equating coherence with internal sameness, or claim-making with something like sincerity. If we consider the early years of the League as a working through of why different kinds of political subjects should or could have a sovereign political form—a state, or a federation, or even a name— anti-imperialism’s particular stabs at an otherwise abstracted, universal “freedom” look like the unevenness of capital and imperialism itself. Notes 1

2 3

British Library (BL), India Office Records (IOR), File 1309/25/13: Fenner Brockway, “The Coloured Peoples’ International,” The New Leader, 26 August 1927. On the LAI and the British Left, see Mark Reeves in this volume. Ibid. Work on these networks includes Jean Jones, The League Against Imperialism, Socialist History Society Occasional Pamphlet Series No. 4 (Preston, UK: Lancashire Community Press, 1996); Ricardo Melgar Bao and Mariana Ortega Breña, “The Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas between the East and Latin America” Latin American Perspectives, 35:2 (March 2008); Maia Ramnath, Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011); Manu Goswami, “Imaginary Futures and Colonial Internationalisms,” American History Review 117:5 (2012), 1461–1485; Fredrik Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, The League Against Imperialism and the Comintern, 1925–1933 (Lewiston, Queenston Press, 2013); Kris Manjapra, Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectuals across Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World

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4

5 6 7

8

Nationalism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015); Marc Matera, Black London: The Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015); Leela Gandhi, Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought, Fin-de-Siècle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship (Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 2006); Daniel Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal Imperialism and the Surveillance of Anticolonialists in Europe, 1905–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), Michele Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018); and Tom Buchanan, “‘The Dark Millions in the Colonies are Unavenged’: Anti-Fascism and Anti-Imperialism in the 1930s,” Contemporary European History 25:4 (2016), 645–65. Frederick Cooper, Citizenship Between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945–1960 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014); Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2015); Lorelle Semley, To Be Free and French: Citizenship in France’s Atlantic Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2019). The Hindustan Gadar Party. Resolutions of the League Against Imperialism for India (San Francisco: The Hindustan Gadar Party, undated). BL, IOR, File YD.2009.a.3401. LAI Secretariat, “China’s Appeal to British Workers.” 1932. Communist Party of India, Comintern and National Colonial Questions: Documents of Congresses (New Delhi: New Age Printing Press, 1973). For the role of the Comintern in the LAI, see Fredrik Petersson’s essay in this volume, as well as his two-volume work, cited above. See John Riddell (ed.), To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920 – First Congress of the Peoples of the East (New York: Pathfinder, 1993); Hakim Adi, Pan Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa, and the Diaspora, 1919–1939 (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2013); Evan Smith, “National Liberation for Whom? The Postcolonial Question, the Communist Party of Great Britain, and the Party’s African and Caribbean Membership” International Institute for Social History 61 (2017) 283–315; Keisha N. Blain, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018); Imaobong D. Umoren, Race Women Internationalists: Activist-Intellectuals and Global Freedom Struggles (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018); Minkah Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from

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9

10

11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21

Harlem to London, 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2011); and Ali Raza, Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020). See 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), and Carolien Stolte and Harold Fischer-Tiné, “Imagining Asia in India: Nationalism and Internationalism (ca. 1905–1940),” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54:1 (2012), 65–92. In this essay, anti-imperialism is understood less as a static or even relative political stance towards the presence and practices of empire, and more as a self-conscious vocabulary of coalition building and mutual recognition. How can we write about the idea(s) of anti-imperialism, saturated as they were with the century’s most potent and tantalizing hopes? If we are to take seriously David Scott’s warning against writing “romantic anticolonialism,” for instance, then a narrative that turns on the League’s possibility and potential cannot suffice. See David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 45. Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom, 16. International Institute of Social History (IISH), League against Imperialism Archive (LAIA), file 39: Speech of José Vasconcelos, Congress-meeting of 10 February, 1927. For the LAI and Latin America, see Michael Goebel’s essay in this volume. Ibid. IISH, LAIA, File 46. “La Perse sous la signe de révolution.” Ibid. Ibid. ISSH, LAIA, File 61. “Resolution sydicale.” The implied and material relationship between socialism and internationalism echoes in the closing lines of the 1848 Communist Manifesto, as Patrizia Dogliani notes, and extends into the genealogy of the workers’ associations known as the Internationals and their opposite, the cooperation and coordination of counter-revolutionary governments and alliances in Europe and in the colonies. See Patrizia Dogliani, “The Fate of Socialist Internationalism” in Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin (eds.), Internationalisms: A Twentieth Century History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 38–60. IISH, LAIA, File 38: “The Korean Problem,” 5. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 7.

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22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

IISH, LAIA, File 60: Declaration of the International Antimilitarist Commission (IAMC). Ibid. IISH, LAIA, File 126: Opening remarks, George Lansbury, Brussels Congress, 1927. Ibid. V.I. Lenin and M.N. Roy, “Minutes of the Fourth Session of the Second Congress of the Communist International.” www.marxists.org/history/inter national/comintern/2nd-congress/ch04.htm. Last modified 2014. Ibid. V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capital, A Popular Outline (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963), 298. Ibid. Ibid. Lenin and Roy, “Minutes of the Fourth Session,” 1920. IISH, LAIA, Int 1405/4: “Statutes of the LAI, 1927.” Ibid. IISH, LAIA, File 46. “La Perse sous la signe de révolution.” Ibid. Ibid. IISH, LAIA, File 91: “Resolution on the Negro Question.” See Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005). IISH, LAIA, File 38: “The Korean Problem.” IISH, LAIA, File 126: Opening remarks, George Lansbury, Brussels Congress, 1927, 1. Madame Sun Yat Sen, “In the Name of the Chinese People,” The AntiImperialist Review 1:1 (1928). Foreword by James Maxton, The Anti-Imperialist Review 1:1 (1928). IISH, LAIA, File 60: Declaration of the International Antimilitarist Commission (IAMC). Ibid. IISH, LAIA, File 118: “Political Resolution of the LAI, 1927.” IISH, LAIA, File 91: “Resolution on the Negro Question.” IISH, LAIA, 1495/20: “Resolution Syndicale;” Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont (Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 1927), 203.

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48

49

50

51 52 53 54 55 56

Report of the LAI in the Colonial Countries, Anti-Imperialist Review, 1:1 (1928): “The President of the Congress, Dr. Ansari referred in his speech to the absolute necessity of forming a federation of Asiatic peoples for the united struggle against imperialism and pointed out that the first step in this regard had been taken by the Congress by associating itself with the LAI.” For a brief history of The Anti-Imperialist Review, the LAI’s periodical, particularly of its revival after 1931, see Fredrik Petersson, “Why We Appear: The Brief Revival of The Anti-Imperialist Review” https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/02/01/ appear-brief-revival-anti-imperialist-review/ (accessed 4 March 2019). IISH, LAIA, File 89: “The Trade Unions and the Struggle Against Imperialism,” Second Anti-Imperialist World Congress, Frankfurt. 20–31 July 1929. Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom, 142. For Senghor and the LAI, see David Murphy’s essay in this volume, and for South Africa and the Leninist notions of self-determination, see Christopher J. Lee’s essay. Ibid., 143; quote from the resolution on the Negro Question, IISH, LAIA, File 91. IISH, LAIA, File 91: “Resolution on the Negro Question”. Ibid. IISH, LAIA, File 38: “The Korean Problem.” Ibid. Ibid.

Chapter 10

The Anti-imperialist “Echo” in India Michele Louro In 1928, the League against Imperialism (LAI) launched a quarterly journal, The Anti-Imperialist Review (AIR), which featured a lead article by founder Willi Münzenberg. He argued that the Brussels Congress produced a “powerful echo” that could be heard around the anti-imperialist world.1 His proof was found in India, where the Indian National Congress (INC) “hailed with enthusiasm” the creation of the LAI and resolved to associate with the movement and contribute financially to the secretariat. He celebrated the extensive coverage of the Brussels Congress in the Indian press and recognized the contributions of Jawaharlal Nehru, who continued to serve on the executive council and as a liaison between the LAI and India. Münzenberg concluded that the LAI had “taken a definite place in the Indian struggle for national liberty,” and that this “added considerable strength to the anti-imperialist movements and movements of national emancipation in the oppressed colonial and semi-colonial countries.”2 Münzenberg’s essay revealed two interrelated points. First, India was vital to the history and trajectory of the LAI. In this formative moment, the INC commitment to anti-imperialism set a benchmark for anti-colonial nationalists in other colonies and “added considerable strength” to the LAI. Later, as sectarianism rose within the LAI, the INC became the subject of intense criticism for its limitations as a bourgeois nationalist movement. Decisions by high-ranking INC leaders no doubt bolstered this criticism as Gandhi wavered on the question of complete independence from the British throughout the League’s existence from 1927 to 1937. The second point was that the anti-imperialist “echo” shaped Indian politics, a rather effusive claim by Münzenberg, but one that inevitably rang true in the years after the Brussels Congress. A major contention of this volume is that the LAI internationalized the claims of anticolonial activists and nationalists across the world in places as diverse as Algeria and Indonesia (see the chapters by Hassett and Stutje). Even for more established institutions like the INC, the League emboldened Nehru to lead Indian nationalists down a more radical path, one tied to the anti-imperialist message. Increasingly after 1927, the anti-imperialist 257

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“echo” came to be institutionalized in INC resolutions and policies, while nationalists forged connections between India and the anti-imperialist world well before India’s independence in 1947. This chapter recounts the interconnected histories of the LAI and INC, the mainstream political institution for Indian independence. While the original intention of this chapter was to trace the LAI’s “echo” in a variety of Indian individuals and institutions, the archival record reveals that the INC and Nehru were the primary conduits between India and the anti-imperialist movement. The LAI sought affiliations from Indian trade unionists and communists, but conditions in India presented challenges to affiliation that were difficult to overcome. The All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) remained split on the question of affiliations abroad for much of the League’s existence.3 Moderates advocated for affiliation with the Labour Socialist International, while more radical leaders sought ties to the Communist International (Comintern). No consensus emerged until the movement eventually split in 1929. Moreover, colonial surveillance and censorship obstructed connections between the LAI and Indian trade unionists and suspected communists.4 By 1929, this latter group had been locked away in prison for nearly four years in the infamous Meerut Conspiracy Case.5 In this context, the INC under the leadership of Nehru took up the cause of global anti-imperialism in India. The interplay between Nehru, India, and the League challenges conventional narratives of anti-imperialism that privilege either the anticolonial nationalist or communist composition of the LAI.6 Neither is adequate in understanding the LAI: rather, the movement was characterized by the simultaneity of both communist and nationalist politics in the interwar moment. This chapter also argues that both the nationalist and communist narratives were mutually constitutive in the making of interwar anti-imperialism. While the Comintern directed and often funded the League’s projects, as Petersson’s chapter documents, the voices of anticolonial nationalists and conditions in the colonial world were equally significant to shaping interwar anti-imperialism. This is clear in Tannoury-Karam’s contribution as well, which makes the case that the Syrian Revolt of 1925 and the question of Palestine informed LAI debates. By marking the significance of nationalism in the colonies, in this case the INC, this chapter reveals the contributions of the colonial world to the League during an internationalist moment when the creative “blending” of communist and anticolonial politics was possible and even celebrated.7 At the same time, this chapter encourages a history of anticolonial resistance in India beyond the conventional interpretations that privilege

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local and national narratives. Only recently have historians begun to consider anticolonialism within a global framework, although scholarship on the INC in particular remains situated within the local and national arena, or in relation to the metropole.8 This chapter pushes beyond this historiography and argues that INC politics were not confined to the nation, but rather that Congress engaged with the interwar world and developed in relation to global anti-imperialism. The INC and the LAI offer a compelling case for rethinking Indian nationalism as more fluid and globally engaged. The histories of India in the League and the League in India are reconstructed in this chapter in several chronological snapshots. The chapter begins by investigating the ways in which Nehru and the INC shaped the LAI in the late 1920s. The INC represented the possibilities for solidarity between anticolonial nationalists and the wider world of antiimperialism and anti-capitalism. Second, it considers the anti-imperialist “echo” in India by revealing the significance of the League to its chief advocate, Nehru, as well as the role anti-imperialism played in framing the INC’s worldview and in radicalizing its claims for independence from Britain. Third, this chapter traces the legacies of the LAI in INC history, and the INC in LAI history, during the turbulent years of the 1930s, as anticolonial resistance strengthened and the world edged closer to another war. This often-forgotten moment in the 1930s reveals the ongoing interplay between the League, anti-imperialism, and Indian nationalism long after the formal relationship between the INC and the LAI ended in 1930. Finally, by way of conclusion, this essay explores briefly the “echoes” of interwar anti-imperialism in the early Cold War with particular attention to the Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia (1955). India’s “echo” in the LAI Indian nationalism produced an “echo” that resonated in the politics and platforms of the LAI throughout the late 1920s. As early as Brussels, the importance of India was evident. The Congress opened with a call for “China for the Chinese” and “India for the Indians” by the chairman, George Lansbury of the British Labour Party. He captured a widely shared assumption that an “international federation” of anti-imperialists depended on events in the Asian arena.9 Lansbury’s colleague, Fenner Brockway of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), also underscored the importance of India and China. His speech addressed both delegations directly. To India he stressed that the ILP is “absolutely at one” with Indian people. He then invited the Chinese delegation to the stage to

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shake hands and “to pledge our word so far as the British ILP is concerned that we will resist any war with China to the utmost; that we declare our solidarity.”10 Applause erupted and the audience rose to its feet as Chinese delegates joined Brockway on stage. Theatrics aside, few countries mattered more to the Brussels Congress and early years of the LAI than India and China. In Brussels, the Chinese delegates, mainly from the radical wing of the Guomindang, far outnumbered any others and the situation in China dominated the proceedings. However, the pre-eminence of China was brief, ending after Chiang Kai-shek turned on communists in April 1927, only two months after the Brussels Congress celebrated the Chinese united front as a model for anti-imperialist comradeship. As the united front collapsed in China and engulfed the country in civil war, the LAI pivoted towards India and saw the INC as a counterweight to the Guomindang. In the years between 1927 and 1929, the LAI emphasized the INC’s potential to serve the antiimperialist cause and lead the colonial world in anti-imperialist resistance. In Brussels, the star power of Nehru overshadowed other representatives from the colonial world and catapulted India into the limelight.11 Organizers in Berlin and their contacts in Moscow were eager for Nehru to attend after attempts to lure Gandhi to Brussels failed.12 Nehru would not disappoint. He arrived early and served on the presidium, a small working group that determined the agenda and programme for the conference. He delivered his speech in the opening session, speaking on behalf of India and making a strong case for its importance to the anti-imperialist struggle worldwide. Nehru also earned unanimous approval for a place on the League’s executive council. He spent significant time and resources travelling across Europe in the service of the LAI throughout his remaining time abroad, from February to December 1927. Few experiences were more significant to Nehru’s political vision than the Brussels Congress.13 The presence of Nehru likewise eclipsed the importance of other influential South Asians who participated in Brussels. Organizers in Berlin and Moscow were especially eager to attract delegates based in the colonies as true representatives of anticolonial resistance. The future secretary of the LAI and arguably the most significant to the institution’s history, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (otherwise known as Chatto), was present, as well as Muhammed Barakatullah, co-founder of the infamous Ghadar Party movement based in America.14 As noted in Stolte’s essay in this volume as well, Barakatullah had stronger ties to communists in Berlin and Moscow, and he was keen to make connections between Nehru and the Comintern. Yet, his untimely death later that year limited

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the role of the Ghadar movement in the LAI. Moreover, neither Chatto nor Barakatullah had the political capital of Nehru, nor were they based in India. Nehru did much to cultivate the stature of India and the INC in Brussels. Of the ten resolutions passed, Nehru personally drafted three and signed a fourth written by the British delegation on solidarity between Britain, China, and India.15 Nehru’s resolution on India noted the primacy of Britain’s crown colony to global anti-imperialism: “[l]iberation of India from foreign domination and all kinds of exploitation is an essential step in the full emancipation of the peoples of the world.”16 Another resolution registered protest against Indian troops dispatched to the Middle East, as well as one on Indian and Chinese solidarity. The emphasis on Asian solidarity was paramount to the LAI, as Stolte’s essay in this volume also reveals. To this end, Nehru hosted a tea party with Asian delegates to consider stronger regional solidarities, an event encouraged by communist organizers and also funded by the INC.17 In Brussels, solidarity between the Asian giants—India and China— remained a strong emphasis for organizers and delegates alike. The IndiaChina resolution, drafted by Nehru, created a shared platform for the Guomindang and INC. The resolution argued that both India and China were “united by the most intimate cultural ties” from the “days of Buddha to the end of the Mughal period and the beginning of British domination in India.”18 British rule in India disrupted these connections, while China’s only encounters with its Asian neighbour during the colonial period were through their interactions with Indian troops serving British interests in the Far East. The document called for solidarity between the two “most vital fronts” of anti-imperialism. Beyond moral solidarity, the Brussels Congress prompted the drafting of a seven-point plan for exchanging information, but also for exchanging INC and Guomindang representatives, students, and trade unionists.19 After Brussels, the LAI secretariat also concentrated on developing an anti-imperialist conference in Hankou, China, and facilitating the travel arrangements for an Indian delegation to attend. Nehru had strong reservations about the practicalities of a China conference and even stronger doubts that the Government of India would extend visas to INC delegates. Nevertheless, the idea was agreeable in principle, and British refusal to issue visas would offer ample reason for further protests at home. A sharper focus on India within the LAI took place after the Shanghai massacre in April 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek abandoned his alliance with communists and his forces massacred thousands. By December

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1927, communists were forced underground in most Chinese cities. Having pinned their hopes and aspirations on Chinese solidarity between the Guomindang and communists, the LAI found itself in a difficult situation. The LAI ultimately decided to redirect its focus to India where Nehru actively supported the League and INC connection. Strengthening this pivot was a change in personnel in the secretariat. Liao Huanxing, a Chinese expatriate, left Berlin that year to seek other opportunities, and Chatto filled the vacancy.20 Chatto and Nehru developed a robust correspondence and close alliance that facilitated a strong tie between the LAI and the INC in the years between 1927 and 1930. By the launch of the Anti-Imperialist Review (AIR) and Münzenberg’s article on the anti-imperialist “echo,” India had all but eclipsed China as the beacon of hope in the colonial world. LAI newsletters and press service routinely underscored and promoted events in India by celebrating the contributions of the INC and Nehru, as well as new affiliations from Indian trade unions.21 In July 1927, the press service featured India and tackled issues like the British expansion into Burma, repression of Indian medical missions to China, and police violence against Indians in Burma and China. A small section on the possibility of an AITUC affiliation rounded out the issue.22 As a consequence of this Indian-centric emphasis, anti-imperialists across the interwar world came to conceptualize India as an anticolonial stalwart and to sympathize with the INC’s struggle. Although Nehru was essential to the development of the LAI, he was not alone in the INC in his promotion of the movement in the late 1920s. Frequent visits and fraternal greetings by other prominent INC leaders also bolstered the status of Indian nationalism within the LAI. Nehru’s father, Motilal Nehru, an influential and well-respected barrister in India, attended the meeting of the executive council in December 1927, representing the INC after his son had departed for India. In 1928 one of the INC’s former presidents, S. Srinivasa Iyengar, attended meetings of the British national section of the League and contributed formal greetings from the INC in the inaugural issue of AIR. He expressed his “warmest appreciation” for the “new spirit” of anti-imperialism in the West. He added that the INC “fervently hoped” that the anti-imperialist movement “will rapidly increase in volume and intensity and bring about a profound transformation.”23 A handful of Indian expatriates also joined LAI ranks. While Chatto became the steward of the LAI secretariat in Berlin, Indian member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), Sharpurji Saklatvala, joined after his tour of India in 1926–1927 where he faced off with Gandhi over

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working-class rights. Back in Europe, Saklatvala joined the executive councils of the British national section and the international LAI. He ultimately drafted the article on India in the first issue of AIR because Nehru missed the deadline. Saklatvala presented India as a “world problem” and the product of modern capitalism and imperialism. While he supported Nehru and the INC, he also warned that their policies had implications for the world. Any INC compromise with Britain for the “advance of personal rights of the few Indians,” would make them “enemies” of the working classes not only in India but also “many more countries than their own.”24 The cautionary note foreshadowed the communist position on the INC introduced later that year at the Sixth Congress of the Comintern. Even so, Saklatvala maintained his ties to Nehru beyond 1928 despite their differences in political affiliation. In these formative years between 1927 and 1930, India became the exemplar for anticolonial internationalism. The League showcased the success of Nehru and the INC in committing moral and financial support to the cause. The INC also served as a counterweight to the failed solidarity between the Guomindang Party and communists in China. Ultimately, these early years witnessed a remarkably strong connection between the INC and LAI as both movements came to see Indian anticolonialism as a vital dimension of the global struggle against imperialism. The Anti-Imperialist “Echo” in India In 1927 the League offered Nehru a pedagogical experience, prompting him to consider the global conditions that produced colonial oppression and capitalist exploitation within and beyond India, and to appreciate the connections between the local struggles Indians faced and anti-imperialist struggles worldwide. After Brussels, Nehru became an intermediary in “internationalizing nationalism,” or translating anti-imperialism within the Indian nationalist movement.25 Inspired by the LAI, Nehru drafted articles for Indian audiences that encouraged a global framing of the nationalist struggle, and he set out to “train and prepare” his Congress colleagues for “world events” that would render nationalism an “insufficient creed” for India.26 Through Nehru as intermediary, the antiimperialist “echo” came to shape INC politics in the late 1920s. Anti-imperialism in India had three dimensions. First, India’s struggle was part of the worldwide struggle against imperialism and capitalism. Therefore, India’s anticolonial resolve to challenge colonialism had global implications for weakening British imperialism and capitalism. Secondly and interrelatedly, Indians had to recognize their vital contribution to this

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struggle by demanding complete independence from the British Empire. The INC’s demand for independence and the establishment of sovereignty for Indians remained a necessary precondition to anti-imperialist triumph. Finally, the LAI advocated for solidarity between anti-capitalists and anti-imperialists on the world stage, and in India this meant aligning the demand for national sovereignty more closely with trade unionism and even communism. Of these initiatives, nationalist solidarity with trade unionism and communism remained the most elusive in this period. While the LAI experience converted Nehru to socialism, he was never wholly successful in convincing the INC of its necessity. Nehru’s personal transformation was immediate. While he admitted that he had little interest in socialism before 1927, his interest peaked as a consequence of the Brussels Congress.27 His first report to the INC on Brussels announced his newfound allegiance to socialism. When he returned to India from Europe in December 1927, he joined AITUC as a liaison between trade unionists and nationalists in India.28 He later became AITUC president in 1929. Nehru also frequented meetings of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, a group of clandestine communists in India in direct contact with Moscow and the CPGB. By 1929, the Government of India noted with alarm that Nehru maintained “his balance on the summit of the precipitous ridge which separates camps of nationalism and communism.”29 Despite his conversion, Nehru’s socialist agenda met strong resistance within the INC. According to Gandhi, the INC represented swaraj rather than socialism as a goal for social transformation. This led to many public confrontations between Nehru and Gandhi. Nehru wrote in his autobiography that Gandhi was a “paradox” for he sought to uplift the poor in India while he “blesses all the relics of the old order which stand as obstacles in the way of advance—the feudal states, the big zamindaries and taluqadaris (landlords), the present capitalist system.”30 Nehru quickly found himself at odds with Gandhi and INC leaders who found his support for socialism alarming and out of step with the nationalist programme. Gandhi often brokered a truce between Nehru and his critics, but the discord demonstrated the divisiveness that the class question engendered in the INC and the obstacles Nehru faced in pushing an anti-imperialist agenda in a nationalist context. Equally problematic was the marginal enthusiasm of Indian trade unionists for anti-imperialism. Only one trade unionist, S.H. Jhabvala, sent formal greetings to Brussels on behalf of the Bombay workers, while AITUC remained divided on whether to affiliate with any institutions

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abroad.31 The LAI did score a formal affiliation in late 1928, but only because the League sent a delegate to the annual meeting of AITUC who was detained by colonial authorities after the opening day. Moderates and radicals alike interpreted the arrest as an overreach by the colonial state in restricting fraternal delegates from abroad from attending AITUC meetings. In protest, delegates resolved to join the LAI and send delegates to the Second World Congress scheduled in 1929. The affiliation was symbolic and ultimately did little to strengthen AITUC engagement with the LAI.32 Instead, the cornerstone of anti-imperialism within India in this period was the INC’s declaration of national independence. Moved by Nehru at the annual congress in Madras in December 1927 in the wake of the League’s establishment, the INC ratified a simple declaration: “[t]his Congress declares the goal of the Indian people to be complete national independence.”33 This was a radical departure for the Congress, an organization founded in 1885 by a Scottish civil servant and with the permission of the viceroy. Dominated by constitutionalists seeking greater representation and access to employment opportunities, the INC before 1920 was hardly an anticolonial endeavour. Even with Gandhi at the helm, it advocated for swaraj, or self-rule rather than independence from Britain. By the late 1920s, most Congressmen desired constitutional reforms within the empire modelled on dominion states like Canada and Australia. Anti-imperialist solidarity, for both Nehru and the League, necessitated that all nationalists declare independence as their goal, thereby eradicating colonialism locally and contributing to the demise of imperialism globally. Nehru introduced the Madras resolution in this wider frame of India’s relationship to the anti-imperialist world. He declared its passage “epochmaking” in that it defined “what sort of freedom” the INC desired.34 He was clear that independence meant control over financial and economic policy, defence forces, and relations with foreign countries.35 Central to complete independence was the power of India to refuse support for the empire and forge “relations with foreign countries” on the basis of antiimperialist solidarity instead.36 Other Madras resolutions also “echoed” the LAI message by condemning imperialism globally and declaring India’s solidarity with anti-imperialists beyond its borders. One resolution moved to associate the INC with the LAI officially, while another expressed India’s solidarity with China in their “joint struggle” against imperialism. The China resolution also denounced the dispatch of Indian troops to further British “imperialists designs” and prevent the Chinese from “gaining their

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freedom.”37 This resolution echoed the LAI’s emphasis on Asian solidarity and the twinning of India and China in Brussels. Another resolution noted the growing “war danger,” and condemned Britain’s mobilization of Indian manpower and resources as a “tool” for imperialist aggression in the colonial world.38 To oversee India’s solidarities with other antiimperialists, the INC created its first foreign department under the supervision of Nehru. The Madras Congress resolutions set a new precedent in INC policy by establishing a role for India in the world beyond empire, one that necessitated complete independence from Britain in foreign affairs and military expenditure. Not all Congress leaders welcomed this agenda. After Madras, Gandhi noted that the INC’s goal remained swaraj, which did not implicitly mean “complete national independence.” Gandhi was not present in Madras, and he argued that Nehru’s resolutions were “hastily conceived and thoughtlessly passed.”39 The two sparred over the Madras Congress resolutions in the Indian press for months ahead of the All-Parties Conference in August 1928, where the independence resolution was under full assault by Congress leadership. This meeting unveiled the Nehru Report, named after Jawaharlal’s father, who was its author. The report outlined constitutional reforms demanded by the INC and other affiliated Indian organizations. Most importantly, the Nehru Report announced dominion status as India’s goal. The younger Nehru withdrew his support for the report and convened a rival meeting on the same premise as the All-Parties Convention in order to establish a new organization, the Indian Independence League. Designed to be a pressure group within the INC, the League advocated for upholding the Madras independence resolution. The Independence League was significant in amplifying the antiimperialist cause in India. Among the first orders of business was an approved resolution for the Independence League to associate with the LAI.40 Moreover, Nehru organized the League in collaboration with the LAI and depended on feedback and guidance from Chatto in Berlin. Both Chatto and Nehru intended the Independence League to be the “meeting ground for anti-imperialist activities” in India, linking the national movement to the global one.41 Nehru was not alone in mobilizing for independence as an anti-imperialist cause. Unlike in Madras, he was joined by fellow Congress leaders representing Bengal, Bihar, the United Provinces, Sind, Ajmer, Kerala, and Delhi. Among these founding members was the notable leftist, Subhas Chandra Bose.42

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Together, Nehru and Bose advocated on behalf of the Independence League within the INC throughout 1928. Serving as co-secretaries of the INC, Bose and Nehru co-authored the Congress’s annual report, which characterized the contradiction between the Madras resolution and the Nehru Report as a “controversy.” The report argued that Madras made clear that the INC “stood for independence,” and this meant “severance from the British Empire.”43 Thus, the Nehru Report undermined the will of the Madras Congress and those who supported the independence resolution. Despite these efforts, however, the INC officially overturned the independence resolution in the annual session in Calcutta (1928) by ratifying dominion status as the Congress goal. Nevertheless, the question of independence continued to be divisive until the passage of purna swaraj, or complete independence, a year later at the annual meeting in Lahore (1929). The independence resolution was the central link between the INC and global anti-imperialism, and Nehru framed it as such in his speech as newly elected president of the Lahore Congress that introduced purna swaraj in 1929. In accepting independence, he argued that India had joined “not only China, Turkey, Persia, and Egypt, but also Russia and the countries of the West” in a “world movement” against imperialism. He also declared that he was “no believer in kings and princes, or in the order which produces the modern kings of industry,” but rather he was a socialist. Socialism, he claimed, had gripped “the world over,” and India required it to “end her poverty and inequality, though she may evolve her own methods and may adapt the ideal to the genius of her race.”44 In January 1930, the INC unfurled the Indian national flag, took independence pledges, and began the civil disobedience campaign to eradicate British rule. By the turn of the decade, the anti-imperialist “echo” shaped the INC’s ideas and policies, which came to recognize India’s struggle against Britain as interconnected to the global anti-imperialist movement. Implicit in this connection was the necessity for the INC to demand complete independence rather than dominion status within the empire. Nehru framed Indian independence within this globality. Although the chief messenger, Nehru shaped INC resolutions and discourse more broadly in ways that eventually led to a nationalist consensus on purna swaraj. Moreover, he increasingly found allies across the left like Bose and others who sought to radicalize the claims of nationalism and align it with the toppling of empires worldwide. While Nehru and the LAI also advocated for Indian nationalist solidarity with trade unionists and communists, this

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gained less traction within the INC. Gandhi articulated a programme for social uplift that fell short of the aspirations of Nehru and other leftists who sought a stronger tie to trade unionists and communists through their common anti-imperialist struggle. Although the LAI laid inroads into the trade union movement in 1928, these ties were superficial rather than authentic, pointing to the limitations of the League in India beyond the INC. The Indian “Echo” and the LAI into the 1930s The INC debate over independence in India and the run-up to purna swaraj dramatically shaped the LAI’s perspective on nationalism in the colonies. LAI co-secretary and CPGB member, Emile Burns, articulated the primacy of INC debates over independence in his report on the Second World Congress of the LAI held in Frankfurt in July 1929, only a few months before India’s declaration of purna swaraj. Appearing in the Daily Worker, Burns reported that while the “Indian resolution at the Brussels Congress” in 1927 “clearly laid down the aim of full independence for India,” the INC “has temporarily pushed the demand for full independence into the background and substituted the demand for Dominion Status.” He added, “Can the League continue to work with the Indian National Congress in such circumstances?”45 At stake in this question was not just the anti-imperialist commitment of the INC, but rather Burns argued that delegates raised “similar points in connection with the bourgeois nationalist movements in other countries.”46 India had become in Frankfurt a divisive terrain for questioning the anti-imperialist loyalties of the INC and bourgeois nationalists in “other countries.” In the months before the INC officially declared independence, Gandhi’s willingness to compromise and accept dominion status, even as late as November 1929, challenged INC-LAI relations. The LAI’s evolving relationship with the Comintern also informed the new situation developing in Frankfurt. Unlike Brussels, Frankfurt was carefully curated by the Comintern for communists to articulate a more critical stance towards non-communist members of the LAI informed by class warfare tactics introduced in the third period beginning in 1928, which cited “Gandhism in India” as treacherous to the masses in colonial India and across the world.47 In this new milieu, the INC represented less a prototype for anti-imperialist solidarity and more a traitor to the cause. Some Frankfurt delegates intensely questioned the INC and its commitment to independence, a fundamental qualification for antiimperialist loyalty. CPGB member Harry Pollitt delivered the keynote

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and argued that the LAI must “clean its ranks of those vacillating and confused elements who were a source of weakness in the struggle against imperialism.”48 He then introduced the resolution on “The Political Situation and the War Danger,” which revealed those “vacillating and confused elements” to be nationalists in the colonies and socialists in imperialist countries. Special attention was given to the INC, which “betrayed the demand for independence, the basic demand of the Brussels Congress of the League.” It added that the INC’s Nehru Report in 1928 was a “complete capitulation to the British imperialism.”49 INC representative Shiva Prashad Gupta pushed back on the Frankfurt inquisition. Gupta served as the Treasurer of the INC and as a founding member of the Independence League, and he was the INC’s sole delegate to Frankfurt. Nehru remained in India, preparing for the annual congress that would ratify purna swaraj as the INC goal. In Frankfurt, Gupta argued that the INC was preparing to accept complete independence, and its loyalty to the anti-imperialist cause was not in question. He even threatened to withdraw from Frankfurt if the resolution representing the INC as a traitor to the anti-imperialist cause was not rescinded. Intense debate over whether to accept Gupta’s demands for revisions unfolded within the communist faction of LAI leadership, a story documented elsewhere.50 At the end of the day, Gupta’s demands were met and the resolutions on the INC revised. Solidarity over sectarianism prevailed in Frankfurt.51 Nevertheless, Frankfurt was a harbinger of the shifting relationship between nationalists and communists within the LAI. One communist report on Frankfurt highlighted that the most “serious error” of the Congress was the lack of “direct representation from the colonies” and none from colonial workers or peasantry.52 This was “particularly glaring” in the case of India, which had only one delegate, Gupta, who was “a large landowner, right wing nationalist and spokesman of Gandhi.”53 The report, however, failed to recognize the restricted mobility of trade unionists and communists imposed by imperialist regimes. In the context of India and the Meerut Conspiracy Case in particular, most radical working-class leaders were imprisoned or driven underground. None would have been able or willing to attend Frankfurt. The Indian context mattered, although it was never fully appreciated in this moment. Events in India ultimately undermined the LAI-INC relationship. In the run-up to the purna swaraj declaration the INC set an ultimatum for the British to accept the Nehru Report or the Congress promised mass civil disobedience and a declaration of complete independence. In

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November 1929, only a month before the ultimatum was set to expire and purna swaraj ratified, Gandhi opened fresh talks with the viceroy that compromised independence for dominion status. INC leadership agreed to the open talks in what became known as the Delhi Manifesto. Nehru reluctantly signed off on the agreement, although he felt confident that the British were not prepared to meet INC demands in the manifesto and the talks would be moot. Critics of the INC within the LAI saw the Delhi Manifesto as a “compromise with the enemy,” and demanded the expulsion of Indian nationalists. The LAI fired off a letter to Indian affiliates that demanded that “real” anti-imperialists break from the INC.54 The Delhi Manifesto was inconsequential to the history of the INC, yet it marked a breaking point for India’s formal ties with the LAI. Much as Nehru anticipated, talks with the viceroy yielded no compromise in 1929. However, the LAI could no longer reconcile the INC’s “vacillating compromises” evident in the Delhi Manifesto even if talks failed. Whereas the Brussels Congress moment demonstrated that the INC’s gradual evolution towards independence was a cause for celebration, the confluence of Comintern pressures and Gandhi’s predisposition to compromise on independence made solidarity between the INC and LAI untenable by 1930. The split was imminent in early 1930. Nehru wrote to the LAI in January and argued that its policies were “harmful” to the INC and “divorced from a real knowledge of the situation” in India.55 The official response from Berlin, signed by Chatto and Münzenberg, assured Nehru that the LAI executive council would meet soon, take up his concerns, and find common ground for “successful cooperation.”56 Chatto also included a personal letter as a fellow “Indian revolutionary,” asking that Nehru not be “embittered” simply because communists pointed out the limitations of the INC on the question of independence.57 Nehru awaited an official response from the LAI for several months, finally resigning on 9 April 1930 and requesting the INC to stop all communication with Berlin.58 The executive committee eventually met in 1931, long after Nehru’s resignation, and rather belatedly expelled the INC from the LAI.59 It made clear that “membership of the League is based on one fundamental condition only—to carry on a really consistent struggle against imperialism, a struggle excluding any compromises with the enemy and ending only with the achievement of complete independence of the colonies and of the oppressed nationalities.”60 In another letter from the LAI to its members, the secretary, now a communist named Hans Thögersen, marked 1931 as

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a “decisive turning point” in which the League would “finally overcome all hindrances and delays.”61 Chief among these “hindrances” were Nehru and the INC as both were “treacherous” for “compromises with the enemy.” Nehru deserved special attention. While he “solemnly pledged … to conduct an unswerving revolutionary struggle against imperialism” in Brussels, he instead served as “lieutenant of Gandhi” and likewise a “traitor to the cause of Indian independence.”62 Paradoxically, at the same time Nehru, Gandhi, and other INC leaders languished in prison for their role in a mass civil disobedience movement that called for complete independence. The split with the INC was catastrophic for the LAI’s connections to India and the colonial world. By 1930 a report to Moscow on the LAI recognized that the secretariat had lost connection to all colonial affiliates.63 The INC’s exit was followed in quick succession by most nationalists in the colonies and socialists in Europe. Ironically, what emerged in this moment of tribulation was a global anti-imperialist movement without the colonized and tied to international communist doctrine and party members based in Europe. Between 1930 and 1932 the LAI focused exclusively on recruiting students living in Berlin and London to represent the colonial world, and India in particular.64 This was a dramatic reversal from the Brussels Congress days when nationalist leaders from the colonies were coveted as anti-imperialist allies. India shifted from the exemplary model of anti-imperialism in the late 1920s to a compromising enemy of the movement by 1930. The story of the INC-LAI split reveals several important points. It demonstrates the confluence of both international communist and Indian nationalist histories in the trajectory of the LAI. By 1929 communists within the LAI far outweighed any other ideological affiliation, but the League managed to retain anticolonial nationalists like Nehru in the movement for nearly three years after the Comintern called upon members to purge bourgeois nationalists from united front organizations in 1928. The “turning point” in the LAI was later than the shift in Comintern policy, and the INC’s expulsion was as much a consequence of Indian nationalist politics and the independence question. Moderate aspirations for constitutional reform were tolerated by the LAI before 1929, but difficult to reconcile as mounting pressure from the Comintern called for sectarian purges. With India’s exit came the departure of most non-communist members from the colonies and a shift towards students and immigrants based in Europe who were potential recruits for the communist party rather than the LAI. Nevertheless, this did not diminish the significance of anti-

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imperialism to the INC and Nehru. Rather, the rupture was brief and India’s commitment remained steadfast in the later 1930s. Institutionalizing Anti-Imperialism in India after 1930 Reginald Bridgeman, secretary of the British national section of the LAI, acquired the League’s international secretariat in 1933. While some of the League’s personnel left Berlin before Hitler assumed power, many others fled Germany. Münzenberg narrowly escaped arrest and found refuge in Paris. Bridgeman received the little that remained from the LAI in 1933: “a list of addresses which was not up to date and so of little value.”65 He admitted that the new secretariat in London had to “reconstitute the work of the League from the beginning.” He added that, “India being the largest colony in the world,” it deserved considerable attention.66 His only Indian connections were Benjamin Bradley, one of the British defendants in the Meerut Conspiracy Case, and Indian students and permanent residents living in Britain. Bridgeman promptly wrote Nehru a “personal letter” in November 1933 seeking “closer cooperation” between the INC and LAI. It was unanswered. Another letter in February 1934 made a similar request and likewise received no response.67 Bridgeman wondered in his annual report on LAI activities whether the letters had reached Nehru, whose correspondence was subject to aggressive censorship, or whether his former LAI colleague “did not wish to reply.”68 Connection with India was vital to the LAI in the 1930s, and likewise Nehru and the INC desired “closer cooperation” by 1934. The INC never formally joined the LAI again; however, the ties between India and the League grew in this period. While Mark Reeves’ essay in this volume documents the importance of Nehru and Indian expatriate Krishna Menon to the League’s history in the 1930s, I emphasize here the longstanding legacies of the LAI’s ideas on the INC after the split in 1930. Anti-imperialism came to be institutionalized in India in the 1930s through the Congress Foreign Department (CFD). Originally established in 1927, the CFD was fairly inactive until it was reconstituted in 1936 under the stewardship of Nehru and his leftist colleagues in the INC. Unsurprisingly, the CFD’s worldview “echoed” the LAI’s worldview. The context in Britain was critical to the INC-LAI reconnection. Under Bridgeman, the LAI returned to the founding aspirations in Brussels that sought to build solidarity between communists and non-communists. This was made easier by a shift in Comintern policy in 1934, which sought to re-engage non-communists in a popular front against fascism. The British LAI also retained throughout the early 1930s close ties to Indian

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students, residents, and workers in the metropole, more so than its Berlin counterpart. The office oversaw the Meerut National Defence Committee in 1929, which officially became part of the British LAI in the summer of 1930. The group collected by 1932 over £700 for defendants, produced and disseminated more than 20,000 leaflets, organized widespread demonstrations across Britain and the world, and pushed colleagues to raise the issue in the British Parliament and trade unions.69 At the same time, Bridgeman forged closer ties to Menon, founder of the India League for Freedom (ILF). As Mark Reeves argues in this volume, Menon became a critical conduit between Nehru, India, and the LAI in the 1930s. The British LAI had ties to Menon’s ILF in the period between 1932 and 1934, crystalized formally in 1935 when Bridgeman became a member of the Indian group. By the time Nehru travelled to London in 1935, the LAI, with ties to Menon’s ILF, offered remarkably familiar platforms for antiimperialist work that resembled the Brussels rather than Frankfurt spirit. Anti-imperialists in the LAI and ILF were captivated by a series of global events in the 1930s including the struggles of Egypt against the British, Abyssinia against Italian invasion, and Spanish Republicans in the civil war against Franco’s fascist forces. Nehru’s attendance at LAI and ILF meetings in 1935 and 1936 was another pedagogical experience that shaped his understanding of the anti-imperialist world. He returned to India and “echoed” these concerns. In Delhi, for example, he argued that “the problems of India are interrelated with world problems,” similar to struggles waged in Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Java, Indo-China, and “several other countries.”70 Nehru appealed to his Indian audience to remain steadfast on the question of independence, for only their freedom could usher in a world free from imperialism. He also made a case for socialism as the “solution for starvation, unemployment, and poverty of India.”71 These anti-imperialist concerns came to shape not only Nehru’s worldview, but also the fundamental platforms of the CFD. Piloted by Nehru, the CFD enlisted the secretarial services of Rammanohar Lohia, another professed socialist within the Congress who had spent significant time in Berlin in the late 1920s. The two collaborated on the production of press statements for an Indian audience that highlighted world events that necessitated India’s attention. At the same time, the CFD created a newsletter to share information about India for worldwide consumption. Of the several hundred recipients of the newsletter residing abroad, nearly all had been contacts supplied by Bridgeman and the LAI secretariat. Thus, as the CFD developed, it did so with an overlapping network of anti-imperialists resembling that of the League.72

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The CFD aspired to be much more than a news bureau: instead, it sought to be a vehicle for institutionalizing India’s first foreign policy, one that aligned closely with the worldview rooted in the ideas of the LAI. It advocated foremost for complete independence in foreign policy matters, which would “tear India away from her British moorings in as far as world politics is concerns,” and instead “actuate Free India and, even motivate our struggle for freedom.”73 The CFD outlined four critical allies that could offer “sympathy and cooperation” in India’s struggle, and after independence could recognize India’s “right to sovereign power and to contribute their share to the building up of a just, peaceful and happy world.”74 The first three of these natural allies mirrored the same antiimperialists constituting the Brussels Congress and LAI: nationalists from the colonies, socialists, and the Soviet Union. In addition, democratic movements challenging fascism comprised a fourth ally, which aligned with the anti-imperialist commitment to anti-fascism in the 1930s. Yet the CFD, in its first annual report, did more than “echo” the LAI worldview. It quite self-consciously situated its history in relation to the Brussels Congress moment and the LAI. In recounting a history of India’s foreign policy, the CFD traced its origins to the Brussels Congress where the INC’s “first major action” in world affairs was to express “sympathy and solidarity” with the anti-imperialist world.75 The CFD’s key initiatives also “echoed” efforts of the LAI and the ILF in London to support, financially as well as morally, struggles in Abyssinia, China, and Republican Spain. The CFD organized all-India demonstrations against imperialism and fascism and called upon the Indian public to think of their struggle as one and the same with their comrades around the world. On 26 September 1937, for example, the CFD organized widespread demonstrations against the Japanese invasion of mainland China. “China Day” advocated for Indians openly to condemn Japan as an imperialist power and boycott its goods alongside British ones. The CFD released a statement reminding Indian readers that “the world faced the immediate danger of a world war and it is evident from the successive attacks of imperialism and fascism on the liberties of Ethiopia, Spain, and China.”76 It advocated for Indians to do their part by supporting their comrades in the world and demanding independence from the British, a critical step in the global struggle against imperialism and fascism. In late 1937, the CFD circulated in India and abroad a history of the INC that “echoed” anti-imperialism by underscoring India’s evolution from moderate demands for self-government within the empire to the call

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for complete independence or purna swaraj in 1929. The historical sketch argued that the “Congress history of 1885 to 1937” moved “from the object of encouraging intimacy among representatives from various provinces to the creed of complete independence for the nation.”77 The history also documented the journey “from the recording of matured opinions of the educated classes to the outlining of the Agrarian Programme.”78 In doing so, the INC took seriously the demands of the masses. From the vantage point of 1937, the CFD celebrated the fact that the INC stood for independence and, because of this, it also stood for solidarity “with progressive struggles outside the frontiers of India.”79 Such a narrative went a long way in embedding the fundamental ideas of anti-imperialism as it applied to India within the official discourse of the INC through the CFD. Rather than isolated resolutions advanced by Nehru personally in the late 1920s, the CFD incorporated anti-imperialism into the INC’s foreign policy in the 1930s. The CFD represented the fruition of nearly a decade of internationalizing nationalism within the INC by aligning India with antiimperialism. The CFD called upon Indians to engage with a wider world of anti-imperialists by demanding complete independence, recognizing the demands of workers and peasants, and developing a worldview that situated the crown colony within a global movement against empires and capitalism. By the late 1930s these pillars of anti-imperialism came to be institutionalized within the INC through the CFD. Thus, while India impacted the history of the LAI in substantial ways, the LAI likewise shaped the politics of the INC well beyond 1930. This early history of the CFD, under the leadership of Nehru and Lohia, also captures the ways in which India came to be a player in the anti-imperialist world long before national independence in 1947. Conclusion As many of the essays in this volume note, the strongest “echo” of the LAI found expression at the Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia (1955), where delegates sought solidarity in an age of decolonization and the Cold War. Sukarno celebrated the Brussels Congress of the LAI as the precursor to the later Bandung Conference.80 Yet, the anti-imperialist “echo” in Bandung hardly resembled the original message and spirit of the Brussels Congress. The LAI afforded spaces for solidarity between anticolonial nationalism and international communism that were no longer possible in Bandung’s Afro-Asian arena. The capture of the state for nationalists in the era of decolonization did not produce a world

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revolution thereafter, and many elites who claimed anti-imperialism in the interwar moment were at odds with communists in their own states and internationally in the Cold War. Inherent in interwar anti-imperialism was this eventual conflict between bourgeois nationalists and their communist counterparts. Moreover, while members of the LAI found common ground on the meaning of empire and European colonial powers as chief antagonists, the neocolonial aspirations of the Soviet Union and the United States after 1945 challenged any facile conceptualization of imperialism. A simple resolution condemning colonialism was passed only with great difficulty and intense disagreement in Bandung. In the aftermath of Bandung and no doubt in response to the tensions produced there, Nehru refused to support and actively obstructed further proposals for a sequel to the conference.81 The failure of Bandung to find common ground on anti-imperialism and unite African and Asian leaders revealed the limits of interwar antiimperialism in the age of decolonization and the Cold War. The interwar moment provided fertile ground for global solidarities that transcended geographical and political boundaries, while Bandung grappled with the divisiveness of Cold War rivalries, as well as the limitations placed on Asian and African leaders who represented states rather than nationalisms and anti-imperialisms. This dramatically different geopolitical arena in the Cold War mattered, a point also highlighted by Byrne and Goebel in this volume. In Bandung, Nehru and his Asian and African colleagues represented state imperatives and negotiated on the basis of difference rather than solidarity.82 Indian independence ironically limited the possibilities for heads of state like Nehru to forge anti-imperialist solidarity across Asia and Africa in Bandung. This final point should not diminish the significance of the LAI to post-colonial India or to Nehru. As Stolte notes in this volume, many Afro-Asian associations were convened in this later period and resembled the creative interplay between anti-imperialists in Brussels, although Nehru did not officially represent India in these platforms after 1947. No doubt he identified personally with Afro-Asian anti-imperialism, but the constraints of state leadership trumped sentiments and sympathy. Anti-imperialist “echoes” persisted more in Nehru’s diplomatic channels in the early Cold War. The meeting of Nehru and Mohammed Hatta in Brussels, also noted by Stolte, was formative to strong diplomatic relations between India and Indonesia in the early Cold War. Likewise, the twinning of India and China within the LAI, which came to be a pillar of INC interwar policy, informed Nehru’s aggressive attempts to

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strengthen cooperation between the two Asian neighbours. Yet, unlike the case of Hatta and Indonesia, the longstanding engagement with China in the interwar period was problematic. It was connections to the Guomindang and Chiang Kai-shek that formed Nehru’s anti-imperialism in the interwar moment, which no doubt complicated India’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China and Mao Zedong. Thus, the strong pedagogical “echoes” of anti-imperialism could be a double-edged sword in the post-colonial moment, facilitating India’s solidarity in some instances and undermining it in others. This point underscores the necessity for more rigorous scholarship on Nehru, the Indian state, and anti-imperialist internationalism beyond the interwar moment. These conclusions also point to the necessity of studying the LAI and interwar anti-imperialism on its own terms, as well as thinking critically about its complicated “echoes” in the post-colonial world emerging after 1947. Many of the essays in this volume have gone a long way in considering this. Interwar platforms based on anti-imperialism and anticapitalism, like the LAI, created a uniquely internationalist space that encouraged the active repression of difference among members and the forging of solidarities. The global conditions created by the Cold War and decolonization often limited (although perhaps never fully closed) these anti-imperialist possibilities for heads of states in the global south, who faced intense pressure from within their states and beyond to uphold rather than transcend such national boundaries. Notes 1

2 3

4

P.C. Joshi Archives on Contemporary History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (hereafter LAI Papers), File 37: Willi Münzenberg, “From Demonstration to Organization,” The Anti-Imperialist Review, 1:1 (July 1928), 4–10. Ibid. The history of Indian trade unionism and labor is extensive. See, Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). For AITUC and its international affiliations, see C.M. Stolte, “Bringing Asia to the World: Indian Trade Unionism and the Long Road Towards the Asiatic Labour Congress, 1919–1937,” Journal of Global History 7:2 (2012), 257–78. For recent histories of international communism and India, see Ali Raza, Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); and Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, Comintern and the Destiny of Communism in India: 1919–1943:

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5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 13 14

Dialectics of a Real and Possible History (Bakhrahat: Seribaan, 2006). The classic text is Gene D. Overstreet and Marshall Windmiller, Communism in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959). The Meerut Conspiracy Case was the most comprehensive attempt by the British colonial state to eradicate communism in India. See essays by Ali Raza, Carolien Stolte, Benjamin Zachariah, Franziska Roy, and Michele Louro in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 33:3 (December 2013). Fredrik Petersson has published extensively on the LAI and communism. See his essay in this volume and other published articles, as well as his Willi Münzenberg, the League against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925–1933, 2 volumes (Lewiston: Queenston Press, 2013). See Michele Louro, Comrades against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). There are a number of recent works on interwar internationalism. See Ali Raza, Franziska Roy, and Benjamin Zachariah (eds.), The Internationalist Moment: South Asia, Worlds, and World Views, 1917–1939 (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2014); Marc Matera and Susan Kingsley Kent, The Global 1930s: The International Decade (New York: Routledge, 2017). The existing scholarship on the INC and anticolonial nationalism is extensive and oft-cited works include Bipan Chandra, India’s Struggle for Independence, 1885–1947 (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1989); Judith Brown, Modern India: The Origins of Asian Democracy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985); and Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, 1885–1947 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989). Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), All-India Congress Committee Papers (AICC), File G29-1927: George Lansbury, “Speech at the Brussels Congress,” February 13, 1927. Russian State Archives for Social and Political History (RGASPI), File 542/1/77/45-46: Fenner Brockway, speech at Brussels Congress. Citations are from the digital copies housed at the Library of Congress. See Stutje’s essay. The Guomindang was significant to the Brussels Congress, but the organization lacked high-profile delegates like Nehru. Madame Sun Yat-sen did not attend, although she sent fraternal greetings and served as an honorary chair despite her absence. For the Comintern’s interest in Nehru, see for example RGASPI, File 542/1/7/27. For more evidence, see Louro, Comrades against Imperialism. Chatto served as secretary of the international LAI from 1928 to 1931. See Nirode K. Barooah, Chatto: The Life and Times of an Indian Anti-imperialist

the anti-imperialist “echo” in india  279

15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28

29

30 31 32

in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). For the Ghadar movement and Barakatullah, see Maia Ramnath, Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Chartered Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). There were twenty-six drafted resolutions, though only ten were presented and approved at the Brussels Congress. The rest were approved in the General Council later that year. RGASPI, 542/1/71/7: Copy of resolution on India archived in Comintern papers. NMML, AICC, File G29-1927: Nehru, “Report on Brussels Congress,” and “Notes on Accounts,” Nehru to Secretary of the AICC, 9 April, 1927. RGASPI, 542/1/73/56: Copy of resolution in Comintern Papers. Nehru, “Report on the Brussels Congress,” 295. For more on Liao, see Belagurova’s chapter in this volume. For example, RGASPI, 542/1/5/82: League against Imperialism Information Bulletin for the Executive Committee, 3 November 1927. RGASPI, 542/1/5/65: Press Service of the League against Imperialism and for National Independence, 15 July 1927. P.C. Joshi Archives, LAI Papers, File 37: Greetings from S. Srinivasa Iyengar in The Anti-Imperialist Review, July 1928. P.C. Joshi Archives, LAI Papers, File 37: Shapurji Saklatvala, “British Imperialism in India: A World Menace” The Anti-Imperialist Review, 1:1 (July 1928). Louro, Comrades against Imperialism, 103–39. Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography with Musings on Recent Events in India (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2004 [1936]), 175. Ibid., 172. See also Comrades against Imperialism. In his report on the Brussels Congress to the INC, Nehru stated for the first time that he “personally” agreed with the “socialist theory of the State.” See, NMML, AICC, File G-29: Nehru, “Report on the Brussels Congress,” 19 February 1927. This was noted in the Committal Order of the Meerut Conspiracy Case. See National Archives of India, New Delhi (NAI), Meerut Conspiracy Case Papers. Nehru, Autobiography, 545. RGASPI, File 542/1/18/7: Copy of Jhabvala’s greetings. The details of this event are recounted in Michele Louro, “The Johnstone Affair and Anti-Communism in India,” Journal of Contemporary History 53:1 (2018), 38–60.

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33

34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47

48

49

50

NMML, AICC, File 4-1927: “Indian National Congress: Resolutions Passed by the Indian National Congress at its 42nd session held in Madras on December 26, 27 and 28, 1927.” Published by the Under Secretary of the All India Congress Committee, March 1928, 4. Nehru, Statement on Madras Congress, 7 January, 1928, reprinted in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru (SWJN), edited by S. Gopal, (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972), Vol. 3, 8-9. Nehru’s presentation of the independence resolution, December 27, 1927, reprinted in SWJN, vol. 3, 5–6. Ibid. Ibid., 1–2. For more on the war danger, see introduction to this volume. Cited in Nehru’s letter to Gandhi, 11 January 1928, reprinted in SWJN, vol. 3, 11. Circular on Activities of the League, 8 November 1928 (Allahbad), reprinted in SWJN, vol. 3, 74–6. See letters from Nehru to Chatto (Berlin) dated 3 October and 28 October, 1928. SWJN, vol. 3, 142–46. For the record of the Independence League, see NMML, AICC: File 7-1928. NMML, AICC, File 4-1927: Annual Report for 1928, Presented by the General Secretaries to the All India Congress Committee, Signed by Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru, 10 December 1928. Nehru, Speech, SWJN, vol. 4, 184–98. Emile Burns, “The World Congress of the League against Imperialism,” The Labour Monthly 11:9 (1929). Ibid. “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in Colonial and Semi-colonial Countries, Adopted by the Sixth Congress,” 1 September 1928, reprinted in McDermott and Agnew, The Comintern, 236. See also, Fredrik Petersson, “The ‘Colonial Conference’ and Dilemma of the Comintern’s Colonial Work, 1928–29,” in Vijay Prashad (ed.), Communist Histories, vol. 1 (New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2016). RGASPI, 542/1/87/17-19: Second Anti-Imperialist World Congress, Information and Press Service No. 5, Afternoon Session 22 July 1929. Excerpts of Harry Pollitt’s speech. International Institute for Social History (IISH), League Against Imperialism Archives (LAIA), File 90: “Resolution: The Political Situation and War Danger,” Second Anti-imperialist World Congress, 20-31 July, Frankfurt, Germany. For Frankfurt debates, see Louro, Comrades against Imperialism, 150–62.

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51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69

70 71 72

Tannoury-Karam also makes this point in this volume about the staying power of the Arab left in Frankfurt. RGASPI, 542/1/79/118-121: Draft Resolution on the Lessons of the Second World Congress of the League against Imperialism and its Immediate Tasks, unsigned but likely drafted by Alexandar Bittleman. Ibid. NMML, AICC, File 1-1929: LAI secretariat to All Indian Organizations affiliated to LAI, 20 November 1929. Nehru to LAI, 26 January 1930, SWJN, vol. 3, 238. NMML, AICC, File FD 1-1929: LAI International Secretariat to President of the Indian National Congress, 26 February 1930. NMML, AICC, File FD 1-1929: Chatto to Nehru, 26 February 1930. P.C. Joshi Archives, LAI Papers, File 10: Nehru to LAI, 9 April 1930. RGASPI, 542/1/49/13-30: Resolutions Adopted by the Executive Council of the League against Imperialism and for National Independence, Berlin, 2 June 1931. Ibid. RGASPI, 542/1/49/293: “To All Anti-Imperialists,” from Hans Thögersen, LAI Secretariat, Berlin, April 1931. Ibid. RGASPI, 542/1/39/26a-b: York to Comintern, “Report on General Situation of AIL and Proposals,” 14 February 1930. RGASPI, 542/1/51/34: Report by York (LAI Secretary), 10 February 1930; RGASPI, 542/1/39/26a-b: York to Comintern, “Report on General Situation of AIL and Proposals,” 14 February 1930. RGASPI, 542/1/61/1: League against Imperialism, Report of the International Secretariat for 1934. Ibid. For relevant sections on India, see RGASPI, 542/1/61/16-18. Ibid. Ibid. British Library (BL), India Office Record (IOR), P&J(S) 179: Report of the League against Imperialism and for National Independence (British Section), 3 February 1933, 25–8. Nehru, Speech in Delhi, 28 May 1936, reprinted in The Hindustan Times on 29 May 1936, SWJN, vol. 7, 265–68. Ibid. NMML, AICC, File FD-7 1936: Lohia to Bridgeman, 12 May 1936 and Nehru to Bridgeman, 25 May 1936. Bridgeman shared contacts and world news. See Ibid., Bridgeman to Nehru, 15 May 1936.

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73 74 75 76 77

78 79 80 81 82

NMML, AICC, File FD-40 1936: Report of the Foreign Office of the A.I.C.C. by Lohia, December 1936. Ibid. Ibid. NMML, AICC, File 39-1936 part ii: Foreign Department, Newsletter No. 26, 30 September 1937. NMML, AICC, File 39-1936 part ii: “The Indian National Congress: 1885– 1938,” circulated with an invitation to contacts abroad to attend the INC annual sessions and signed by Lohia, 1 December 1937. Ibid. Ibid. Sukarno’s Speech in Bandung is reprinted in Selected Documents of the Bandung Conference (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1955). See for example, NAI, Asian-African Conference Papers, File 1(49): Nehru to Kotewala, 7 December 1955. See also, Louro, Comrades; Jeffery J. Byrne, Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); and Frank Gerits, “‘When the Bull Elephants Fight’: Kwame Nkrumah, Nonalignment, and Pan-Africanism as an Interventionist Ideology in the Global Cold War, 1957–66,” The International History Review 37:5 (2015), 951–69.

Chapter 11

Two Leagues, One Front? The India League and the League Against Imperialism in the British Left, 1927–1937 Mark Reeves V.K. Krishna Menon always made people angry. When he left southern India in 1924, coming to England under the auspices of his mentor Annie Besant’s Theosophist and Indian Home Rule movement, Menon disappointed his father by not becoming a lawyer and returning to Kerala to take over the family practice.1 Moreover, he disappointed Besant by not remaining true to the Theosophist or Home Rule faith, and instead charted his own path with various intellectuals on the British left, especially Harold Laski. He would eventually frustrate even those new leftist friends: first by his conservatism and gradualism, and then by his radicalism, adopted in the mid-1930s.2 His personal prickliness did not help: as even his allies noted, he created “round himself an atmosphere of suspicion and intrigue.”3 Alan Lawson, who photographed Krishna Menon along with Jawaharlal Nehru on a visit to the front in Spain in 1938, had a more generous explanation. Owing to his vegetarianism, he could rarely find anything to eat.4 Whatever the reason, the same year Indira Nehru (later Gandhi) identified the problem: “[t]here are so many groups and parties here, and Krishna is not popular with any of them.”5 Perhaps his unique and ironic gift was an ability to alienate everyone equally, placing him on an equal footing with everybody. If he irritated the left, he positively frightened the right, and his mid-1930s embrace of the far left, including the British Section of the League Against Imperialism and the Communist Party of Great Britain, made him a bête noire for MI5, and eventually the US intelligence services.6 Even at the height of his powers after Indian independence, when he had the ear of Jawaharlal Nehru, everyone around India’s leader detested or at best tolerated Krishna Menon, both for his imperious manner and his political intransigence. The White House and the US Embassy in New Delhi were not alone in rejoicing when Krishna Menon took the fall for the Indian army’s disastrous performance against China in 1962.

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This essay will argue that Krishna Menon’s troublesomeness, both for his allies on the left and his enemies on the right, originated in the mid-1930s, when he followed Nehru’s lead to embrace a “united front” approach to anticolonialism. By “united front” this essay means the broad coalition of nationalists and leftists, both pro- and anti-communist, by which Nehru described the League Against Imperialism on its formation in 1927: an organization with “a broad enough basis to include national organisations on the one hand and labour organisations belonging both to the 2nd and the 3rd Internationals.”7 This united front approach led Krishna Menon to embrace rather than reject organizations with ties to communists, and to participate in European anti-fascist activity such as support for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and China against Japan after 1937. After the League Against Imperialism folded in 1937, Krishna Menon particularly embraced the Communist Party itself, unlike many of the other participants in the united front. Krishna Menon and the India League became a hub in a wide network of leftist organizations and causes which took root in London in the midand late 1930s, many of which were tied to British Communists’ attempts to build a united front among leftists in parallel with the “popular front” uniting French and Spanish communists with anti-fascist bourgeois parties.8 Through his frequent collaborations with Reginald Bridgeman, the former British diplomat and prime mover behind the League Against Imperialism in Britain, Krishna Menon gained allies for Indian independence in Britain and internationally through participation in a wide variety of institutions.9 Both fellow travellers rather than members of the CPGB, Krishna Menon and Bridgeman sought to build wide coalitions based in personal connections. This strategy could backfire, but it also allowed for a flexibility surviving the many crises which afflicted the left throughout the mid- to late 1930s, such that Krishna Menon and Bridgeman’s networks outlasted the League Against Imperialism itself. By the time that Nehru visited Britain in late 1935 and first met him, Krishna Menon had embraced the same faith in socialism and internationalism that Nehru had adopted in the late 1920s. This, in turn, had led him to Bridgeman and the League Against Imperialism. From 1935 onwards, Krishna Menon tied himself to Nehru’s particular brand of socialism and anticolonial internationalism, which sought not only Indian independence but a shift in world order towards national freedom, economic liberation, and international equality. That is, after 1935 Krishna Menon caught the vision of what Nehru had hoped the League Against Imperialism could be back in 1927.

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The united front which Krishna Menon, Bridgeman, and others tried to build in the mid- and late 1930s arose out of a similar vision from the late 1920s, when Willi Münzenberg spearheaded the effort to unite world antiimperialist efforts under the auspices of a League Against Imperialism.10 Nehru was only one of many anticolonial activists who found inspiration in this approach, but his particular engagement with Krishna Menon, and through him the British left, allowed his interpretation of the united front to flourish in the 1930s and beyond. In 1927, while Krishna Menon was still offering Theosophist seminars and agitating for dominion status for India, Nehru was engaging with Münzenberg and others in Brussels, blazing the political path which Krishna Menon would follow for the rest of his life. Nehru’s United Front When the League Against Imperialism formed in Brussels in 1927, Nehru had high hopes for the organization because of its international and ideological breadth (for more on Nehru’s interest see Michele Louro’s chapter in this volume; and for the context of Brussels and the LAI see Fredrik Petersson’s chapter). At Brussels Nehru first met Fenner Brockway of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), Labour’s George Lansbury, and Ellen Wilkinson, members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and the former British diplomat Reginald Bridgeman.11 The unity among British leftists at Brussels did not last long, however. As early as in September 1927 the Labour Party had disavowed the international League Against Imperialism (based in Berlin) over its ties to Moscow, and Labour’s George Lansbury had resigned from the League.12 Thus, by the time the British delegates at Brussels had organized a British Section of the League Against Imperialism (BS-LAI) in 1928, its members spent much of their first meeting excoriating Labour.13 Even as the British leftists fought among themselves, Nehru maintained consistent contact with Bridgeman and ensured that a Congress representative attended the meeting.14 Only ten days after the BS-LAI’s inaugural meeting, the Comintern convened for its Sixth Congress in Moscow, where the organization entirely abandoned the united front approach. The Comintern implemented this shift at the League Against Imperialism’s second international congress in Frankfurt, held in 1929, where the Comintern orchestrated speeches and actions strongly criticizing organizations such as Nehru’s Indian National Congress (see Michele Louro’s essay) and the BS-LAI’s main non-communist member, the ILP. By September 1929 the League’s

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international secretariat had expelled its own head, the ILP’s James Maxton.15 The criticism of the Congress at Frankfurt deeply hurt Nehru, who had consistently defended the Congress’s affiliation with the League against criticism from non-communist Indian nationalists since 1927. In replying to such critiques, Nehru articulated a cohesive rationale for cooperating with communists or organizations with communist members. Just as the Comintern turned away from the united front, Nehru made the case for anticolonialism as a broad church in which anticolonialists must remain willing to cooperate with international allies of any stripe in order to achieve their immediate goals. Admitting in a letter to the veteran Indian nationalist, Taraknath Das, that the League included communists, Nehru nonetheless advocated as wide an anticolonial alliance as possible, insisting that he would “cooperate with any organization or state whether it is monarchical, republican or fascist,” “so far as its activities are anti-imperialist.”16 Writing to the ILP’s Fenner Brockway, who grappled with the same difficulty about cooperating with communists, Nehru articulated a middle path, where non-communists could cooperate with communists “if [they] happen to do something which helps us,” not regarding them “as untouchables and keep[ing] away from them lest more respectable people might be offended,” while also rejecting out of hand any “reliance on communists in England or elsewhere.”17 Nehru’s letter to Brockway came in the aftermath of Brockway’s attendance at the Frankfurt Congress, and as Nehru heard reports of the Comintern-backed attack on the broader left parties present there he came to feel great frustration at the sudden shift, lamenting to the US civil liberties campaigner Roger Baldwin “that some of our friends have a peculiar knack of doing things the wrong way.”18 In his letters to the Indian communist Chattopadhyaya, who served as one of the League’s international secretaries in Berlin, Nehru fell back on his defence of a united front, referring back to the original 1927 vision of the League “[bringing] together all anti-imperialist elements whether communists or not.”19 Nehru acknowledged differences within such united fronts, but placed the preference on the side of cooperation, noting that despite “a difference in outlook … If there is a fair measure of agreement then it is desirable to work together.”20 In his formal letter finally breaking the Congress’s relationship with the League in early 1930, Nehru still maintained future hope of cooperation, looking back to his original hope for the League as “a meeting place for anti-imperialist elements,

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communist and non-communist,” where “both viewpoints have sufficient weight attached to them.”21 Nehru did not give up on cooperating with the League, and many within the British League, such as Bridgeman and the Indian Communist MP Shapurji Saklatvala, happily worked with Nehru on such causes as defending the accused in the Meerut Conspiracy Case.22 However, Nehru spent most of the six years from 1930 to 1935 in prison, and so his vision of a less ad hoc anticolonial united front also languished. In the meantime, Krishna Menon moved to the left and towards a Nehruvian vision of socialism, anticolonialism, and internationalism, such that by the time they met in 1935, together they sought to build the united front which Nehru had hoped the League Against Imperialism could become back in 1927. Krishna Menon’s India League, 1929–1934 Krishna Menon had arrived in Britain in July 1924, where he joined the ILP and worked hard as an activist for his Theosophist sponsor, Annie Besant. Krishna Menon’s work for Besant centred on her pet route to Indian freedom, the Commonwealth of India Bill, which had the support of Labour’s delegate to the League Against Imperialism, George Lansbury.23 In fact, while Krishna Menon worked for its passage, Nehru had condemned Besant’s Bill, since it left foreign relations and the army in British hands, and he had even briefly corresponded with his League Against Imperialism comrade Fenner Brockway of the ILP about drafting a rival Bill.24 Throughout the late 1920s Krishna Menon remained a loyal follower of Besant, dutifully organizing Theosophist meetings and activities promoting her gradualist approach to Indian freedom.25 Despite his moderation, Indian Political Intelligence flagged Krishna Menon as a potential liability in December 1927, noting that he “holds extreme political views and is anti-British in his conversation.”26 However, throughout 1929 and 1930, Krishna Menon continued to voice a moderate call for Britain to grant dominion status to India, in his writing and in addressing ILP, Labour, and pro-Besant meetings from London to Manchester and the Midlands.27 Indeed, Krishna Menon’s moderation made him a target for the Communist Party, which interrupted a conference he organized in Birmingham in April 1930.28 The first hints of radicalism from Krishna Menon came in June 1930, when he implicitly rejected Besant’s pacifism and explicitly endorsed full Indian independence—not dominion status—as the Indian National

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Congress had done in 1929 under Nehru’s influence. Moreover, Krishna Menon made his case in socialist terms, justifying his pessimism about a post-independence Indo-British relationship “as there was not a nation in the whole of the world that had not at one time or another ‘come under the exploitation schemes for British capital.’”29 Through the summer of 1930, Krishna Menon publicly returned to the Besant party line, but by September he had seized control of Besant’s organization and led it to endorse the Congress’s line.30 After September 1930 the “Commonwealth of India League,” which Krishna Menon had led since 1929 on Besant’s behalf, ceased to support its founder’s goals, and instead agreed to support the demands of the Indian National Congress, “including the right to secede from the Empire.”31 As Krishna Menon’s organization shifted towards supporting Indian independence, it began to attract supporters from Labour’s left wing, who had left the League Against Imperialism in the late 1920s over its ties to the Comintern. Thus, the Labour MP John Beckett (later to join Mosley’s British Union of Fascists), who had been on the Executive Committee of the BS-LAI in 1928, attended a Commonwealth of India League event in July 1930, where he called Saklatvala and the CPGB leader Harry Pollitt his “friends” for defending the Meerut prisoners, and identified himself as a “Left-Winger” alongside two other exiles from the League Against Imperialism, Maxton and Brockway of the ILP.32 After mid-1930 Brockway and other “left-wingers” began to appear frequently at Krishna Menon’s events. Still hostile to “bourgeois nationalists” such as the Indian National Congress, the CPGB did not celebrate Krishna Menon leading the Labour left to align with Congress. Instead, at an event intended to unify the entire anticolonial Indian community of London on 27 November 1930, Indian CPGB members shouted down speakers ranging from the Quaker activist Horace Alexander to the fiery leftist MP Ellen Wilkinson. While interrupting one Indian woman, the troublemakers justified their disruption on the basis that “[w]e are not gentlemen, we are Communists.”33 Tension between Krishna Menon and the CPGB continued into 1931, even as Krishna Menon’s organization began to overlap with BS-LAI members. For example, in May 1931, the BS-LAI’s A.E. Fruitnight participated in the Commonwealth of India League’s annual conference. Fruitnight attempted to draw Krishna Menon into the Meerut prisoner campaign, proposing a resolution “demanding the release of the Meerut prisoners at once.” However, Krishna Menon demonstrated his refusal to cooperate with communists on any grounds by insisting that

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“he did not care about a mere 31 men, but for the thousands of political prisoners now in jail.”34 Amid his continued antipathy for communists Krishna Menon cemented his control over the Commonwealth of India League, which Gandhi visited while in London for the second Round Table Conference in late 1931. In an executive council meeting held moments before Gandhi’s arrival to speak, the League changed its object to “support[ing] India’s claim for Swaraj,” and recommended altering the name from the “Commonwealth of India League” to simply “India League.”35 The organization finally changed its name in January 1932, completing its transformation.36 The new India League (IL) soon began to cooperate more fully with Reginald Bridgeman and the BS-LAI, although some tension remained evident. Bridgeman attended the IL’s women’s conference in March 1932, and Krishna Menon prevented him from moving an amendment to the conference’s resolution on the basis that the IL “did not desire any Communist motion to be dealt with.”37 Two months later, though, Krishna Menon attended the BS-LAI’s annual conference, and after spending most of the intervening months in India with an IL delegation alongside Labour’s Ellen Wilkinson, the ILP’s Monica Whately, and the journalist Leonard Matters, he seemed much more friendly to the BS-LAI and the CPGB.38 On arriving back in Britain in November, Krishna Menon invited Bridgeman, Saklatvala, and Harry Pollitt to speak at an IL conference on 26 November 1932.39 Moreover, whereas in 1931 he had refused to associate with the Meerut case, in early 1933 he earned credit from the BS-LAI by writing a letter to the Manchester Guardian on behalf of the prisoners.40 By the time Krishna Menon returned from India in late 1932 the integration of the IL with the BS-LAI and other communist-backed organizations had progressed beyond Krishna Menon. Bertrand Russell, who had become the IL’s chairman in early 1932, attended the World Congress against War held in Amsterdam in August 1932, drawing the IL into the BS-LAI’s orbit.41 The conference was the brainchild of the League Against Imperialism’s original mastermind, Willi Münzenberg, and Reginald Bridgeman chaired the British delegation to the conference, which Russell joined.42 Bridgeman doubled as the BS-LAI’s secretary and the organizer of the British Anti-War Council, both of which he ran out of the same office—a great convenience for MI5, which tracked the two organizations in the same file.43 Romain Rolland, Gandhi’s biographer and popularizer in Europe, helped to organize the Amsterdam Congress,

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and his written report after the gathering foretold where the French Communist Party and eventually Comintern would move in 1934 and 1935, when he told the assembled communists and non-communists to “proclaim, at the outset of this Congress, the slogan ‘Above all parties – united front.’”44 Russell and Rolland seem to have drawn Krishna Menon into the AntiWar Movement, as Rolland promoted Krishna Menon’s IL delegation to India in an early 1933 column, and Krishna Menon then attended the British Anti-War Council’s two-day congress in March 1933.45 However, the old tensions between Krishna Menon and Indian communists re-emerged as he and Saklatvala feuded over the communists’ continued criticism of Gandhi.46 Krishna Menon apparently never became involved in activism around the Scottsboro case but, along with Meerut and the Anti-War Movement, Scottsboro was another cause célèbre which created an ad hoc unity among British leftists, and which centred on the BS-LAI, whose office hosted the Scottsboro Defence Committee’s meetings.47 Scottsboro notwithstanding, by 1934 the India League and the BS-LAI had become tightly linked at the same time as the French Communist Party was insisting on a united front strategy.48 Krishna Menon’s turn to the BS-LAI must have come in part out of desperation, since the India League lost its main source of funds in late 1932.49 Krishna Menon had sided with the affiliationists against Brockway in the ILP’s 1932 fight about splitting from the Labour Party, instead entering yet another league, Stafford Cripps’ Socialist League, which remained within Labour, and the split led Brockway to resign from the India League.50 The loss of Brockway, and especially the ILP’s funding, represented a major blow for the India League, but seemingly through sheer force of will (and lack of sleep) Krishna Menon kept the organization going through 1933 and 1934, buoyed by its secretary’s continued relationships within the Labour Party and the Quaker-aligned Friends of India.51 As Krishna Menon himself and the India League languished, powerless to stop the advance of the National Government proceeding with its Government of India Act under committee review, Krishna Menon finally began to embrace the BS-LAI. In May 1934 Bridgeman convened a meeting of BS-LAI’s executive “for the purpose of ‘establishing some form of organisational link between Indians in London who are opposed to foreign rule in India’ and [BS-LAI].” Krishna Menon wrote to the group but could not attend, and even then he specified that the letter came from him personally, not the IL.52 Later that year, the Anti-War Movement invited Krishna Menon to speak at a demonstration commemorating the

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outbreak of the Great War, and Bridgeman reached out to Krishna Menon personally about developing a joint strategy against the India Bill.53 Another overlapping organizational link connecting the BS-LAI and the Anti-War Movement with the India League took shape in early 1934 as the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) formed in response to the Incitement to Disaffection Bill. Leftist fellow travellers such as D.N. Pritt and Neil Lawson, lawyers who had helped the Comintern-backed International Labour Defence in defending accused communists and trade unionists in Meerut and in Germany, connected the new NCCL to the Haldane Society, a socialist lawyers’ club which Krishna Menon joined when he was called to the bar—also in 1934.54 The BS-LAI and the NCCL also served as an institutional link reconnecting Krishna Menon with Fenner Brockway, who in May 1934 “congratulated the Council on their success in forming a united front against Fascism.”55 Brockway and Krishna Menon’s mutual support for the NCCL represented an advantage inherent in maintaining a wide network of political connections: even when one relationship fell through (the IL-ILP connection), others could take their place (the BS-LAI), and the two parties could still work together through third parties (the NCCL). By early 1935, the India League and the BS-LAI edged even closer, as an Indian BS-LAI member, Ishaat Habibullah, was the featured speaker for a major IL meeting.56 Later in 1935, Bridgeman and Harry Pollitt offered Krishna Menon and the India League their support “without reservation,” with Bridgeman joining the IL and pledging not to do anything to “embarrass” it.57 By the time Nehru got out of prison in 1935, then, Krishna Menon had assembled and been included in a network spanning from Quaker allies of Gandhi, through the left of the Labour Party, all the way to the Communist Party. Much to Nehru’s chagrin, all these groups united in October 1935 as a “Nehru Reception Committee” to welcome him to London.58 After connecting with Nehru and enjoying his support, Krishna Menon would embrace Nehru’s 1927 vision of a united front, and through the new strength enjoyed by the India League, he could vitiate that front. Nehru and Krishna Menon’s United Front, 1933–1935 Nehru and Krishna Menon seem to have first corresponded during Nehru’s brief respite from prison in late 1933, and publishing appears to have brought the two together. Krishna Menon, needing to support himself outside his India League work, had become a general editor for Selwyn and Blount by mid-1933.59 In this capacity, Krishna Menon apparently wrote to Nehru in

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November 1933 asking to publish an article of Nehru’s, “Whither India?,” and asking Nehru “to elaborate these articles and make them into a book.”60 Nehru rejected this proposal, but he continued to send Krishna Menon pamphlets and reports about official repression in India for circulation in Britain until he returned to prison in February 1934.61 This brief correspondence apparently affected Krishna Menon intensely, as one of the subjects Nehru mentioned in his 1933 letter—calling for a constituent assembly for India, as an alternative to the House of Commons drafting a Government of India Bill—subsequently appeared in Krishna Menon’s India League activism. Nehru noted, “[A] Constituent Assembly elected under an adult or near adult franchise … is the only feasible solution of the political problem as well as the communal problem in India.” He then added, suggestively, “[I]f this proposal is put forward in England also by responsible parties it would be very helpful.”62 Seeking to please Nehru, in June 1934 Krishna Menon circulated a petition calling for a Constituent Assembly in India on the basis of full adult franchise, just as Nehru had requested.63 Krishna Menon also floated this proposal at the Labour Party Conference of October 1934, as an alternative to the Government’s Government of India Bill.64 In August 1935, Krishna Menon took the liberty of publishing several of Nehru’s speeches and pamphlets under Harold Laski’s introduction as India Speaks, perhaps further attempting to link himself to Nehru.65 At the same time Krishna Menon had switched from Selwyn and Blount to The Bodley Head of John Lane, where he served as their India specialist and edited the “Twentieth Century Library” series, whose emblem (designed by Eric Gill) depicted “Laocoön, that is Man, fighting with the twin snakes of War and Usury.”66 Before leaving Selwyn and Blount, Krishna Menon edited a collection of essays from Oxford graduates on war, in response to the Oxford Union’s “King and Country” debate of February 1933. One of the debate’s participants, future Labour Party leader Michael Foot, contributed an essay, beginning a long collaboration with Krishna Menon which drew Foot into anticolonial politics.67 With both the title on anti-war sentiment and the Twentieth Century Library’s orientation against war and usury, Krishna Menon began to identify himself in his day-to-day profession with leftist politics, sympathetic to the anti-war and anti-capitalist ideas of the ILP which also circulated through Communist-linked organizations such as the BS-LAI and the Anti-War Movement. Publishing further helped Krishna Menon’s political career through his work at John Lane on Nehru’s autobiography, tentatively entitled

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In and Out of Prison.68 By coordinating Nehru’s late October-early November 1935 visit to Britain and then handling Nehru’s literary affairs in London, Krishna Menon began to enter into Nehru’s close circle: Nehru playfully chided Krishna Menon for first calling him “pandit,” and then “Mr.” Eventually Nehru succeeded in his requests that Krishna Menon call him by his given name, since “this ceremony in personal relations bores me.”69 After the 1935 visit to Britain, Nehru recognized Krishna Menon’s abilities, describing him to Rajendra Prasad as “very able and energetic and is highly thought of in intellectual, journalistic and leftwing Labour circles,” with all “the virtues and failings of the intellectual.” Nehru admitted he “was very favourably impressed by him,” recognized that he had led the India League in a “definitely socialistic” direction, and identified the India League as “the only really political organisation” working for Indian independence in Britain.70 Krishna Menon’s 1933–1934 correspondence with Nehru and his usefulness as a contact in the British publishing industry help to explain why Nehru settled on Krishna Menon and his India League as the conduit for Congress activity in Britain. There were, after all, many groups purportedly working for Indian independence in Britain, some even led by Indians.71 However, by the time Nehru arrived in London in 1935, only Krishna Menon’s India League straddled the line Nehru himself had tried to walk from 1927–1930, that of the united front: cooperating with communists and non-communists alike, but refusing to be dominated by communists. Just as it had for Nehru in 1927, the League Against Imperialism provided a useful link to a wider network of Communist-backed organizations, while still allowing the India League to cooperate with others on the left. Krishna Menon demonstrated his ability to operate such a united front-style network by integrating the IL with the BS-LAI, the Anti-War Movement, and the NCCL in 1934, as shown in the previous section. In keeping with the Comintern’s own endorsement of a “united front” policy in the summer of 1935, Nehru also emphasized a “united front” throughout his European sojourn of October 1935 – February 1936, describing the Congress as a “joint front (including many groups)—a front populaire—against British imperialism” in a piece for the French paper, Vendredi, which backed the front populaire, soon to become the government in France.72 Nehru also emphasized the popular and united front idea to the staid Labour party, again calling the Congress “a joint front against British imperialism,” thus differentiating it from the Comintern vocabulary but still maintaining the concept of unity across ideology against imperialism.73

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Nehru demonstrated his continued commitment to the League Against Imperialism on his arrival in London in October 1935, where he met Bridgeman and Saklatvala. (For the longer-term connections signified by this reunion see the work of Michele Louro and particularly her chapter in this volume.) By the time of Nehru’s arrival, even the communists within BS-LAI had accepted the Comintern’s new line, with the CPGB’s Ben Bradley (a former Meerut prisoner) telling the British Section at a September 1935 meeting that the organization would reach out to Nehru and the Congress.74 Nehru proved more than ready to reciprocate, and when he returned to Britain in late January 1936 he especially made time to meet again with Bridgeman and “the Saklatvala group,” deprived of its namesake due to his premature death from a heart attack days before Nehru’s arrival. In his 1936 visit, Nehru also attended a BS-LAI meeting, lunched with the CPGB’s Harry Pollitt, and met again with Reginald Bridgeman. In addition to this activity on the far left, a reception of Labourite members of the IL, from Ellen Wilkinson to Stafford Cripps and Harold Laski, welcomed Nehru, as did the Indian Conciliation Group.75 Since Nehru had left his itinerary entirely to Krishna Menon’s discretion, the political breadth covered during Nehru’s brief trip demonstrated the broad-minded approach Krishna Menon and Nehru took to engaging the British left. Krishna Menon and Bridgeman’s United Front, 1936–1937 After Nehru’s return to India, Krishna Menon threw himself into cooperation with the various organizations which made up the network he had assembled in 1934 and 1935, often in lockstep with Reginald Bridgeman. Bridgeman and the organizations linked to him through the BS-LAI reciprocated: a few weeks after Nehru’s departure from Europe, Bridgeman, Ben Bradley, and Ronald Kidd of the NCCL all spoke at an India League event, alongside such IL Labour stalwarts as Michael Foot, J.F. Horrabin, and Reginald Sorensen.76 By May 1936, Indians affiliated with the BS-LAI—who in the early 1930s had harassed and interrupted IL meetings—were attending India League events, although at one event Bridgeman had to act as a peacemaker between Krishna Menon and BS-LAI members who still found him insufferable.77 Krishna Menon’s involvement in the NCCL provided another opportunity for Nehru to articulate his vision of a united front, as he argued with his new London protégé about whether to affiliate a new Indian Civil Liberties Union with the NCCL. Nehru rejected a formal affiliation, as the Congress had with overseas branches ever since 1931,

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but urged Krishna Menon to serve as a personal link to the NCCL. Nehru admitted he did “not expect much” from the NCCL, “but my own tendency is to err on the side of inclusion rather than on exclusion.”78 Accordingly, two weeks later Krishna Menon accepted an appointment to the NCCL’s Indian Civil Liberties Subcommittee.79 In the spirit of inclusion, Nehru was most pleased when Stafford Cripps succeeded in securing a united front among the Socialist League, the ILP, and the CPGB in early 1937, and Nehru wrote to Cripps to congratulate him on assembling “the joint front of left-wing elements in Britain,” echoing his own use of “joint front” to describe the Congress in India.80 In addition to the NCCL, in 1936 Krishna Menon participated in an international congress for world peace, held in Brussels in the same palace where the League Against Imperialism had first met in 1927. The 1936 Congress represented a flowering of the Popular Front, with the communist-front Anti-War Movement coordinating with fellow travellers like Romain Rolland, women’s peace organizations, and League of Nations Union liberal internationalists such as the Labour MP, Philip Noel-Baker, and Conservative MP Lord Cecil.81 Krishna Menon conveyed to Nehru his scepticism about the gathering, which summoned nearly 5,000 delegates from all over the world, and even after attending he admitted that the wide ideological range of those who had agreed to form an International Peace Campaign (Rassemblement Universel pour la Paix, RUP) made the organization potentially untenable. Nonetheless, in the same spirit that had animated Nehru in Brussels in 1927, Krishna Menon insisted that “the wise way is to put forward our constructive programme instead of non-co-operating or remaining just protestants.”82 Krishna Menon also found the presence of other fellow travellers in the RUP, such as its secretary Louis Dolivet, very encouraging.83 1937 found Krishna Menon’s version of the united front at its very peak, as he maintained his existing organizational links—especially the India League, enjoying Congress’s immense victories in the 1936 elections— and expanded his ambit to include mobilization for Spain, China, and Ethiopia. After unsuccessfully lobbying Nehru to send Congress support to the Spanish Republic in late 1936, Krishna Menon independently started a campaign to send an ambulance in support of the anti-fascist cause.84 Nehru’s daughter Indira, then a student at Oxford, even spoke alongside stalwart fellow travellers John Strachey and Isabel Brown at a rally for Krishna Menon’s Spain-India Aid Committee in March 1937.85 Later in the year Krishna Menon spoke at a conference on Ethiopia organized by Sylvia Pankhurst, and he became a reliable member and

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speaker for the China Campaign Committee, another Popular Front-style organization which arose to support Nationalist China against invasion by Japan.86 Much of this flurry of activity occurred after May 1937, when the League Against Imperialism was finally wound up. Krishna Menon had attended its final conference, in February 1937, which nearly dissolved into a fight as the veteran anticolonialist and international socialist George Padmore challenged the leadership of the BS-LAI over its attitude towards Ethiopia.87 In the weeks after the February conference, the BS-LAI consciously wound itself up, with Ben Bradley circulating a letter to members in May saying that organizational weakness and the BS-LAI’s continued prohibition by the Labour Party led its leadership to decide that its aims would be better served by “carrying on the anti-imperialist work through the broad channels of the Trade Union and Labour Movements, and through the rapidly developing Unity Campaign.”88 Bridgeman and Bradley certainly had black activists such as Padmore and Jomo Kenyatta in mind with this prompt to “channel” the personnel of the BS-LAI into other movements—such as the International African Service Bureau, set up along the lines of the BS-LAI with the League’s remaining funds, which Bridgeman transferred to Padmore.89 However, no person or organization could have better fitted Bradley’s description than Krishna Menon and the India League, through which Bridgeman, Bradley, and numerous other former BS-LAI activists continued to support socialist anti-imperialism for the rest of the 1930s and throughout the Second World War.90 After the outbreak of war in 1939, Bridgeman even shared Krishna Menon’s office, and Bridgeman continued to work on behalf of the India League.91 Bridgeman and Krishna Menon worked incredibly closely through the NCCL, writing a “A Minimum Programme of Civil Liberties in the Colonial Territories” together during the summer of 1941.92 Bridgeman’s Colonial Information Bureau continued to report faithfully on IL conferences at least until 1943, and Bridgeman himself remained a member of the IL long after India had gained its independence, serving as the League’s Honorary Treasurer in 1950.93 All this was enabled in part by Krishna Menon’s ideological evolution into what former Meerut prisoner-turned-anticommunist Philip Spratt would later call “the fellow-traveller who is more loyal than party members themselves.”94 In this sense of the loyal fellow traveller, Krishna Menon belongs alongside Bridgeman and figures such as D.N. Pritt, who would eventually leave Labour to join the CPGB. Unlike Pritt, though,

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Bridgeman and Krishna Menon were useful to their communist allies precisely because they remained in the Labour Party and the India League remained a “safe space” for leftists from across the spectrum to interact. For example, in 1940 Bridgeman’s local Labour liaison rebuked him for attending a communist-front committee of Cypriots, pointedly contrasting that committee with the IL.95 What differentiated the Cypriot committee from Krishna Menon’s IL was the careful nurturing of ties with Labour and Labour leaders which Krishna Menon had maintained, despite his political disagreements, ever since his days as a moderate Besant devotee. Conclusion: Communist Capture? Precisely because Krishna Menon had maintained his relationships and political linkages despite his own leftward evolution, he had enmeshed himself in relationships spanning the British left. As I tried to map out all of Krishna Menon’s organizational linkages, the image which emerged resembled a web far more than a network. And like a web, Krishna Menon’s connections proved durable. Explaining to Nehru why he could not return to India to head the civil liberties union there in late 1936, Krishna Menon explained that “the Indian work here is not to be defined in terms of an organisation,” but rather in terms of his many “contacts.”96 This would prove true as, with the exceptions of his fallings out with Besant and Brockway in the early 1930s, Krishna Menon kept his relationships open, even when they proved difficult for him politically and for others because of Krishna Menon’s prickliness. Thus, when the Labour Government swept to power in 1945 Krishna Menon had a direct line to the party through his longtime mentor and friend Harold Laski, his collaborator Ellen Wilkinson, and his protégé Michael Foot, among many others; and he still remained active in his relationship with the CPGB and maintained his links to groups such as the China Campaign Committee, the NCCL, and the Colonial Information Bureau.97 The crucial question for historians looking at Krishna Menon, and for the US and British intelligence agencies at the time, remained whether this was an alliance assembled by Krishna Menon or simply a case of the CPGB successfully capturing Krishna Menon and his organizational links for their own purposes. The BS-LAI had fully penetrated the IL by 1936 at the latest, with Chloe Davis serving as a secretary at the India League office and reporting back to Ben Bradley at the BS-LAI office.98 (Of course, in addition to the usual Home Office Warrant for phone checks and police surveillance, MI5 had an undercover operative, “Miss X,” who worked at the BS-LAI and then at the Anti-War Movement after

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1932, so the British security service was monitoring the CPGB’s own monitoring operation.99) Indian Political Intelligence certainly felt that by early 1937 Krishna Menon had become a communist agent in all but name, noting his “eulogistic references to the USSR” over Spain and his “ever-increasing intimacy” with the CPGB.100 At the same time, Nehru detected a shift in Krishna Menon’s politics after Krishna Menon wrote him cautioning against signing a letter in support of Trotsky and against the show trials in Moscow.101 While we should acknowledge to an extent the “success” of the CPGB in converting Krishna Menon into a committed fellow traveller by 1937, it would be a mistake to assume that he acted simply as a CPGB proxy, any more than Bridgeman had since the creation of the BS-LAI. Moreover, we ought to distinguish between the CPGB’s actual success and the real success, which came from the fellow traveller Bridgeman, who made the early overtures to Krishna Menon through the BS-LAI in 1934. Rather than “capturing” Krishna Menon, he himself came to share Bridgeman’s commitment to anti-imperialism as a cause above all others, which Bridgeman articulated in 1932 as “whether … he believes in Imperialism, or wishes to overthrow it.”102 If, as Bridgeman believed in 1932 and Krishna Menon believed by 1937, the Soviet Union represented a force against imperialism, then Krishna Menon’s alignment with the CPGB after 1937 simply followed Nehru’s dictum from 1929 to “cooperate with any organization or state” no matter its politics, “so far as its activities are anti-imperialist.”103 Krishna Menon applied the same standard to the ideologically diverse RUP, which he had hoped in 1936 would combine “with the positive contributions made by Russia and by popular movements like our own” to “avert war and liquidate imperialism and capitalism with it.”104 Moreover, Krishna Menon saw his role as a personal connection linking Nehru and socialist elements in India to various causes in Britain, and especially the CPGB, in a series of “second rate jobs” making an important, if unglamorous, contribution to India’s freedom. As he explained to Nehru in 1936, Krishna Menon felt “that the situation in India will soon develop in such a way when these contacts however unimportant they are in terms of a mass struggle would still be invaluable as a necessary element in our fight.”105 The next ten years largely bore this out, as Krishna Menon’s India League became a key lifeline for Nehru and the Congress under the restrictions of the Second World War.106 And, with Labour’s victory in 1945, the connection bore fruit long after institutions such as the BS-LAI, China Campaign Committee, and even the IASB had passed from the stage.

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The weakness of Krishna Menon’s approach emerges most clearly not in terms of his “capture” by communists, but rather in the thin-ness of the web: like a spider’s web, Krishna Menon’s network remained sticky, but it could also be brushed aside once Krishna Menon passed from the stage. As Nehru explained to Krishna Menon about a similar thin-ness of the socialist left in Congress in the 1930s, with a panoply of organizations “a handful of people have to carry on with them, usually the same people.”107 Thus, once Krishna Menon left Britain in 1952 he never quite found the same dense network in which he could exercise influence, and once he lost his influence over Nehru after the 1962 war he became a liability rather than an asset even for his allies in the KGB.108 However, Krishna Menon did remain thickly enmeshed in the networks which arose around various Asianisms, though with the exception of the 1955 Bandung Conference he largely hovered just behind the direct action of the actors covered in Carolien Stolte’s chapter in this volume. Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, in particular, did not care for Krishna Menon.109 But then, who did? Even when large organizations interacted new problems would emerge, since the largest member organization would take on the burden of labour, “and yet others interfere and make work difficult. It is fairly easy to cooperate in a demonstration, but it is far more difficult to do so organizationally.”110 Krishna Menon’s IL and his many allies could have made the same critique of the CPGB, or at times the communists might have made the same critique of Krishna Menon. Never without his fair share of critics, Krishna Menon nonetheless never found himself without his fair share of friends, at least until 1962. In this sense, the legacy of the League Against Imperialism as a united front served Krishna Menon very well. Notes 1 2 3

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Janaki Ram, V.K. Krishna Menon: A Personal Memoir (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 8–16. Minoo Masani, Bliss Was It In That Dawn… A Political Memoir Up to Independence (Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1977), 24–5. H.N. Brailsford quoted in Nicholas Owen, The British Left and India: Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism, 1885–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 233. Imperial War Museum, Interview 3901, Alan Lawson, recorded November 1978: www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80003885. Indira Nehru, quoted in Owen, The British Left and India, 233.

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Paul M. McGarr, “‘A Serious Menace to Security’: British Intelligence, V. K. Krishna Menon and the Indian High Commission in London, 1947–52,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 38:3 (2010), 441–69; Paul M. McGarr, “‘India’s Rasputin’?: V. K. Krishna Menon and Anglo–American Misperceptions of Indian Foreign Policymaking, 1947–1964,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 22:2 (2011), 239–60; Ian Hall, “‘Mephistopheles in a Saville Row Suit’: V. K. Krishna Menon and the West,” in Ian Hall (ed.), Radicals and Reactionaries in Twentieth-Century International Thought (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 191–216. Jawaharlal Nehru, “Note for the Working Committee,” 7 March 1927, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, First Series (hereafter SWJN FS) vol. 2 (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972), 301. This essay distinguishes between “united front” and “popular front” because “united front” is the term British leftists used, since the British Labour Party never seriously entertained unity with the CPGB, much less non-socialist parties. On the joint Comintern and French origins of the “front populaire,” see Jonathan Haslam, “The Comintern and the Origins of the Popular Front 1934–1935,” The Historical Journal 22:3 (1979), 673–91; John F. Santore, “The Comintern’s United Front Initiative of May 1934: French or Soviet Inspiration?,” Canadian Journal of History 16:3 (1981), 405–21. For the ‘Popular Front’ as concentric circles of a united front (socialists), a ‘people’s front’ (anti-fascists), and internationalism, see Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 265–66. The best single account of Bridgeman remains John Saville, “Bridgeman, Reginald Francis Orlando (1884–1968), Anti-Imperialist,” in Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville (eds.), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 7 (London: Macmillan, 1984), 26–40. For the best evocation of Nehru’s entry into this milieu in 1925–7, see Michele L. Louro, Comrades against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), chs. 1–2. International Institute of Social History (IISH), League against Imperialism Archive (LAIA), “List of Organizations and Delegates Attending the Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism” (League against Colonial Oppression, 10 February, 1927); Jawaharlal Nehru, “Report on the Brussels Congress,” 19 February, 1927, SWJN FS 2: 279; Hull History Centre (HHC), U DBN/25/1: “Report of the International Secretariat for 1934” (League against Imperialism, 1934). Nehru to Rangaswami Iyengar, 7 September, 1927, SWJN FS 2: 329; Fredrik Petersson, “From Versailles to Bandung: The Interwar Origins of

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16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

Anticolonialism,” in Luis Eslava, Michael Fakhri, and Vasuki Nesiah (eds.), Bandung, Global History, and International Law: Critical Pasts and Pending Futures (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 74. For example, comments by A.J. Cook, Harry Pollitt, Shapurji Saklatvala, George Allison, and Fenner Brockway in IISH, LAIA: “Report on the First Conference of the British Section of the League Against Imperialism Held in London on July 7th., 1928,” 7 July 1928, 4, 6, 8–9, 10. For the organization of the British Section, see The National Archives, London (TNA), KV 2/2504: R. Bridgeman to C.P. Dutt, 28 March 1928. Jawaharlal Nehru to R. Bridgeman, 11 June 1928, SWJN FS 3: 132; Nehru to Bridgeman, 26 June 1928, SWJN FS 3: 133; Nehru to V. Chattopadhyaya, July 1928, SWFN FS 3: 135. Nehru also kept up with the BS-LAI after its July meeting: Nehru to Bridgeman, 25 October 1928, SWFN FS 3: 149. Fredrik Petersson, “Hub of the Anti-Imperialist Movement,” Interventions 16:1 (2014), 58; footnote to Nehru to Roger Baldwin, 25 November 1929, SWJN FS 3: 314. Nehru to Taraknath Das, 25 August 1929, SWJN FS 3: 311. Nehru to Fenner Brockway, 1 August 1929, SWJN FS 4: 107. Nehru to Edo Fimmen, 25 November 1929, SWJN FS 3: 312; Nehru to Roger Baldwin, 25 November 1929, SWJN FS 3: 313–4. Nehru to Chattopadhyaya, 25 November 1929, SWJN FS 3: 312–3. Nehru to Chattopadhyaya, 30 January 1930, SWJN FS 4: 233. Nehru to Secretaries, League against Imperialism, 30 January 1930, SWJN FS 4: 238. Meerut now has a substantial literature; see Susan D. Pennybacker, From Scottsboro to Munich: Race and Political Culture in 1930s Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), chap. 4; Michele L. Louro, “‘Where National Revolutionary Ends and Communist Begins’: The League against Imperialism and the Meerut Conspiracy Case,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33:3 (2013), 331–44; Franziska Roy and Benjamin Zachariah, “Meerut and a Hanging: ‘Young India,’ Popular Socialism, and the Dynamics of Imperialism,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33:3 (2013), 360–77; Carolien Stolte, “Trade Unions on Trial: The Meerut Conspiracy Case and Trade Union Internationalism, 1929–32,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33:3 (2013), 345–59. Ram, Personal Memoir, 16–17; Suhash Chakravarty, V.K. Krishna Menon and the India League, 1925–47 (Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1997), volume 1: 60, 67, 73.

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24 25

26

27

28 29 30

31 32

Jawaharlal Nehru, “Note on a Proposal for a Parliamentary Bill for India,” 10 March 1927, SWJN FS 2: 305–306. For example, “Lectures and Meetings: The Theosophical Society,” The Times, 5 May 1928. For an exhaustively detailed account of Krishna Menon’s time in Britain based on unique access to Krishna Menon’s papers, see Chakravarty, V.K. Krishna Menon and the India League, 1925–47; volume 1 covers 1924– 1930, volume 2 1930–2. British Library (BL), India Office Records (IOR), L/P&J/12/323: “Extract from New Scotland Yard Report, Dated 28th December, 1927,” 28 December 1927. “Britain’s Future in India: Peace by Conciliation and Agreement,” Manchester Guardian, 7 January 1929; BL IOR, L/P&J/12/356: “Commonwealth of India League, Extract from New Scotland Yard Report Dated 10th July, 1929,” 10 July 1929; “The Commonwealth of India League: Manchester Branch,” The Indian News 1:5 (25 July 1929), 11; C.R.G., “The Commonwealth of India League,” The Indian News 1:9 (19 September 1929), 7; “The Commonwealth of India League,” The Indian News 1:10 (3 October 1929), 5; “Conditions of Life in India: Case for Self-Government,” Manchester Guardian, 7 October 1929; “Commonwealth of India League,” The Indian News 1:11 (17 October 1929), 7; V.K. Krishna Menon, “India: A New Chapter,” The Indian News 1:13 (14 November 1929), 4; BL IOR L/P&J/12/323: V.K. Krishna Menon, “India: A New Chapter. Hope for the Future,” Bradford Pioneer, 6 December 1929, 1–2; “A Petition,” The Indian News 1:22 (3 April 1930), 7; “India and Dominion Status: Moderate Opinion Ready to Be Friendly,” Manchester Guardian, 7 April 1930; V.K. Krishna Menon, “Save the Conference!,” The Indian News 1:25 (17 May 1930), 3. “Conference at Birmingham,” The Indian News 1:23 (17 April 1930), 4. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/356: “Commonwealth of India League, Extract from New Scotland Yard Report Dated 25th June 1930,” 3. V.K. Krishna Menon, “Great Britain and India: Letter to the Editor,” The Spectator, 12 July 1930, 51; “Critics of Simon Report: Manchester Meeting,” Manchester Guardian, 14 July 1930. For the organizational maneuvers to take over the Commonwealth of India League: “Formation of London Federation,” The Indian News 2:2 (October 7, 1930), 7; BL IOR, L/P&J/12/356: “Commonwealth of India League, Extract from New Scotland Yard Report Dated 26th November, 1930.” “Commonwealth of India League,” The Indian News 2:1 (18 September 1930), 8. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/356: “Commonwealth of India League, Extract from New Scotland Yard Report Dated 11th December, 1929,” 1–2; BL IOR

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33

34 35 36

37 38

39 40 41

42

L/P&J/12/356 “Commonwealth of India League, Extract from New Scotland Yard Report Dated 23rd July, 1930,” 2. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/356: “Commonwealth of India League, Extract from New Scotland Yard Reports, Dated 10th December, 1930,” 2–3; “Indian Freedom. Large Meeting in London. Unanimous Demand for Self-Determination,” The Indian News 2:6 (4 December 1930), 8. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/270: “League against Imperialism, British Section, Misc. 730,” 10 June 1931. “Gandhi’s Exhortation to the Commonwealth of India League,” The Indian News 3:17 (26 November 1931), 2. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/356: “Commonwealth of India League, Extract from New Scotland Yard Report Dated 20th January 1932;” “The India League,” The India Review 4:2 (30 January 1932). For the detailed backstory behind this, see Chakravarty, V.K. Krishna Menon and the India League, 1925–47, volume 2. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/448: “India League: Extract from Scotland Yard Report dated 16th March 1932,” 3. TNA, KV 2/2509: “Summary of Information and Action 1929–1933 Relating to Vengalil Krishnan Krishna MENON,” ca 1934, 1; TNA, MEPO 38/107: “Record Sheet of Vengalil Krishnan Krishna MENON Known as Krishna MENON Born 3.5.1897,” ca 1972, 1; on the IL delegation, see Condition of India: Being the Report of the Delegation Sent to India by The India League, in 1932 (London: Essential News, 1933). BL IOR, L/P&J/12/448: “India League: Copy Extract from New Scotland Yard Report, dated 23rd November, 1932,” 1. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/273: “League against Imperialism and the Anti-War Movement,” 14 February 1933, 5. The first instance of Russell’s involvement with the India League appears in Krishna Menon to Sir Samuel Hoare, 16 February 1932. See Cambridge South Asia Centre, V.K. Krishna Menon Papers Microfilm [hereafter KMPMicrofilm]. George Lansbury and Harold Laski were also present at the meeting Krishna Menon recounted (13 February 1932). The World Congress Against War (New York: American Committee for Struggle Against War, 1932), 3, 25. For more on the Münzenberg-orchestrated Anti-War Movement, which became known as either the Amsterdam-Pleyel Movement or the World Committee against War and Fascism, see Larry Ceplair, Under the Shadow of War: Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and Marxists, 1918– 1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 78–81, 84–85; David James Fisher, Romain Rolland and the Politics of the Intellectual Engagement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), chap. 7.

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43 44 45 46 47

48 49

50

51

52 53

54

55

BL IOR, L/P&J/12/272: “League against Imperialism (British Section) – Misc. 755,” 18 July 1932. Address by Romain Rolland in World Congress Against War, 11–12. Romain Rolland, “Vers l’unité de l’Inde, par l’entente hindoue-musulmane,” Europe 31:121 (15 January 1933), 107–10. “Peace Congress Scenes,” Manchester Guardian, 6 March 1933. For the definitive account of London-based Scottsboro activism see Pennybacker, From Scottsboro to Munich, 17–65 and throughout. For the BS-LAI’s office, see the invitations to the Committee’s meetings sent to Jomo Kenyatta throughout TNA, KV 2/1787. Haslam, “The Comintern and the Origins of the Popular Front 1934–1935”; Santore, “Comintern’s United Front Initiative.” In this, Menon’s turn echoed the India-born Communist MP Shapurji Saklatvala’s move to the Comintern from 1925 to 1927 after his personal network’s resources dwindled, as recounted in Daniel Edmonds, “Unpacking ‘Chauvinism’: The Interrelationship of Race, Internationalism, and AntiImperialism amongst Marxists in Britain, 1899–1933” (University of Manchester: PhD dissertation, 2017), 29, 168–70, and 193–4. On disaffiliation, see Gidon Cohen, “The Independent Labour Party, Disaffiliation, Revolution and Standing Orders,” History 86:282 (2001), 200–221. For Krishna Menon and the Socialist League, see Michael Bor, The Socialist League in the 1930s (London: Athena Press, 2005), 286–90. Suhash Chakravarty, Crusader Extraordinary: Krishna Menon and the India League 1932–1936 (New Delhi: India Research Press, 2006), 434; Owen, The British Left and India, 208–9. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/274: “League against Imperialism and Connected Communist Activities,” 4 July 1934. N.B. Hunter to Krishna Menon, 28 July 1934, reproduced in Chakravarty, Crusader Extraordinary, 455. Bridgeman to Krishna Menon, 8 December 1934, referenced in Chakravarty, 444. TNA, KV 2/3592: “History Sheet for Neil Lawson, 28.9.32–20.9.35,” 3 October 1935, 7 verso. On the Haldane Society in the 1930s, see Nick Blake and Harry Rajak, Wigs and Workers: A History of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, 1930–1980 (London: Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, 1980), 7–19. Menon represented the Haldane Society at an NCCL event in 1941: HHC, U DCL 56/9: “Report on Third Session of National Council for Civil Liberty in the Colonial Empire,” 15–16 February 1941. TNA, KV 2/1917: “BROCKWAY Archibald Fenner. Vol. 1. of H.S. 1931 to 1939,” ca. 1939. Krishna Menon corresponded with Ronald Kidd of the

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56

57

58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67

68

69 70 71

NCCL as early as March 1935: Kidd to Krishna Menon, 11 March 1935, reproduced in Chakravarty, Crusader Extraordinary, 655. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/450: “India League: Extract from New Scotland Yard Report dated 13th February, 1935, No. 31.” For Habibullah’s BS-LAI affiliation, see BL IOR, L/P&J/12/274: “India Independence Day Meeting: Extract from New Scotland Yard Report dated 30th January 1935.”. Harry Pollitt to Krishna Menon, 6 March 1935, and Bridgeman to Krishna Menon, 10 March 1935, referenced in Chakravarty, Crusader Extraordinary, 439. For further examples of BS-LAI and IL cooperation in early 1935, see Chakravarty, 644. KMP-Microfilm, Nehru to V.K. Krishna Menon, 23 October 1935. TNA, KV 2/2509: “Summary of information and action 1929–1933 relating to Vengalil Krishnan Krishna MENON,” 2. KMP-Microfilm: Nehru to Krishna Menon, 21 December 1933. KMP-Microfilm: Nehru to Krishna Menon, 28 December 1933 and 1 February 1934. KMP-Microfilm: Nehru to Krishna Menon, 21 December 1933. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/449: V.K. Krishna Menon, “A Constituent Assembly for India. A Memorandum,” 4 June 1934. “Labour Party Conference,” Manchester Guardian, 4 October 1934. Cited in Chakravarty, Crusader Extraordinary, 646. From dustcover of Naomi Mitchison, The Home (London: John Lane, 1934), image at www.seriesofseries.owu.edu/twentieth-century-library (accessed August 24, 2018). V.K. Krishna Menon, ed., Young Oxford and War (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1934); Martin Ceadel, “The ‘King and Country’ Debate, 1933: Student Politics, Pacifism and the Dictators,” The Historical Journal 22:2 (1979), 397–422. Nehru to Krishna Menon, 9 December, 1935, SWJN FS 7, 16. Ellen Wilkinson seems to have suggested that Nehru utilize Krishna Menon as a literary agent, citing the work he had done on her 1934 book on fascism with Selwyn and Blount. See Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru Pre-1947 Correspondence, Vol. 103, 55–6: Wilkinson to Nehru, 5 November 1935. KMP-Microfilm: Nehru to Krishna Menon, 31 December 1935. Nehru to Rajendra Prasad, 20 November, 1935, SWJN FS 7, 42. For the many Indian and India-related groups in London in the 1930s, see Owen, The British Left and India, 197–234. 239 gives Owen’s understanding of Nehru’s choice of the IL.

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72 73 74 75 76 77

78 79

80 81

82 83 84 85 86

87 88

89

Jawaharlal Nehru, “India and the World,” 6 January 1936, SWJN FS 7, 57. Jawaharlal Nehru, “Speech at a Labour Party Reception,” 3 February 1936, SWJN FS 7, 89. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/293: “Jawahar Lal Nehru, Misc. 824,” 14 March 1936, 3. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/293: “Jawahar Lal Nehru,” 12 February 1936, 1–2, 5. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/450: “India League: Extract from New Scotland Yard Report dated 8th April, 1936.” BL IOR, L/P&J/12/450: “India League: Extract from Scotland Yard Report No. 63 dated 6th May 1936.” Specifically, Saty Brata Roy, C.B. Vakil, Promode Ranjan Sen-Gupta, and D.J. Vaidya attended IL events, all of whom had heckled Krishna Menon in the early 1930s. Nehru to Krishna Menon, 3 September 1936, SWJN FS 7, 429. HHC, U DCL/152/2a: “Report on Steps taken by the NCCL on behalf of the Civil Liberties of the Indian people,” ca. 1943; TNA, MEPO 38/107: “Record Sheet of Vengalil Krishnan Krishna MENON known as Krishna MENON born 3.5.1897,” ca. 1972, 2. Nehru to Sir Stafford Cripps, 22 February 1937, SWJN FS 8, 31. On this complicated confluence, see Rachel Mazuy, “Le Rassemblement Universel pour la Paix (1931–1939): une organisation de masse ?,” Matériaux pour l’ histoire de notre temps 30:1 (1993), 40–44; Louro, Comrades against Imperialism, 218–24. KMP-Microfilm: Krishna Menon to Nehru, 19 September 1936, 1. KMP-Microfilm: Krishna Menon to Nehru, 12 November 1936, 3–6. See KMP-Microfilm: Krishna Menon-Nehru correspondence of 19 November and 14 and 29 December 1936, and 4 January 1937. “The Coming Week,” The New Statesman and Nation, 13 March 1937, 409. Arthur Clegg, Aid China 1937–1949: A Memoir of a Forgotten Campaign (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2003), 21; TNA, KV 2/2509: “Summary of information and action 1937 relating to: Vengalil Krishnan Krishna MENON,” ca. 1937, 2. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/275: “League against Imperialism – Annual Conference,” 10 March 1937, 3–4, 7. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/275: Bradley’s 11 May 1937 circular quoted in “League against Imperialism: Extract from New Scotland Yard Report No. 90 dated 19th May 1937.”. TNA, KV 2/1787: “Cross-Reference, Subject: Johnstone KENYATTA,” 20 July 1937; Jean Jones, The League against Imperialism, Socialist History Occasional Pamphlet Series, 4 (London: Socialist History Society, 1996), 29.

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See Bridgeman’s presence at nearly every IL event after 1937 in the IPI files for 1938 forward, as well as numerous other CPGB members (BL IOR, L/P&J/12/451–56). 91 BL IOR, L/P&J/12/277: “Brief Note on R.F.O. Bridgeman,” 30 July, 1942. On Bridgeman’s IL work, see his letter to Krishna Menon of 6 April 1941, talking about recruiting a Labour MP for the India League: KMP-Microfilm: Bridgeman to Krishna Menon, 6 April 1941. 92 The Minimum Programme correspondence is found in the minutes of the NCCL’s British Overseas Sub-Committee, on which Krishna Menon and Bridgeman served together: HHC, U DCL 99/1 Part 1 and U DCL 275/1; Krishna Menon and Bridgeman also served together on the Standing Orders Committee of the NCCL’s 1941 Colonial Conference: HHC, U DCL 56/9. 93 See the Colonial Information Bulletin of 24 August 1943 section on “India,” 6, HHC, U DBN 26/1; and Bridgeman as Honorary Treasurer of the India League listed in HHC, U DCL 11/8, Part 1. 94 Philip Spratt, Blowing Up India: Reminiscences and Reflections of a Former Comintern Emissary (Calcutta: Prachi Prakashan, 1955), 57. 95 Letter to Bridgeman, 16 July 1940, quoted in Saville, “Bridgeman,” 36. 96 KMP-Microfilm, Krishna Menon to Nehru, 14 November 1936, 1. 97 The best single document covering all of Krishna Menon’s activities is the Special Branch’s file on him, closed only after his death in 1972: TNA, MEPO 38/107: “Record Sheet of Vengalil Krishnan Krishna MENON known as Krishna MENON born 3.5.1897,” ca. 1972, 2. 98 TNA, KV 2/1022: Telephone Check, Holborn 8915, 6 October 1936. 99 TNA, KV 2/1023: “The Woolwich Arsenal Case,” 18 November 1950, 8; for further details on “Miss X,” see Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence in the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire (New York: Overlook Press, 2012), 19. 100 BL IOR, L/P&J/12/323: Memorandum for Mr. Silver, 1 February 1937; BL IOR, L/P&J/12/450: “India League: Extract from New Scotland Yard Report No. 83 dated 10th February, 1937,” 2; BL IOR, L/P&J/12/450: “India League and Communist Party of Great Britain: Extract from Scotland Yard Report No. 87 dated 7th April, 1937.” 101 Footnote 2, Nehru to Krishna Menon, 22 May 1937, SWJN FS 8, 659. 102 Letter from Bridgeman to a Labour colleague, 16 September 1932, excerpted in Saville, “Bridgeman,” 31. 103 Nehru to Taraknath Das, 25 August 1929, SWJN FS 3, 311. 104 KMP-Microfilm: Krishna Menon to Nehru, 12 November 1936, 12. 105 KMP-Microfilm: Krishna Menon to Nehru, 16 November 1936, 2. 90

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106 For

the details of this connection, see especially Owen, The British Left and India, 251–98. 107 Nehru to Krishna Menon, 7 August 1937, SWJN FS 8, 293. 108 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 314–15. 109 On taking over leadership of the Indian delegation to the UN General Assembly in 1963, Mrs. Pandit was charitable enough to admit that not all the delegation’s problems were due “to my predecessor,” Krishna Menon, but she damned him with the faintest of praise: “It would be unfair to him to attribute all that has gone wrong to his temper or his misinterpretation of policies.” NMML, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit Papers, Series no. 1, II Installment, Subject Files – 1: Relating to the United Nations, File 5, 17–8: V.L. Pandit to M.J. Desai, 21 September 1963. 110 Nehru to Krishna Menon, 30 August 1937, SWJN FS 8, 719.

Chapter 12

Herald of a Failed Revolt: Mohammad Hatta in Brussels, 1927 Klaas Stutje In Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont, the published proceedings of the first Congress in Brussels, there is a picture of Mohammad Hatta, the future first vice president of Indonesia. It shows a crowded conference table in one of the side meetings of the Congress. Among the discussants are Jawaharlal Nehru of the Indian National Congress, Willi Münzenberg, chairman of the Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (International Workers’ Relief), and Liao Huanxing of the Chinese Guomindang Party. Hatta— still without his iconic round glasses—is chairing this meeting and, seen from the back, he turns around to look into the camera.1 

Fig. 20. Hatta at the Brussels Congress.

The picture suggests that Mohammad Hatta was a prominent participant of the Congress, and as such he is remembered. On the last day Hatta was elected to the newly established executive committee of the LAI. In this executive committee, which came together on a regular basis between 1927 and 1929, Hatta acquired a large network of influential and 309

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experienced political leaders and activists, such as Nehru, Münzenberg, and Liao Huanxing. This enhanced his prestige in the Netherlands and in the Indonesian national movement. Yet, in 1927 Hatta was a young man of 25 years old with very little international political experience. He was chairman of a very small organization for Indonesian students in the Netherlands, the Perhimpoenan Indonesia (Indonesian Association, PI), which numbered around twenty active members at the end of the 1920s. Nehru, by contrast, was already a renowned person in the Indian Congress Party, representing millions of Indians. Who was this young Hatta in 1927, and how can we explain his prominent position in the LAI? In Indonesian political historiography and literature on interwar internationalism Hatta’s position in the LAI is ill understood. Indonesianists take the Indonesian involvement in Brussels as evidence for the rising influence of Hatta and his fellow students as political leaders, and as the result of continuous efforts to bring the situation in his fatherland to the attention of foreign audiences. This approach does not make clear why the organizers of the LAI were interested in offering this tiny Dutch student organization a platform and a seat in the executive committee.2 On the other hand, in historiography of transnational anticolonialism and interwar internationalism the Indonesian delegation is often mentioned in a long list of organizations and movements from the colonized world that were rallied by anticolonial structures in Europe, such as the IAH of Willi Münzenberg, the Comintern, and the LAI itself, to join the leftist front against imperialism. Hatta and the PI are considered as self-evident extensions of the Indonesian anticolonial movement at large, perhaps justified by the fact that Hatta would become a prominent politician in his later life. Unfortunately, in these publications Hatta’s position within Europe and the Indonesian political landscape is left undiscussed. They ignore the fact that the PI was a very small and expatriate organization without mass support in the Netherlands Indies itself. At the same time they deny the fact that from this marginal position Hatta and the Indonesian students self-consciously pursued a specific agenda in engaging with leftist political networks in Europe.3 This article seeks to provide context for the Indonesian appearance at the 1927 Brussels conference by discussing the social background of the representatives, political developments in the Netherlands Indies, and the reaction of the international communist world to those developments. More generally, this article demonstrates that the various delegations in the LAI operated in a complex political landscape at the intersection

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between the local field as expatriate communities in Europe, the national field as elites in their countries of origins, and the international field as representatives within a transnational political network. All three fields have to be taken into account in order to understand the political dynamics within the LAI. Indonesian Students in Europe On 5 September 1921, Mohammad Hatta arrived in the Netherlands to study business in Rotterdam. He belonged to a relatively small community of Indonesian students that had started to arrive in the Netherlands from the turn of the twentieth century. Initially, this group consisted of a few dozen pioneers, but their numbers increased steadily in the years after the First World War to up to 150 people per year by the end of the 1920s. Before the war, the majority of the students had an aristocratic background and were predestined to occupy a prominent position in the Dutch colonial administration. After the First World War the social composition changed when wealthy business families and civil servants started to send their children overseas as well. Hatta was one of them. Born in 1902 in Fort de Kock, present-day Bukittinggi in West Sumatra, he had a mixed religious and commercial background, and his family envisaged a career in business for him. The Indonesian student community in the Netherlands played a significant role in Indonesian political history. The students are considered to be among the first Indonesians to start campaigning for an independent state beyond regional or religious affiliations.4 Many of the students who once studied in the Netherlands—Hatta, but also Sutan Sjahrir, Ali Sastroamidjojo, and few others—would play prominent political roles upon returning to the colony. Also in early post-colonial state formation former students from the Netherlands took a leading role, with the future vice president Hatta again as the most prominent example. Most of these students were members of the PI. In the first years of its existence the association, by then still known under its old Dutch name of “Indische Vereeniging”, was primarily a social club that organized lectures, festivities, and student trips. But in the beginning of the 1920s, under the influence of politicized newcomers, it gradually turned into a political vehicle that no longer put confidence in the colonial state to democratize and develop the Netherlands Indies towards full independence. The organization severed ties with loyalist groups and adopted an oppositional and anticolonial attitude. In 1922 the board changed the name of the organization from Indische Vereeniging to its Indonesian translation,

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Perhimpoenan Indonesia. The new name expressed the desire to achieve full independence from the Netherlands. The new title of its journal: Indonesia Merdeka, or “Free Indonesia,” was also symbolic. The PI strongly agitated against the Dutch colonial authorities and political parties but, concurrently with the emergence of a nationalist tendency among Indonesians in the Netherlands, they also started to engage with the world beyond the confines of the Dutch Empire. For instance, in an article from 1923 entitled “Indonesia in the global community,” Mohammad Hatta emphasized that the Indonesian Archipelago was situated on the crucial intersection between the Indian and the Pacific oceans, and was predestined to play an important role in world history. Elsewhere, he argued that the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 had inspired the Indonesians to “join with other nations in their headlong rush along the route to progress and independence.”5 In the words of the PI, ‘The rising country of Indonesia consciously tries to evaluate the position it occupies within the international community. It feels that it constitutes an independent link in the great world chain.”6 The awareness of being part of a global movement against colonialism encouraged them to reach out to other anticolonial movements that were also present in Europe. In January 1925 the PI decided to send a permanent representative to Paris, the “[c]apital of the men without a country.”7 This representative, the vice president of the PI, Arnold Mononutu, actively engaged with Asian groups living in Paris and presented himself as an ambassador of the yet-to-be-independent state of Indonesia. In this capacity he spoke to activists from British India, French Indochina, and China. He also engaged with cultural and semi-political student organizations and tried to introduce the Indonesian cause to the Parisian public by approaching prominent periodicals. A very concrete result of these international efforts was an invitation to attend a large French liberal pacifist conference, organized by Marc Sangnier to promote Franco-German reconciliation, in August 1926 in Bierville, a small village near Paris. As chairman of the PI, Hatta was one of a handful of Asian delegates who operated as a group to represent the colonized world. Looking back on the event in Indonesia Merdeka he wrote, “For the first time the Western pacifists saw Asia being represented at their congress. And for the first time they heard Asia’s voice, which declared in clear language that no lasting peace is possible as long as the oppressed peoples are not free of the foreign yoke.”8 They would soon hear that voice a second time at the founding conference of the League Against Imperialism.

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Nevertheless, Hatta’s own enthusiasm should not divert us from the fact that the position of the Asian delegation at the congress in Bierville was still very marginal. Hatta’s speech, for instance, was scheduled on the eighth day of the conference and did not result in new invitations or further political integration with European liberal and pacifist circles. Also in Paris, the Indonesian efforts were less successful than anticipated. The PI was particularly eager to get in contact with active communist anticolonial circles in Paris, especially around the propagandistic journal, Le Paria, tribune des populations des colonies, and the large communist daily, L’Humanité. But Mononutu did not succeed in getting the manifesto of PI published. Perhaps the political situation in Indonesia was too unfamiliar to the Parisian activists to attract attention, or perhaps they doubted the political character of the nationalist Indonesian elites in the Netherlands. In any case, as representative of the PI in Paris, Mononutu spoke on behalf of not more than a few dozen Dutch Indonesian students and carried too little mandate to expect open doors. For lack of a better alternative, it seems that the Indonesian students were drawn into a network of colonial elites from Asia, with a strong emphasis on orientalist cultural studies and closely associated with French governmental circles and the higher echelons of French society. In other words, the introduction of the Perhimpoenan Indonesia at the congress of the League Against Imperialism in 1927 cannot be explained by its own efforts alone. Crucial for its international reception were dramatic events on the other side of the globe in the Netherlands Indies. The Communist Revolts of November 1926 9 In the Netherlands Indies, social tensions had been building up for more than a decade already. The first modern political membership organization, Boedi Oetomo, was established in 1908, after which a series of political associations and trade unions followed. The largest of these associations were organized along cultural and religious lines. The Javanese organization, Boedi Oetomo, had more than 10,000 members in 1909 and the Islamic social movement, Sarekat Islam, grew from more than 360,000 members in 1916 to 2.5 million in 1919. After 1914, a socialist movement began to grow from within the Sarekat Islam, which resulted in its expulsion and eventually in the creation of the Partai Komunis Indonesia in 1920. Together, these organizations and affiliated trade unions created a lively political environment in the Netherlands Indies. It is important to note that anticolonial nationalism of the kind of the Perhimpoenan Indonesia remained a marginal political force until the

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closing years of the 1920s, even though the first nationalist organization, the Indische Partij, was established in 1912. This changed in 1921, when a new governor-general, Dirk Fock, assumed power. He steered away from years of relative tolerance towards Indonesian political organizations. Under his leadership, the authorities made it virtually impossible to voice anticolonial critique in a non-militant way. Deteriorating economic circumstances led to disillusionment among large parts of the Indonesian population. The support for a policy of noncooperation with the colonial authorities and for militant labour struggle increased accordingly. In some areas, demonstrations and disturbances took place on a weekly basis, and in industrial sectors the readiness for strike action was widespread. Under pressure of an angered support base and weakened by continuing arrests, the PKI decided in December 1925 that it was time for a coordinated revolt against the colonial authorities. It hoped that Moscow would lend financial, propagandistic, and perhaps even military support and that other Indonesian organizations would join along the way. It ordered its chapters and cells to prepare for illegal action and armed revolt on a date to be announced later. In the meantime the party bureau sent two prominent members to Moscow to seek support from the Comintern. After months of waiting in Moscow, the two representatives, Alimin and Musso, were told that the Comintern disapproved of the plan. The newly installed “National Secretariat for Indonesia,” with the Indian communist M. N. Roy and two exiled PKI-leaders, Semaoen and Darsono, among its members, wanted to get a better impression of the situation in the Netherlands Indies and the state of the Party. It urged postponing revolutionary attempts and giving priority to broadening the mass base of the PKI and affiliated organizations.10 In the meantime, the police in the Netherlands Indies intensified their repression of the PKI with increasing success. According to John Ingleson it had become almost impossible to organize the urban population by December 1925.11 Party branches were infiltrated, meetings dispersed, and leaders arrested. This only increased the sense of urgency of some of the best-prepared PKI branches, because they feared losing momentum if revolution was not planned soon. In this atmosphere of impatience and chaos, a few local branches decided not to wait for Alimin and Musso’s delayed return from Moscow. Without informing the central PKI leadership, they formed a secret committee and decided that 12 November 1926 would be the start of the revolt. They reached out to other branches of the PKI, but more than half of them were

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not willing or able to participate in the uprising. In several regions the police found out about the plans and started to make pre-emptive arrests. On 12 November, the day of the revolt, it remained eerily quiet in some of the most active districts of central Java. Only in Batavia did riots break out, and in West Java and West Sumatra the atmosphere was tense for about a week. By the time the PKI representatives returned to the Netherlands Indies from Moscow, the authorities had restored complete control and had crushed the aspirations of the PKI and its affiliated organizations. Within a few months 13,000 alleged communists were arrested, three leaders executed, and 1,300 people deported to the penal colony of Upper Digul in New Guinea. The revolt of November 1926 meant the end of the PKI and any other communist mass organization in the East Indies until after the Second World War.12 International Reactions to the Revolt of November 1926 The colonial government was greatly embarrassed by the fact that it had neither expected nor prevented this communist revolt. Arguably for the first time, the eyes of the world had turned towards the Netherlands Indies to discover that Dutch colonial rule was not as enlightened and benevolent as the Dutch authorities claimed. The Comintern, on the other hand, was also caught by surprise, and had difficulty determining its response to the developments in the Netherlands Indies. It rightfully suspected that the revolt was the work of dissenting PKI branches, but it did not want to condemn the Indonesian Communist Party as a whole. The news of the failed revolt in the Netherlands Indies coincided with alarming messages from China, where the Chinese Communist Party was active within the nationalist Guomindang party. A bloody clash between communists and nationalists in China was imminent and the Comintern did not want to admit that the Indonesian communists were being defeated as well, since this would render the Comintern’s Asia policy bankrupt. Therefore, on 20 November 1926, a week after the PKI revolt had begun and three days after the National Secretariat for Indonesia had urged the PKI to change its course, the Comintern issued a statement in support of the brave people of Indonesia: “[s]uppressed peoples of the world! The insurrectionary Indonesians are your advance guard; they express the will to freedom which is your common property. Do everything in your power to support them in their struggle!”13 The statement seemed intended to express solidarity, but was cynical because the Comintern had actively worked to delay the preparations for the revolt and did not support the confrontational strategy of the PKI.14

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Be that as it may, within this period of confusion on the part of the Comintern between November 1926 and December 1927, the founding congress of the League Against Imperialism took place in Brussels. It was organized by the German communist Willi Münzenberg of the Internationale Arbeiterhilfe, who had the ambition to bring the most important anticolonial organizations of the moment into contact with the international Left. At first sight it seems unlikely that the Perhimpoenan Indonesia—a small student organization with only a few dozen members and no official mass presence in the Netherlands Indies—should have received an invitation. In size and influence, the PI was incomparable with the Guomindang party or the Indian National Congress. However, the events in the Netherlands Indies drew previously unexpected attention to Dutch imperialism. For lack of a clear PKI presence in Europe, it was probably Semaoen, an Indonesian communist exile and member of the presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, who suggested inviting the Indonesian students to come to Brussels. This gave the small PI the opportunity to present itself as the only available representative of the Indonesian national movement in Europe. Nationalizing the 1926 Revolt The sudden elevation of the Perhimpoenan Indonesia as the unlikely heralds of a failed revolt is visible in a few ways. First of all, it led to considerable confusion in the sources—as well as in later accounts by historians—on the mandate of the Indonesian group. The proceedings that were published after the congress in Brussels presented the Perhimpoenan Indonesia as a “union of national parties in Indonesia.” The students were said to represent various organizations, such as the communist platform Sarekat Rakjat and the Islamic Sarekat Islam. This information is highly inaccurate. It is unlikely that Partai Sarekat Islam, the successor of Sarekat Islam, had granted the PI students an official mandate to be active in Brussels. Moreover, Sarekat Rakjat, the locally rooted communist mass base of the PKI and a rival organization to the Sarekat Islam, was largely defeated after the revolt of November 1926, along with the PKI. Semaoen, who was stated to represent the Sarekat Rakjat, was completely detached from communist activists in the Netherlands Indies after he was banished to Europe in July 1923. This makes it hard to believe that he was the actual representative of the organization at the Brussels Congress. The misperception regarding the mandate of the Indonesian group was due to confusion created by the students themselves. They probably claimed a larger mandate than they actually had, and introduced themselves as

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the representatives of the Indonesian population at large. This episode reveals more about the political aspirations of both the PI and Semaoen than about official support in the Netherlands Indies for their activities. Moreover, the over-representation of Semaoen and the PI students fitted the agendas of both the Comintern and the organizing committee of the Brussels Congress, who wanted to introduce the students as martyrs of the Indonesian revolt. Secondly, the Indonesians’ speech on the second day of the Congress reflected the ambition of the PI and the communist organizers to present the revolt as a national reaction, and not as a failure of the PKI. Nazir Pamontjak, who was the spokesperson of the PI, described the colonial state as a loyal servant of the interests of international capitalism. He continued with an overview of the genesis of the Indonesian nationalist movement and the suffocating repression of the colonial government. Finally, he brought the audience the latest news from the colony: the revolt of November 1926. Pamontjak described the popular unrest as a natural reaction of an impoverished population to colonial policy and police repression. The Indonesian population was consistently described as a united whole. Even though Pamontjak mentioned a cryptic lack of “discipline of a few leaders who had deviated” as a direct cause of the revolts, he refrained from discussing the role of the PKI. Consequently, it remained unclear whether the unrest was still continuing, which parties were involved, and what the future of the Indonesian anticolonial movement would be. That the PKI—and the anticolonial movement as a whole—had just experienced a devastating defeat was not mentioned at all. By contrast, Pamontjak stated rather boldly, “It is not Indonesia that is not prepared for independence, but it is Holland which is not ready to educate a people that is larger and has an older culture than herself.”15 This nationalization of the revolt of 1926 was a logical consequence of the ideological background of the Indonesian students, who saw the political conflict in the Netherlands Indies primarily as a national struggle, and not as a class conflict. But it also resonated with the preferred explanation of the revolt by the Comintern and Semaoen. In the brochure that Semaoen distributed at the Congress, entitled “Indonesien hat das Wort,” he applied the same narrative as Pamontjak. The latest uprising was clearly the result of increased Dutch police repression: “[b]eastly, inhumane and cruel is the Dutch terror in Indonesia. One consequence was the revolt of the population of West Java in November 1926 … The revolt was a popular uprising, which was an expression of the rebellious nature [‘Volkswillens’] of all Indonesians.”16 Semaoen’s analysis was even

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echoed in an official Comintern document of March 1927, “to bring out the fact that Indonesian revolution was r[e]ally a hunger insurrection,” and not the work of specific communist branches.17 As such, the Indonesian revolt of November 1926 was nationalized not only by the Indonesian nationalists but also by the international communist world. Asian Solidarity Finally, the peculiar character of the Indonesian presence was also visible in the fact that the Indonesians pursued an anticolonial nationalist rather than a communist agenda. In unofficial meetings in the corridors of the conference, the Indonesian nationalists of PI tried to reach out to other nationalist delegations. Each day, the conference had a morning and an evening session, and the lunch break offered ample opportunities for informal meetings and networking. In his autobiography Hatta mentions that he used all lunch breaks to establish contact with other activists and to convene side meetings.18 Unfortunately, neither Hatta nor the other students revealed whom they met and what they discussed. Most of the side meetings were not open to outsiders or secret police. However, in the memoirs of other colonial attendants we can read that Hatta invited the Algerian representative of the Étoile nord-africaine, Messali Hadj, and Mazhar Bey el Bakri, a Syrian revolutionary from Berlin, to drink tea and exchange ideas and contacts.19 Moreover, Jawaharlal Nehru mentions how the Indonesian group was one of the Asian delegations that tried to formulate common aims and strategies. He described how the smaller Asian nations, Indonesia, Korea, Persia, Syria, and Egypt—which for the occasion were all regarded as Asian—wanted to investigate the possibility of establishing an Asian anticolonial federation. The Asian delegations came together once and held a discussion for two or three hours without result. Nehru himself, who represented the most important Asian delegation after the Chinese block, was not convinced of the relevance of the Asian initiative. For him Europe remained the most suitable meeting ground for the various Asian nationalities.20 Moreover, the organizing committee of the general congress was rather suspicious about the Asian initiative because it did not fit their idea of anticolonial and proletarian unity. In the end, Nehru and the other Asians “decided that it was premature to talk of any special Asiatic organisation and that [they] might concentrate for the present at least on strengthening the new League Against Imperialism, which in effect would largely serve [their] purpose.”21 Nevertheless, the Asian delegations, including the PI, drafted a common resolution in which the

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LAI and her sympathizers promised to do everything in their power to liberate Asia from imperialism and colonial oppression. Moreover, the Asians agreed to circulate publications and invitations and to establish a permanent committee with four members that would be established in Paris. This small bureau had to continue the Asian work within the LAI and guard the interests of the Asian countries without representation, like Korea and Persia.22 The initiative to establish an Asian bureau did not seem successful, but it indicates that the congress of the LAI was more than just an orchestrated event of the Comintern, and that it stimulated interactions between various colonial delegations. The Position of Hatta in the LAI Hatta himself was well aware that the PI’s breakthrough was only partly due to the organization itself. Returning from his journey to Brussels he wrote euphorically, “At first, [the world] did not want to believe us. But the recent developments in Indonesia have opened the eyes of the outside world to the wrongs over there. It is primarily due to the recent uprising in our fatherland that the Indonesian problem was an important topic at the congress in Brussels.”23 Yet, in many ways the appearance of the PI in the LAI was beneficial to the small student organization, and elevated it to an important anticolonial player. The successful appearance of the Indonesian students at the founding congress of the LAI in Brussels had a few concrete effects. First of all, the LAI was an important breeding ground for the Indonesian students to gain political experience. Not only ideologically, but also technically in matters of organization and representation, the LAI provided lessons that the students could use for the rest of their long political careers. It elevated the PI from a marginal student club to a potentially powerful political organization that started to behave accordingly. With some bravado, the PI together with the LAI appointed an international committee with dignitaries from the European labour movement to investigate the causes of the revolt and its repression by colonial authorities. Thus, the emphasis would be shifted from the communist conspirators to the poor living conditions of the Indonesian population. As expected, the Dutch authorities refused to cooperate and denied entry to the delegation, but this gave the PI the sensation that it could hold the authorities to account. It is illustrative of the PI’s integration in international anticolonial networks that the organization received numerous congratulations on the occasion of its twentieth birthday in 1928, not only from the Netherlands and the Netherlands Indies, but also from Nehru on behalf of the INC,

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from Indian and Chinese socialist students’ associations in Berlin, from Egyptians in London, and from several national LAI sections. Secondly, the PI reinforced its position in the Netherlands. In the years immediately after the First World War the Indonesians had garnered little interest from Dutch political parties. The dominant streams of conservatives and liberals were repelled by the PI’s uncompromising political course towards independence, but also the mainstream of the Sociaal Democratische Arbeiderspartij (Social Democratic Labour Party, SDAP) was not anxious to associate with this small group of nationalist students. According to it, immediate independence would be a precipitate step and a disaster for both the Dutch and the Indonesian working classes. The Communistische Partij Holland (CPH), by contrast, adopted the slogan “Indonesia free from Holland!” at an early stage, and used anticolonial politics to create a distinct profile as against the rival SDAP and other bourgeois parties. However, Dutch communists were not very interested in engaging the Indonesian elitist students who, according to them, aspired to be the future bourgeoisie. We must remember that the PI had only recently discarded its moderate and loyal attitude towards the colonial system. As a result, the students were rather isolated in the Dutch political landscape. After its star appearance at the LAI, the PI found a more interested audience among Dutch leftist parties. Together with representatives of the CPH and the left wing of the SDAP, the PI established the Dutch chapter of the LAI. Bringing the two parties together was a challenge, and was possible only with the PI in balancing position. The fact that the PKI had disappeared from the stage forced the communists in the Netherlands to recognize the PI as the personification of the Indonesian national movement. The SDAP kept a distance initially, but after Hatta and three other students had been arrested under the pretext of sedition in September 1927 the leftist SDAP Member of Parliament and lawyer, Duijs, offered his support, and the youth organization of the party started a release campaign for the students. It seems that the LAI not only introduced the Indonesian students on the international stage, but also enhanced their position in the Dutch political landscape. Finally, the international involvement and subsequent Dutch repression of the PKI also put the students of the Perhimpoenan Indonesia on the map in the Netherlands Indies. The PI had always aspired to represent the Indonesian movement for independence in the Netherlands and Europe, but far away from the Netherlands Indies it remained isolated from the Indonesian political landscape. This changed after the integration of

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the PI into international anticolonial networks. In April 1929, the selfperception of the PI as an advance guard in Europe was sanctioned when the PPPKI in the Netherlands Indies—a broad political coalition of nationalist organizations—sent a telegram to Mohammad Hatta in which it recognized the Perhimpoenan Indonesia “as her official representative [in Europe]” and the “advance guard” of the Indonesian federation in Europe.24 Good relations with the LAI were explicitly mentioned in the PPPKI’s instructions. In reaction to articles in Indonesia Merdeka, which suggested that the PI had become redundant with the establishment of nationalist organizations in the Netherlands Indies, Soekarno encouraged the PI to continue its propaganda abroad or, should the PI disband itself, to establish special propaganda bureaus in the European capitals. On 1 April 1929 the newly established radical trade union, Sarekat Kaoem Boeroeh Indonesia (Indonesian Workers’ Union, SKBI) even decided to join the LAI directly, with the PI as its functional representative.25 The growing connectivity of the Indonesian political landscape with the global networks of the LAI via the PI also led to new fears on the part of the colonial authorities. After the revolt of November 1926 the Dutch colonial government suspected Moscow of supporting the Indonesian communists via the PI in the Netherlands. As we have seen, this suspicion was groundless, but when Indonesian organizations started to engage with the LAI directly towards the end of the 1920s the governor general reacted immediately. In the Indies’ parliament he said, “The government does not allow organisational contact between associations or persons in the Indies and the League or any other organisation which is under strong communist influence. As soon as such contacts appear to exist, there will be measures taken.”26 In July 1929 the police raided the houses of SKBI leaders and arrested, among others, the returned PI member Iwa Koesoema Soemantri. The union itself was banned. On 29 December 1929 the same happened to the PNI, which led to the incarceration of Soekarno and hundreds of others, among whom were the former PI members Gatot Taroenomihardjo, Ali Sastroamidjojo, Abdulkarim Pringgodigdo, and Mohammad Joesoef. The connection with the LAI played an explicit role in the decision to crack down on the nationalist movement.27 This shows not only that political developments in the Netherlands Indies directly influenced political affairs in Europe, but also the other way around. Conclusion To comprehend the political dynamics within the LAI, especially in relation to the PI, it is important to understand the interplay between

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the national, international, and local spheres. Throughout the 1920s, the Perhimpoenan Indonesia remained a nationalist organization that engaged with the communist world primarily for pragmatic and opportunistic reasons. Conversely, Hatta’s prominent position can also be explained by the fact that he had almost no political mandate or mass base and was a relatively harmless negotiating partner for both the communist and the anticolonial forces within the LAI. This balancing act would change in 1929 when communist students gained the upper hand within the PI and manoeuvred the organization on a Stalinist course. At the end of 1931, Hatta was expelled from both the PI and the LAI. By this time, however, the interest of the international anticolonial world in the Indonesian struggle of independence was no longer dependent on the fate of Hatta and the PI. Before 1927, the situation in the Netherlands Indies was never discussed in European anticolonial circles, despite the existence of large anticolonial organizations such as the Sarekat Islam and the PKI. Struggles in China, British India, Morocco, and Syria caught the attention of anticolonial and communist activists. This changed after the revolt of November 1926 and the subsequent appearance of the PI at the founding conference of the LAI. Despite the fact that the communist movement was effectively destroyed in 1927 and would reappear only after the Second World War, and despite the fact that Indonesian political organizations suffered severe restrictions throughout the 1930s, the “Indonesian revolutionary movement” remained a popular topos among European anticolonial activists. As such, it was on par with the Indian and Chinese nationalist and anticolonial movements. This propagandistic support had no direct influence on the situation in the Netherlands Indies, but it was important as a point of reference after August 1945, when the long war for independence from the Netherlands began. Notes 1

2

Louis Gibarti, Eduard Fimmen and Mohammad Hatta (eds.), Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont: Offizielles Protokoll des Kongresses gegen koloniale Unterdrückung und Imperialismus, Brüssel, 10–15 Februar 1927 (Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 1927), after 140. For instance John Ingleson, Perhimpunan Indonesia and the Indonesian Nationalist Movement, 1923–1928 (Victoria: Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian studies, 1975), 33–4; Harry A. Poeze, Politiek-Politioneele Overzichten van Nederlandsch-Indië, 4 vols. (‘s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1982–1994), vol. 1: xcix–ci; Harry A. Poeze, In het land van de overheerser, vol. 1, Indonesiërs in Nederland 1600–1950 (Dordrecht: Foris Publications,

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3

4

5

6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14

15 16

1986), 211, 213–7; J. Th. Petrus Blumberger, De nationalistische beweging in Nederlandsch-Indië (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink&zoon, 1931) 193–5. For instance Mustafa Haikal, “Willi Münzenberg und die ‘Liga gegen Imperialismus und für nationale Unabhängigkeit,’” in Tania Schlie and Simone Roche (eds.), Willi Münzenberg (1889–1940): Ein deutscher Kommunist im Spannungsfeld zwischen Stalinismus und Antifaschismus (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1995), 146; Alain Dugrand and Frédéric Laurent, Willi Münzenberg, artiste en révolution (1889–1940) (Paris: Fayard, 2008), 262; Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (London: The New Press, 2007), 21, 32. For instance in Petrus Blumberger, De nationalistische beweging, 187; George McTurnan Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952) 88–9; R.E. Elson, The Idea of Indonesia: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 45. Hatta, “Indonesia in de wereldgemeenschap,” in Verspreide Geschriften, ed. Arnold Mononutu et al. (Jakarta: Van der Peet, Penerbitan dan Balai Buku Indonesia, 1952) 21–31; Mohammad Hatta, “Indonesia in the Middle of the Asian Revolution,” in Deliar Noer et al. (ed.), Portrait of a Patriot: Selected Writings by Mohammad Hatta (The Hague: Mouton, 1972), 17–26. “Ons lustrumnummer,” Indonesia Merdeka (1924), 17. This term was derived from Roger N. Baldwin, “The Capital of the Men without a Country,” The Survey (1 August 1927), 460–467. “Onze buitenlandse propaganda,” Indonesia Merdeka 4:5–6 (1926), 70–71. Parts of the following sections are derived from Klaas Stutje, Campaigning in Europe for a Free Indonesia: Indonesian Nationalists and the Worldwide Anticolonial Movement, 1917–1931 (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2019). International Institute of Social History (IISH), Archief Komintern – Partai Komunis Indonesia, inv. no. 2: minutes 29 July 1926. John Ingleson, In Search of Justice: Workers and Unions in Colonial Java, 1908–1926 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), 314. Ruth T. McVey, The Rise of Indonesian Communism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), 341–6, 353. Quoted in McVey, The Rise of Indonesian Communism, 347. IISH, Archief Komintern – Partai Komunis Indonesia, inv. no. 3, “Report of Comrade Samoun to British Secretariat meeting of March 8, 1927, on Indonesian question,” 3. Gibarti, Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont, 140. Semaoen, Indonesien hat das Wort: Der Niedergang des holländischen Imperialismus (Berlin: Carl Hoym, 1927), 33.

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17 18

19

20 21 22 23

24 25

26 27

IISH, Archief Komintern – Partai Komunis Indonesia, inv. nr. 3, minutes 8 March 1927. Mohammad Hatta, Mohammad Hatta: Memoir (Jakarta: Yayasan Hatta, 2002), 213; Ahmad Subardjo Djoyoadisuryo, Kesadaran nasional: Sebuah otobiografi (Jakarta: Gunung Agung, 1978), 129–32. Messali Hadj, Les mémoires de Messali Hadj, 1898–1938 (Paris: Éditions JeanClaude Lattès, 1982), 157; “Contre le colonialisme, l’étoile nord-africaine rend compte des travaux du congrès de bruxelles,” l’Humanité, 7 March 1927. Jawaharlal Nehru, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2, ed. S. Gopal (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972), 290. Nehru, Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2: 289–90. Nehru, Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 2: 290; Gibarti, Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont, 262. Mohammad Hatta, “Het Brusselsche Congres tegen Imperialisme en Koloniale Onderdrukking en Onze Buitenlandsche Propaganda,” Indonesia Merdeka 5:1–2 (1927), 17. Poeze, In het land van de overheerser, 1: 216; Poeze, Politiek-Politioneele Overzichten, 1: cii; Ingleson, Perhimpunan Indonesia, 65. R.C. Kwantes, De ontwikkeling van de nationalistische beweging in Nederlandsch-Indië: Bronnenpublikatie, 4 vols. (Groningen: WoltersNoordhoff, 1975–1982), 3: 202–6; Petrus Blumberger, De nationalistische beweging, 262, 366–70. Cited in Petrus Blumberger, De nationalistische beweging, 369. John Ingleson, Road to Exile: The Indonesian Nationalist Movement 1927– 1934 (Singapore: Heinemann, 1980), 96, 104–5; Petrus Blumberger, De nationalistische beweging, 366, 369.

Chapter 13

The Leninist Moment in South Africa Christopher J. Lee In 1978, Progress Publishers in Moscow released A Soviet Journey by the South African writer and activist Alex La Guma (1925–1985). The book was part of an English-language series that published titles from a range of foreign writers, many of whom were Communist Party members in their respective countries. In retrospect, these books can be seen as agitprop aimed at the popular influence of Soviet dissidents, such as the novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the poet Joseph Brodsky, who had gained heroic stature in the West through their critiques of the Soviet system. However, La Guma’s contribution to the series stands out. As one of South Africa’s most prominent writers during the apartheid era, La Guma is best known for his fiction. Through novels such as A Walk in the Night (1962), And a Threefold Cord (1964), The Stone Country (1967), In the Fog of the Seasons’ End (1972), and Time of the Butcherbird (1979), La Guma pursued a political project through literature that sought to depict the lives of labourers, activists, prisoners, and working-class families, primarily in the city of Cape Town.1 Though different in place and subject matter, A Soviet Journey can be understood as conforming to the politics of his fiction, as well as representing a longer trajectory of South African political thought and activism that began during the 1920s, specifically with regard to Leninism. It consequently suggests much more than simple promotion of the USSR. Though Leninist thought and the figure of Lenin himself formed a recursive presence in liberation journals such as The African Communist, published by the South African Communist Party (SACP), A Soviet Journey underscores the personal histories that were entangled with such political positions and outlooks.2 What follows in this chapter is a set of historical contexts and intellectual frameworks for reappraising La Guma and A Soviet Journey. It argues that A Soviet Journey points to the longevity of Leninist ideas of self-determination that first emerged during the 1920s, particularly at the 1927 League Against Imperialism meeting held in Brussels, and how this near century-long endurance can be attributed to both interpersonal relationships and the resilience of certain tactical elements of South African political thought. Indeed, rather than emphasizing institutions, 325

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parties, and organizations as crucibles for the fostering and promotion of political ideas, this chapter stresses the importance of individuals and the consequent role of biography for approaching broader global trends. La Guma’s father, James (Jimmy) La Guma, in particular was a principal intermediary in the transference of Leninist ideas, being an early figure in the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), a delegate at the Brussels conference, and a visitor to the Communist International (Comintern) headquarters in Moscow. This family connection and mutual political involvement underscore how personal lives often transcend normative time frames and political geographies, thus fostering unexpected intergenerational continuities between epochal periods, such as the interwar and Cold War periods. As committed communist internationalists, the lives and political work of Jimmy and Alex La Guma connected political worlds that encompassed Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, while temporally stretching across the twentieth century. A Soviet Journey, in turn, is a text and artifact that brings together disparate historical experiences that are too infrequently treated together, including the close relationship between Marxist-Leninist thought and anti-colonial nationalism. A Soviet Journey points to the importance of Marxist peripheries and what can be called a “southern Marxism” within the Global South—the South African left being one of many formations of African socialism found across the continent.3 In sum, this chapter underscores a set of dynamics between fathers and sons, Marxism and nationalism, and literature and liberation in order to illuminate a wider range of geographic, generational, and intellectual parameters as to how Leninism, global anti-imperialism, and the black radical tradition can be understood. Anti-Imperialism and Family History in South Africa Justin Alexander (Alex) La Guma was born on 20 February 1925, and raised in the District Six neighbourhood of Cape Town, an impoverished, racially-mixed quarter that captured the creole spirit of the city. The La Guma family, which had French and Malagasy origins, was itself classified as “Coloured” (multiracial) in status. La Guma portrayed the vibrancy of District Six in his first work of fiction, A Walk in the Night, though the city informed his upbringing and identity in other ways. Its location provided fertile ground for ideas circulating globally—Marxism, Garveyism, and anticolonial nationalism among them. Indeed, La Guma grew up in a household receptive to these influences. The multicultural and multinational outlook of A Soviet Journey can be traced back to this intellectual diversity.

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Alex’s father, Jimmy La Guma (1894–1961), had a particularly keen impact, given his leadership roles in different political organizations.4 Born into poverty in Bloemfontein, a small town situated between Cape Town and Johannesburg, Jimmy gained a limited formal education, though he came into contact with the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) early on. Founded in 1919, the ICU was the most important political organization in South Africa during the interwar period. It proved to be more significant than the South African Native National Congress— founded in 1912 and later renamed the African National Congress (ANC) in 1923—due to its substantial membership that reached urban and rural areas. Like the ANC, the ICU sought to organize black South Africans against a series of racist legislative measures enacted since the formation of South Africa with union in 1910. Its popular appeal rested in its ideological blending of working-class interests, black nationalism, and the panAfrican ideas of Marcus Garvey, whose Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) developed a strong presence in South Africa.5 Jimmy worked under the ICU’s founder, Clements Kadalie, during the early 1920s. However, by 1925 he had joined the CPSA. Jimmy thus became politicized in a context defined by the competing, yet often overlapping, organizations of the ICU, ANC, UNIA, and CPSA, all of which helped to define early on the long struggle against segregation (1910–1948) and apartheid (1948–1994) during the twentieth century. His engagement with these different political strands would have a profound impact on his only son.6 Among these organizations the CPSA was the most vital to the senior La Guma’s history. Indeed, Alex would later recall in an essay entitled “Why I Joined the Communist Party” (1982) that a portrait of Lenin hung in their living room.7 The CPSA has its own storied past, being founded in 1921 and therefore only a short time after the Bolshevik Revolution. The CPSA had gained immediate attention through its involvement with the Rand Rebellion—a revolt of white workers in Johannesburg that lasted from late December 1921 until March 1922, when the South African military crushed it, leaving 200 dead. The racist character of the uprising with white workers positioning their interests against black workers stirred considerable debate among CPSA members. The Rand Rebellion had been preceded by significant strikes by black workers, including a 1919 strike by dockworkers in Cape Town organized by the ICU and a mineworkers’ strike in February 1920 with an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 involved.8 These tensions over race and political organization within the CPSA that emerged during the early 1920s soon shifted after 1924 to an

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emphasis on black labour, given the sheer numeric majority of the black working class. Yet, despite support of this turn by CPSA leaders, questions remained. The Soviet Third International (1919–1943)—better known as the Communist International or Comintern—that sought to promote communist revolution worldwide also had a bearing. The natural sense of fealty held by many within the CPSA towards the Comintern, combined with the racial challenges of South Africa and internal debates within the Comintern itself during the 1920s, created a fraught atmosphere over strategic coordination and political outlook—anxieties of influence between the local and the global that continued in different ways up to the apartheid period. Political loyalty towards the Comintern was not practised entirely at a distance. In 1927 the senior La Guma, who formed part of the CPSA’s policy to recruit South Africans of colour (black, Indian, and Coloured) into its ranks, participated in the Comintern-sponsored World Congress Against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism held in Brussels, Belgium, in 1927—better known as the League Against Imperialism (LAI) meeting.9 Leninism provided a decisive alternative for self-determination from American Wilsonianism.10 Brian Bunting, the son of CPSA founder Sidney Bunting, wrote that a principal appeal of Marxist-Leninist thought concerned its arguments for national self-determination found in Vladimir Lenin’s The Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1914) and Joseph Stalin’s Marxism and the National Question (1913). As Bunting asserts, these tracts elaborated a theoretical basis on which to understand and end “the national oppression of the black peoples of South Africa” and, furthermore, achieve “the national aspirations of all sections of the people … within the framework of a single, integrated South African state based on non-racialism, democracy and full equality.”11 Summarily stated, “Marxist theories on the national question, and in particular the practical experience of the Soviet Union in applying those theories [through a multinational federation], were of special significance for South Africa, with its racially mixed population.”12 Such concerns regarding the national question would inform the later arguments of A Soviet Journey. But a different question came first. Jimmy La Guma’s service as a CPSA envoy at the LAI meeting formed part of broader South African and Comintern efforts to develop a coherent local strategy. The so-called “colonial question” in particular posed a test in the South African case, given South Africa’s self-governing status in the British Commonwealth since 1910. However, measures of segregation and black land dispossession, particularly after the 1913 Natives Land Act, construed South Africa

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as a colonial situation in the eyes of many activists, hence La Guma’s attendance in Brussels in 1927. The question of categorical definition would continue through the apartheid period. Indeed, the later alliance between the ANC and the SACP—a reformed version of the CPSA, initially underground, after its banning under the Suppression of Communism Act in 1950—exhibited an anticolonial ethos that paralleled liberation struggles elsewhere in Africa, while also expressing affinities with civil rights movements in the United States and other liberal democracies. The colonial question was therefore not purely intellectual in scope, but had serious implications in terms of political tactics and organization. An early attempt at resolving this question occurred in 1927 with the “Native Republic” thesis, formulated by La Guma and Comintern General Secretary Nikolai Bukharin. La Guma travelled to Moscow immediately after the meeting in Brussels along with Josiah Gumede of the ANC to discuss the South African situation. Upon his return to South Africa, Gumede reportedly said, “I have seen the new world to come, where it has already begun. I have been to the new Jerusalem.”13 However, he and La Guma were not the first to visit the USSR. Sidney Bunting attended the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in 1922, which addressed the “Negro question”—a vital occasion that convinced Bunting to redirect the CPSA’s efforts towards the black working class.14 The issue of black liberation had been introduced with Lenin’s “Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions” (1920)—also translated at times as “the National and Colonial Question,” signalling the entanglement of both issues—which informed the Comintern’s Second Congress.15 However, by the time La Guma visited Moscow, Comintern policy was less certain following Lenin’s death in 1924, the failure of communist revolutions in Europe, and the catastrophic neglect of the Communist Party of China, which resulted in its repression and thousands of its members being killed. These factors generated a ruinous break between Stalin and Leon Trotsky, leading to the Fourth International and the latter’s infamous assassination in Mexico City in 1940. Still, as the essays in this volume demonstrate, Asia, Africa, and Latin America quickly came into the foreground in Brussels. The Native Republic thesis emerged from this shift, with stress on national liberation in South Africa as an essential stage prior to socialist revolution. In fact, Soviet officials promoted this thesis for both South Africa and the United States, in the latter case known as the Black Belt Nation Thesis, which characterized black communities in the American South (the “Black Belt”) as comprising a nation with the right to selfdetermination.16

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La Guma embraced the Native Republic thesis with its affinities to Garvey’s notion of a “Black Republic” and the connected idea of “Africa for the Africans.” It nevertheless drew controversy within the CPSA due to its transparent racial character. Anxieties surfaced that this strategy could fracture the party once more. However, debate did not fall along strictly racial lines, with black CPSA members, such as William Thibedi, being critical of a nationalist approach.17 Amid these tensions, La Guma returned to the Soviet Union once more in 1927, partly to attend the tenth anniversary celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution, but also to report this internal dissent. Indeed, Sidney Bunting and Edward (Eddie) Roux, author of the classic book on black politics in South Africa, Time Longer Than Rope (1948), attended the Sixth Congress of the Comintern in 1928 with the intention of dissuading Soviet officials of the Native Republic thesis through the two-part argument that South Africa’s black proletariat was ready for a socialist revolution, whereas the rural black peasantry was not ready for a nationalist struggle. Furthermore, the existing black bourgeoisie was too small to lead a nationalist movement. The delegation nonetheless failed to shift Comintern policy.18 The Comintern instead passed a resolution on “The South African Question” and approved the “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries” at the Sixth Congress, which affirmed Lenin’s position in support of black self-determination.19 The Native Republic thesis became the official platform of the CPSA in January 1929, despite persistent debate. Nevertheless, the thesis established and familiarized strategic concepts (the proletariat, the peasantry) and policy tensions (rural versus urban areas, socialist revolution versus national liberation) that continued to animate discussions among activists for decades, even if the thesis itself did not last in name. It captured the political stakes involved, the tactical considerations demanded, and the organizational decisions to be reached. It also anticipated the alliance between the nationalist ANC and the socialist SACP during the 1950s which has lasted, albeit in weakened form, to the present. Jimmy La Guma was at the centre of this history. As recounted in the opening section of his son’s memoir, A Soviet Journey, the senior La Guma’s experience in Moscow also sparked Alex’s imagination. The CPSA eventually expelled Jimmy in 1932—partly the result of a Comintern policy to purify ideological positions, thus echoing infighting within the Soviet Politburo itself with the expulsions of Trotsky in 1927 and Bukharin in 1929.20 It also undermined the mobilization of the Native Republic thesis. Undeterred, the senior La Guma attempted to establish

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a local branch of the League Against Imperialism and went on to help to found the National Liberation League in Cape Town in 1935, becoming editor of its flagship publication, The Liberator: A Non-European AntiImperialist Magazine.21 The Liberator resembled its overseas predecessor, Harlem’s The Liberator, by featuring the work of African-American writers and intellectuals such as Langston Hughes, J. A. Rogers, and Paul Robeson.22 As the literary critic Roger Field has written, this Black Atlantic engagement with New Negro Era figures exposed the younger La Guma to “an inclusive notion of African identity that incorporated all racially oppressed South Africans and African Americans.”23 The Liberator was also anti-fascist in orientation, given the politics then emerging in interwar Europe. Alex purportedly attempted to join the International Brigades, organized by the Comintern, to fight against Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.24 Despite his failure to achieve this improbable ambition, anti-fascism and Alex’s belief that the USSR helped defeat it during the Second World War would continue to inform his politics, as seen in A Soviet Journey. In the meantime, he pursued his father’s political path by joining the Young Communist League in 1947, a year before the National Party and its apartheid platform came to power. It proved to be a decisive choice, mirroring the parallel enrolment of a new generation of activists in the ANC Youth League, including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Oliver Tambo. Leninism at Mid-Century As cited at the start, Progress Publishers in Moscow—the famed imprint of works by Marx and Lenin during the Soviet Union’s lifetime—produced a book series beginning in the late 1970s entitled “Impressions of the USSR” of which A Soviet Journey was a part. This English-language series had a number of titles from a range of foreign writers. This series also fits into a deeper history. Foreign travellers to the Soviet Union who wrote about their experiences had existed since the Bolshevik Revolution—the American John Reed and his book Ten Days that Shook the World (1919) being a key example. But countless others followed, comprising a pattern that was not only trans-Atlantic, but global in scope. Among the most notable visitors to the USSR between its formal establishment in 1922 and just after the Second World War—the era of Jimmy La Guma and his generation—were the American novelist Theodore Dreiser (Dreiser Looks at Russia, 1928), the French writer André Gide (Retour de L’U.R.S.S., 1936), the German critic Walter Benjamin (the posthumously published

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Moscow Diary, 1986), the American critic Edmund Wilson (Travels in Two Democracies, 1936), the American photographer Margaret BourkeWhite (Eyes on Russia, 1931), and the American novelist John Steinbeck (A Russian Journal, 1948). Historian Michael David-Fox has estimated that, overall, approximately 100,000 foreigners travelled to the USSR between the First and Second World Wars.25 Yet, as A Soviet Journey indicates, this phenomenon continued throughout the Soviet Union’s existence, forming an intellectual and political bridge between the ideas of the interwar period and those of later decades of the Cold War. In the South African context, this continuity can be attributed to the intergenerational nature of the liberation struggle. Alex La Guma was part of a crucial generation of South African activists that emerged during the 1940s and 1950s, who were galvanized by the threat apartheid posed beginning in 1948. Other figures include the aforementioned ANC leaders Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Oliver Tambo. Alex formally joined the CPSA that year, though the Suppression of Communism Act (1950) soon dissolved the organization, which itself had dwindled since the interwar period. It retained only about 2,000 members by 1950.26 As mentioned earlier, the party was reconstituted underground as the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1953. Moses Kotane, who had been elected the general secretary of the CPSA in 1939 and had studied at the International Lenin School in Moscow—a training centre founded by the Comintern—in 1931 and 1932, sought to restore the radical internationalism of the 1920s.27 The world in which Alex La Guma came of political age therefore involved a continuation of past efforts, including the positions of Lenin, albeit in a new context shaped by the oppressiveness of the apartheid regime as well as the possibilities that surfaced as decolonization spread across Africa and Asia during the early Cold War period. La Guma played an active role in defining and pursuing these options. In the short term, the dissolution of the CPSA in 1950 and its reincarnation as the SACP shortly thereafter had led La Guma to join the South African Coloured People’s Organization (SACPO), which in turn marked his entry into the orbit of the ANC and the Congress Alliance—a multiracial coalition of parties formed after the 1952 Defiance Campaign which included the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats, and the South African Congress of Trade Unions, in addition to SACPO and the ANC. For many communists the ANC offered organizational support, an intellectual community, and political cover from state surveillance. While distinctions between the SACP and the ANC never entirely dissolved, the

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boundaries between the two organizations were notoriously blurred, with members rotating between both. During the 1950s especially, the SACP largely comprised an internal faction within the ANC. Indeed, the ANCSACP alliance is best understood as an evolving relationship that largely restored the two-step political strategy that initially took shape with the Native Republic thesis, whereby a nationalist struggle—in this instance embodied by the ANC—would precede and enable a socialist revolution led by the SACP. For La Guma and other communists, their participation in the ANC assisted this Leninist logic and long-term political plan.28 La Guma’s involvement with SACPO formed part of this strategy by mobilizing Coloured activism in support of the ANC and the Congress Alliance. With the 1950 Group Areas Act, the 1950 Population Registration Act, and the 1951 Separate Representation of Voters Act, among other pieces of legislation, the Coloured community faced increasing legal discrimination. La Guma’s activism with SACPO culminated when it co-sponsored the Congress of the People held in Kliptown, Soweto, in June 1955 along with the other members of the Congress Alliance. This event marked the apex of the Alliance and its vision for a future South Africa as laid out in the Freedom Charter. Yet the promise of this occasion was cut short. The apartheid government responded to this multiracial national coalition in December 1956 by arresting La Guma along with 155 other activists as part of the infamous Treason Trial that lasted until 1961. Despite the loss of momentum, the trial tightened this interorganizational solidarity. The Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter constituted an attempt to address the national question that confronted many political organizations—how to reconcile the diverse demography of South Africa into a common identity. This question once again originated in part from the political and intellectual deliberations of the CPSA and Leninist ideas of self-determination during the 1920s. Engaging with this question therefore did not pose a strategic contradiction for those who embraced international socialism and its concerns for class.29 For the CPSA and the SACP a defining text had been Stalin’s Marxism and the National Question (1913), mentioned before, which argued that nations were historically constructed communities bound by language, territory, economy, and culture and were specific to the capitalist epoch.30 Though Stalin stressed that nations were not racial or “tribal” in the sense of being natural or hereditary, South Africa’s racial and ethnic communities were construed by many activists as “national groups,” to use the wording of the Freedom Charter.31 For the left, socialism provided a subsequent means for overcoming historically constructed national

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differences and thus the divisions imposed by the apartheid government. The SACP and the ANC in particular had by 1955 reached a provisional agreement on ideological grounds through the idea of “colonialism of a special type”—an expression that intended to capture the specificity of the South African situation.32 South Africa was a self-governing dominion in the British Empire as of union in 1910, possessing a legal status similar to that held by Australia and Canada. It was not a “colony” per se, despite the discriminatory treatment of non-white South Africans that approximated colonial measures found elsewhere.33 Hence, the formulation of “colonialism of a special type” effectively revived the Native Republic thesis and its strategy of anticolonial nationalist struggle by defining South Africa as a situation of internal colonization that subjected a nonwhite majority to land dispossession, labour exploitation, and political disenfranchisement. During the 1930s Jimmy La Guma had presciently described South Africa as a case of “imperialism within an imperialism,” thus well before the SACP’s official statement of this new programme in “The Road to South African Freedom” (1962).34 This situation is further reminiscent of the issues around semi-colonialism raised in the chapters by Belagurova and Goebel in this volume. The spectre of Leninism and the Native Republic thesis therefore continued to cast an intellectual shadow over the ANC-SACP alliance with “colonialism of a special type” informing later theoretical interventions by activists.35 It also inspired the writing of Alex, whose fiction embraced its outlook and went on to explore the dimensions of the “colonial question” in such works as A Walk in the Night (1962), And a Threefold Cord (1964), and The Stone Country (1967)—each of which examined dimensions of the oppressiveness of white minority rule. His writing in exile went further to examine the fissures, dilemmas, and potential solutions for this strategic question, specifically in his later novels, In the Fog of the Seasons’ End (1972) and Time of the Butcherbird (1979), which appeared in the same decade as A Soviet Journey. All three should be understood in dialogue with one another. Indeed, when La Guma left South Africa for exile on 21 September 1966, he entered a broader world of activist politics that further shaped his political outlook and writing.36 This body of exile fiction and non-fiction remains distinctive for the internationalism it displays. His concerns for global liberation struggles, decolonization, and post-colonial uncertainty can be witnessed in essays such as “Paul Robeson and Africa” (1971), “Vietnam: A People’s Victory” (1973), and “Cuba and Africa” (1984), as well as short stories like “Come Back to Tashkent” (1970) and “Thang’s Bicycle” (1976).37 Exile provided a new

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context for La Guma’s thinking, enabling his creative talents and political beliefs to flourish in new directions. The Soviet Union continued to offer a significant backdrop and setting for these interests. Leninism and Late Socialism A Soviet Journey must be read in the light of this nineteen-year period of exile between 1966 and his death from a heart attack in Havana in 1985—a time of deeper self-reflection and political motivation due to his being unburdened by the surveillance and threat of arrest he faced in South Africa, yet one still defined by constant uncertainty. The book can be considered a summing up of his personal and professional histories. As La Guma himself notes in the prologue, his impressions of the USSR developed at an early age, informed by his father’s travels there and political material made available through the CPSA. His text consequently shares thematic continuities with this formative period of South African activism and its engagement with Leninism during the interwar period. But A Soviet Journey also displays the politics of the Congress Alliance during the 1950s—the importance of the national question in particular—as well as broader themes of decolonization, post-colonial development, and Afro-Asian connections, the last of which emerged from his involvement with the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association (AAWA) founded in 1958.38 La Guma argues in A Soviet Journey that socialism in the USSR demonstrated a solution to the national question in South Africa, along with providing an economic paradigm for post-colonial development more generally. As noted at the start of this chapter, Leninism was a recurrent theme in liberation writing—the year 1970 in particular witnessed a burst of publications, given that it marked a century since Lenin’s birth. A Soviet Journey fits into this broader pattern of ongoing intellectual engagement and enduring remembrance. This confluence between La Guma’s writing and politics had existed from the start of his career. However, his books published during the 1970s offer more robust narratives and experimental treatments of political questions, as suggested before. His last two novels, In the Fog of the Seasons’ End and Time of the Butcherbird, examine in particular the ethics of armed struggle and the differences between rural and urban areas, respectively, thus reflecting the strategy of the ANC and the SACP in relation to the colonial and national questions. A Soviet Journey undertakes a different approach. Though observing and meditating on the Soviet present circa the mid-1970s, La Guma is concerned in this text with South Africa’s future. Not only did the USSR provide a political system apart from a

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number of Western liberal democracies that had legacies of imperial rule and supported the apartheid regime, but it also embodied an alternative paradigm of political organization, economic growth, and social purpose that successfully integrated a range of national groups. As a multinational federation, it symbolized a modernity that fulfilled the utopian ideas of the ANC-SACP alliance.39 It manifested the strategy of national selfdetermination followed by socialist revolution. If La Guma’s novels contain, to cite Abdul JanMohamed, depictions that “constantly speak of lack and fortitude,” A Soviet Journey exhibits in contrast a robust vision of the future through travel vignettes of historical and cultural depth as well as celebratory portrayals of Soviet development written in a frequently exuberant tone.40 La Guma’s exile writing also seized upon an evolving diplomatic atmosphere. The Comintern had dissolved during the Second World War in 1943, and the short-lived Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) lasted less than a decade, from 1947 to 1956. However, Soviet policy towards Africa revived after the 1953 death of Stalin with active support for liberation struggles and newly independent countries alike—from Algeria’s anti-colonial Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) to Patrice Lumumba’s Congo, before his assassination in 1961.41 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, greeted the rising Third World with enthusiasm. The 1956 Suez Crisis in particular marked a turning point that accelerated diplomacy with Afro-Asian countries.42 During his first year of exile, La Guma attended the third Afro-Asian Writers’ Conference held in Beirut in 1967—an event that began his involvement with the AAWA and its magazine, Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings, in which he published and which he served on its editorial board.43 He also began visiting the Soviet Union, his first trip while en route to Beirut in March 1967. This initial visit was followed by a second one in May for the Fourth Congress of Soviet Writers and a third in November to attend celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution—a moment he recalls in Chapter One (“Flashbacks”) of A Soviet Journey. The six-week trip that formed the basis for A Soviet Journey took place in 1975. The Writers’ Union of the USSR (Soiuz sovetskikh pisatelei) invited La Guma to write a book, and he drew upon preceding experiences, as described in Chapter One (“Flashbacks”), in addition to the 1975 visit. Established during the First Congress of Soviet Writers in August 1934, the Union became powerful over time, ranking among the most prestigious learned societies in the USSR. Its invitation was therefore an honour for La Guma. These institutional parameters undoubtedly shaped the

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composition, editing, and publication of A Soviet Journey as well. Though La Guma had his own political and literary agenda, elements of Soviet doctrine can be found throughout A Soviet Journey. Nonetheless, what is also clear is La Guma’s commitment to Marxism-Leninism. Consisting of six chapters plus a prologue and an epilogue, A Soviet Journey is both a travel account as well as a work of political theory—a quality that surfaces through La Guma’s choice of description and commentary. He is frequently concerned with the application of Marxist-Leninist ideas as policy in the regions of Soviet Central Asia and Siberia in particular, where he spends the bulk of his time, as demonstrated in Chapters Two (“The Footsteps of Alexander”), Three (“The Big Sky”), Four (“The Golden Road”), and Five (“A Giant of Great Promise”)—four out of the book’s six chapters. In a section entitled “The River Tamers,” La Guma highlights the importance of hydroelectric power stations in Tajikistan along the Vakhsh River and the ambition of Lenin’s GOELRO Plan, which aimed to fulfill his declaration that “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.”44 In Chapter Five La Guma similarly explains at length the Samotlor oil field in Siberia—an atypical topic for most tourists. A student of Lenin throughout his life, La Guma’s engagement in A Soviet Journey therefore displays a dialectical reasoning with regard to economic and social development rather than solely political revolution. More specifically, he puts forward an argument about how an urban vanguard (the industrialized Soviet West) could lead a rural peasantry (Central Asia and Siberia)—ideas that returned to past debates in South Africa starting with the Native Republic thesis. La Guma’s descriptions regarding the Soviet system’s ability to deliver people from feudalism directly to socialism in Central Asia—bypassing a capitalist stage— can be read in dialogue with ANC-SACP positions. The Soviet Union, in La Guma’s eyes, presented visible proof. These elements of historical materialism also introduce a difficult set of political questions. Though written after the period of de-Stalinization that occurred during the Khrushchev era, A Soviet Journey nonetheless contains traces of Stalinism, even if Stalin himself is absent by name.45 La Guma’s uncritical discussion of collectivization and the construction of the Great Ferghana Canal in 1939—the first resulting in the 1933 famine and the second relying on forced labour—highlight classic instances of Stalin’s policy of “Socialism in One Country.” La Guma also celebrates the “creation of national states in Central Asia” in Chapter Two—a process that he sees as selfdetermination, but can also be interpreted as colonial in nature.46

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Other elements also animate A Soviet Journey, in particular La Guma’s enthusiasm for the ancient cultures and histories of Central Asia and Siberia—a different approach to nationalism and national identity. The writer Maxim Gorky, whom La Guma had long admired, had emphasized the importance of folk arts, believing that they offered a concrete sense of the working relations, social realities, and worldviews of people.47 The ever-present occasions of the Dom Kultury (culture centre) and chaighana (tea house) in La Guma’s itinerary provide insight into this world of local culture. Furthermore, the AAWA, with which he was heavily involved at this point, stressed indigenous artistic traditions and their contribution to national identities in resistance to the effects of colonialism and neocolonialism. La Guma’s invocation of the ancient civilizations of Bactria, Sogdiana, and Tocharistan; the long histories of Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara; and thinkers such as Rudagi (858–941), Abu-Ali ibnSina (980–1037), and Ulugbek (1394–1449) within the narrative of A Soviet Journey consequently declares an ambition to decentre Europe and emphasize Asia as a source of world heritage. A Soviet Journey thus dwells on differences between the Soviet East and West not only in terms of culture and economy, but also with regard to history. This civilizational dimension of A Soviet Journey fixes La Guma’s project within an emergent Afro-Asian literary tradition that he helped to define. His sense of affinity with the people of Central Asia and Siberia underscores a different kind of Cold War Afro-Asianism apart from the Indian Ocean focus that has preoccupied much scholarship.48 Though his ventures into ancient history and deep time can be seen as a detour from controversial political issues of the Soviet present, they can also be understood as experiments with alternative perspectives, chronologies, and national identities. La Guma uses Soviet political history, his own personal history, and the foundational histories of Central Asia to politicize, personalize, and disassociate his book from conventional Western views. A Soviet Journey ultimately re-mythologizes the Soviet system and its applicability to the South African situation. This doctrinaire approach raises questions as to why La Guma refused to see the Soviet system as authoritarian and, in the case of Central Asia, colonial in scope. When does political imagination become political fantasy? Such questions are difficult to answer conclusively, except that La Guma was a committed communist. He was, first and foremost, addressing the problem of the future world as defined by the South African liberation struggle and the politics of the Cold War. In doing so, he was drawing upon a deeper tradition that extended back to the 1920s.

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Leninism, Literature, and Individual Lives Exile is a common trope of South Africa’s history during the apartheid period. Those forced into exile not only cultivated an aspirational cosmopolitanism that sought solutions for the South African crisis but, through this pursuit, their experiences disrupt nationalist narratives and political chronologies that continue to inform the present. A Soviet Journey is one document of this experience, indicating the wider world that South African activists engaged. Specific to La Guma, A Soviet Journey serves as a culmination of his political and creative life. It is his longest work, fiction or non-fiction, and it is the only book-length memoir he wrote. It is undoubtedly incomplete as an autobiography, yet its very incompleteness highlights the political and living constraints that La Guma faced before his death in 1985.49 The negotiated end of apartheid without the achievement of a socialist agenda has since marginalized figures like him. Furthermore, the collapse of the Soviet Union itself unavoidably casts a different light on such positions and the optimism found in A Soviet Journey. Alexei Yurchak and Francine Hirsch have examined the ontological crisis that many observers, Soviet and non-Soviet alike, experienced when the USSR quickly splintered along national lines in 1991.50 Errors in judgment and future prognosis were not exclusive to South African activists. A Soviet Journey also points to a long tradition of interaction between black nationalism and socialism, one informed by Leninist ideas of selfdetermination. African-American and Pan-African activist-intellectuals, including esteemed figures like W. E. B. Du Bois, George Padmore, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson, also travelled to and wrote about their experiences in the USSR.51 In this sense, the Soviet Union presents a more expansive geography for rethinking the paradigm of the Black Atlantic.52 Moscow served as a provisional metropole within this broader political landscape, highlighting how the Black Atlantic did not just consist of a diasporic community of sentiment, but also comprised a space of political intention. Informed by a radical double-consciousness that embraced both race and class, both black identity and revolutionary Marxism, these activist-intellectuals in particular saw the Soviet Union in utopian terms as a society without racial discrimination—a political project that not only had resolved questions of national self-determination and class oppression, but in doing so had dissolved the colour line. As noted elsewhere in this volume, the Soviet system offered potential solutions to Atlantic world problems. La Guma’s writing and political thought similarly relocate the contours and interplay between South African politics, the Black Atlantic,

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the Second World, and the Third World. As indicated in this chapter, A Soviet Journey can be read at a number of levels. As a travel account it provides a panoramic view of Soviet modernity at its height—a close-up of late socialism as an analogue to the more commonly examined late capitalism.53 As a work of political theory A Soviet Journey points to how the Soviet project presented a heterotopian space that influenced radical projects around the Atlantic world, thus underscoring a need to extend current understandings of the black radical tradition to the South Atlantic. Yet such considerations of interpretation should not diminish the personal importance the Soviet Union had for La Guma. It sustained a politics of hope—not solely in an imaginary future sense, but in its factual existence. A Soviet Journey undermines apodictic assessments—especially Euro-American ones—that have resulted in retroactive condemnation of those who supported the USSR, without attention to how it symbolized futures that reassured activists during uncertain times.54 This aspect of optimism must be taken seriously. In contrast to much of his fiction, A Soviet Journey is a joyful work, celebrating Soviet achievements ranging from electrification to gender equality. It offers a contrapuntal reading of the Soviet Union that challenges presentist views of the USSR. La Guma’s account ultimately reveals the diverse intellectual labour and political theory that emerged during the anti-apartheid struggle—a polyphonic archive of fugitive-cosmopolitan voices and situated texts that reveal entwined circuits of socialist, Black Atlantic, and Afro-Asian internationalisms that originated, at least in part, with Leninism. A Soviet Journey demonstrates the endurance of this approach to self-determination through the latter decades of the twentieth century, with political parties, families, and even personal memoirs serving as vessels for these long-held ideas. Notes 1

2

Alex La Guma, And a Threefold Cord (Berlin: Seven Seas Publishers, 1964); Alex La Guma, In the Fog of the Seasons’ End (London: Heinemann, 1972); Alex La Guma, A Walk in the Night and Other Stories (London: Heinemann, 1967 [1962]); Alex La Guma, The Stone Country (London: Heinemann, 1967); Alex La Guma, Time of the Butcherbird (London: Heinemann, 1979). See, for example, I. Potekhin, “Lenin and Africa,” The African Communist no. 3 (1960), 18–26; Terence Africanus, “Lenin and Africa,” The African Communist 40 (1970), 15–27; Editorial, “Homage to Lenin,” The African Communist 41 (1970), 5–7; S. P. Bunting, “Personal Impressions of Lenin,” The African Communist 41 (1970), 19–21; David Ivon Jones, “Lenin’s First

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3

4 5

6 7 8 9

10

11 12 13 14

Newspaper,” The African Communist 42 (1970), 55–68; Francis Meli, “The Comintern and Africa,” The African Communist 43 (1970), 81–98; Z. Nkosi, “How the Russian Revolution Came to South Africa,” The African Communist 70 (1977), 71–87; Apollon Davidson, “Lenin on South Africa,” The African Communist 91 (1982), 73–9. It should be noted that 1970 marked the onehundredth birthday of Lenin, hence the cluster of articles on him that year. See, for example, Priya Lal, African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonization (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970); Leander Schneider, Government of Development: Peasants and Politicians in Postcolonial Tanzania (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014); Walter A. E. Skurnik, “Léopold Sédar Senghor and African Socialism,” Journal of Modern African Studies 3:33 (1965), 349–69; Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), chapter 8. Alex La Guma, Jimmy La Guma: A Biography, ed. Mohamed Adhikari (Cape Town: Friends of the South African Library, 1997). On this history, see Robert Trent Vinson, The Americans Are Coming!: Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2012). On Jimmy La Guma’s early life and career, see Roger Field, Alex La Guma: A Literary and Political Biography (London: James Currey, 2010), 13–6. Alex La Guma [under the pseudonym Gala], “Why I Joined the Communist Party: Doing Something Useful,” The African Communist 89 (1982), 49–52. Allison Drew, Discordant Comrades: Identities and Loyalties on the South African Left (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 49. Drew, Discordant Comrades, 96. For an authoritative account of the LAI, see Michele L. Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 6, 37, 41, 43. Brian Bunting, Moses Kotane: South African Revolutionary (London: Inkululeko Publications, 1975), 16. Ibid. Ibid., 30. Drew, Discordant Comrades, 68, 69.

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15

16

17 18 19

20

21 22 23 24

25

These views were additionally shaped by the Indian radical M. N. Roy. See Kris Manjapra, M. N. Roy: Marxism and Colonial Cosmopolitanism (New Delhi: Routledge, 2010), 43. Drew, Discordant Comrades, 96; Minkah Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 77, 133–4. Similar to South Africa, this strategy, which in principle would result in a Black Belt Republic, also had an intense influence on communist party activities there. See Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015 [1990]); Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000 [1983]), 227. For a separate study focused on Harlem, see Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983). Drew, Discordant Comrades, 102. Ibid., 99–101. The “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries” has also been translated as “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies.” On the South African question, see “The South African Question” (1928), Marxists Internet Archive, accessed 29 November 2016, https://www.marxists.org/history/ international/comintern/sections/sacp/1928/comintern.htm. It should be noted that the senior La Guma briefly left the CPSA leadership in 1928, in part due to internal party tensions, to become general secretary of the CPSA-supported Federation of Non-European Trade Unions; was formally expelled from the CPSA in 1929 over party factions; rejoined in 1931; and was permanently expelled in 1932. His major contributions were made prior to 1928. See Field, Alex La Guma, 17, 21, 28–9. Ibid., 28–9. The Liberator (1929–1932) was also known as The Harlem Liberator (1933– 1934) and the Negro Liberator (1934–1935). Field, Alex La Guma, 35. Cecil A. Abrahams, Alex La Guma (Boston: Twayne, 1985), 5; Nahem Yousaf, Alex La Guma: Politics and Resistance (London: Heinemann, 2001), vii. Michael David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1. For separate studies, see David Caute, The Fellow-Travellers: Intellectual Friends of Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet

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26 27 28

29 30

31 32

33

34

35

36

37

Union, China, and Cuba, 1928–1978 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Sylvia R. Margulies, The Pilgrimage to Russia: The Soviet Union and the Treatment of Foreigners, 1924–1937 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968). Drew, Discordant Comrades, 272. Brian Bunting, Moses Kotane, South African Revolutionary: A Political Biography (Cape Town: Mayibuye Books, 1998), 58–60. For a separate summary, see Irina Filatova, “The Lasting Legacy: The Soviet Theory of the National-Democratic Revolution and South Africa,” South African Historical Journal 64:3 (2012), 507–37. Field has addressed this question in relation to La Guma’s involvement with SACPO. Field, Alex La Guma, 99. Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National Question (1913), Marxists Internet Archive, accessed 1 November 2016, https://www.marxists.org/reference/ archive/stalin/works/1913/03.htm. Field, Alex La Guma, 56–7. On this chronology, see David Everatt, “Alliance Politics of a Special Type: The Roots of the ANC/SACP Alliance, 1950–1954,” Journal of Southern African Studies 18:1 (1992), 19–39. For discussion, see Robert Thornton, “The Potentials of Boundaries in South Africa: Steps Towards a Theory of the Social Edge,” in Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (eds.) Postcolonial Identities in Africa (London: Zed Books, 1996), 136–61. This program was written in 1962 and published in 1963. See “The Road to South African Freedom: Programme of the South African Communist Party,” The African Communist 2:2 (1963), 24–70. Steven Friedman, Race, Class and Power: Harold Wolpe and the Radical Critique of Apartheid (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2015), introduction. Their route took them through Kenya before arriving in London on September 22. See Blanche La Guma with Martin Klammer, In the Dark with My Dress on Fire: My Life in Cape Town, London, Havana and Home Again (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2010), 129, 131. Alex La Guma, “Come Back to Tashkent,” Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings 4 (1970), 208–10; Alex La Guma, “Cuba and Africa,” Sechaba, March (1984), 20–3; Alex La Guma, “Paul Robeson and Africa,” The African Communist 46 (1971), 113–9; Alex La Guma, “Thang’s Bicycle,” Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings 29 (1976), 42–7; Alex La Guma, “Vietnam: A People’s Victory,” The African Communist 53 (1973), 29–35.

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38

39

40 41

42

43

44

45 46

47 48

49

The Afro-Asian Writers’ Association was also referred to as the Association of Asian and African Writers and the Permanent Bureau of Afro-Asian Writers, based in Cairo. It should be noted that debates exist over defining Soviet “modernity.” See, for example, Michael David-Fox, Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). Abdul R. JanMohamed, Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1983), 262. Vladimir Shubin, ANC: A View from Moscow, 2nd ed. (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2008), 3. For separate discussions of Soviet foreign policy during this period, see Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), chapter 2; Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). Constantin Katsakioris, “The Soviet-South Encounter: Tensions in the Friendship with Afro-Asian Partners, 1945–1965,” in Patryk Babiracki and Kenyon Zimmer (eds.), Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange Across the Soviet Bloc, 1940s-1960s (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014), 145. On Lotus, see Hala Halim, “Lotus, the Afro-Asian Nexus, and Global South Comparatism,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 32:3 (2012), 563–83. V.I. Lenin, “Our Foreign and Domestic Position and Party Tasks,” 21 November 1920, Marxists Internet Archive, accessed 22 November 2016, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/nov/21.htm. The tenure of Leonid Brezhnev, during which La Guma traveled, is considered neo-Stalinist in orientation. On this period under Stalin, see, for example, Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). Felix J. Oinas, “The Political Uses and Themes of Folklore in the Soviet Union,” Journal of the Folklore Institute 12:2–3 (1975), 158. See Carolien Stolte’s essay in this volume as well as the recent special issue “Other Bandungs: Afro-Asian Internationalisms in the Early Cold War,” Journal of World History 30:1–2 (2019). Premesh Lalu, “Incomplete Histories: Steve Biko, the Politics of SelfWriting and the Apparatus of Reading,” Current Writing 16:1 (2004), 108; Christopher J. Lee, “Tricontinentalism in Question: The Cold War Politics

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50

51 52

53 54

of Alex La Guma and the African National Congress,” in Christopher J. Lee (ed.), Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010), 270–1. Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 1, 2; Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). Joy Gleason Carew, Blacks, Reds, and Russians: Sojourners in Search of the Soviet Promise (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008). For discussion, see, for example, Kate A. Baldwin, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922–1963 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 8–11; Maxim Matusevich, “Expanding the Boundaries of the Black Atlantic: African Students as Soviet Moderns,” Ab Imperio 2 (2012), 325–50; Monica Popescu, “On the Margins of the Black Atlantic: Angola, the Eastern Bloc, and the Cold War,” Research in African Literatures 45:3 (2014), 91–109; Cedric Tolliver, “Alternative Solidarities,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50:4 (2014), 379–383. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992). Katsakioris, “The Soviet-South Encounter,” 135. My thoughts here are also influenced by Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 29.

Chapter 14

Towards Afro-Asia? Continuities and Change in Indian Anti-imperialist Regionalism, 1927–1957 Carolien Stolte “The Afro-Asian peoples believe that imperialist domination, foreign exploitation and other evils which result from the subjugation of the peoples are a denial of the fundamental rights of man … The Afro-Asian peoples desire unity, to work together, to help each other, in order to struggle for the welfare of the Afro-Asian peoples as well as the whole of mankind.”1 Introduction In February 1927, Indian students, activists, and other anti-imperialists converged on Brussels to attend the first session of the League Against Imperialism. The League sought to convene anti-imperialists from the colonized world as well as their allies in order to join forces and build “a permanent international organization in order to link up all forces combating international imperialism and in order to ensure their effective support for the fight for emancipation conducted by the oppressed peoples.”2 The conference was both influenced and supported by the Comintern, but the Soviets did not fully control it.3 Jawaharlal Nehru, member of the Executive Committee of the Congress, had taken an active part in its organization. The opening quotation to this chapter, however, is not from the Brussels Conference, but from thirty years later. In December 1957, antiimperialists from across the Afro-Asian region and their allies met in Cairo to found an international organization combating imperialism in “all its forms and manifestations.”4 The conference was both influenced and supported by the Soviet Union, but not controlled by it.5 Rameshwari Nehru, member of the Executive Committee of the Congress and relative of Jawaharlal Nehru, had taken an active part in its organization. This rhetorical repetition serves as a preliminary demonstration that the similarities between the 1927 and 1957 conferences were no coincidence. The Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference in Cairo convened in a 347

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very different world from that of the Brussels Conference. Many of its Asian participants had gained independence by the time of the Cairo conference, and representation from Africa had greatly increased compared to Brussels. Most importantly, new forms of imperialism emerged as the Cold War spread to all corners of the globe.6 Why, then, examine Indian participation in events on different sides of decolonization as comparable manifestations of regional anti-imperialist solidarity? This chapter argues that Indian participation in, and hopes for, the League Against Imperialism were informed by a tradition of Asianism that continued to inform anti-imperialist internationalism throughout the interwar years and beyond Indian independence in 1947. This tradition continued to shape Indian internationalism, but its defining antiimperialist character enabled it to expand into Afro-Asianism as more African anti-imperialist movements entered the international scene. In doing so, this chapter does not argue that all Asianism from the interwar years on became Afro-Asianism: for that, the phenomenon of Indian Asianism was far too varied.7 It included cultural movements that sought to establish the unity of Asia as a result of historical linkages; religious movements that sought to define Asia along Hindu-Buddhist or, in some cases, Islamic lines; as well as more outright Pan-Asianism attempts to federate politically.8 It does argue that anti-imperialist Asianism, which used common features and shared experiences among Asian nations (both perceived and real) to unite around an anti-imperialist agenda, was used to such great effect during the lifetime of the League Against Imperialism that it carried over into later projects that claimed to be its successors. John Steadman once lamented that “many a writer on Asia … postulates a unity that has no real existence outside his own imagination.”9 The same might be said for attempts to unite anti-imperialist agendas under an Asian banner. However, this does not mean that this “Asia” was without content. Many Indian Asianisms knew exactly what they were, who was included, and why. A moving map of Asia as defined by those areas affected by European imperialism proved especially durable in radical visions for a post-colonial future in a more just international order. This was a project that continued after political decolonization had been achieved and carried the legacy of the League Against Imperialism past independence. Anti-imperialist Asianism was informed by a variety of Indian internationalist networks and participation in organizations which included the League but were not determined by the League. Without wanting to overstate the importance of the League Against Imperialism,

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it is nevertheless no coincidence that the League was regularly referred to during post-war conferences. Moments like the Asian Relations Conference (New Delhi 1947), the Conference of Asian and African Countries (Bandung 1955), and the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference (Cairo 1957) did not pass without reference to their 1927 predecessor. Nehru frequently referred to his connection to Mohammed Hatta through the LAI, and in 1947 organized an aeroplane to airlift the Indonesian delegation from behind the Dutch blockade because he would not hold an Asian conference without them.10 Sukarno famously stated in his opening speech at the Bandung Conference that “only a few decades ago it was frequently necessary to travel to other countries and even other continents before the spokespersons of our people could confer. I recall in this connection the Conference of the ‘League against Imperialism and Colonialism’, which was held in Brussels almost thirty years ago. At that Conference many distinguished Delegates who are present here today met each other and found new strength in their fight for independence.”11 Sukarno’s statement at Bandung reveals the important place the LAI came to occupy in Afro-Asian memory.12 It was seen retroactively as a conference of states-in-waiting, convening political leaders who would later take up leading positions in the independent governments of their respective countries. Yet that was just one part of the story. Though Bandung was an intergovernmental affair, the 1947 Delhi conference, the 1957 Cairo conference, and many other Asian and Afro-Asian gatherings were not. The interconnected processes of decolonization and the Cold War included an uneven timeline for decolonization, new regional pacts, new spheres of influence, and other geopolitical considerations. Both the need for, and the constraints on, Afro-Asianist meetings in this period created a blurring of the lines between the state and non-state realms. An official conference in the eyes of one delegation could be an unofficial one in the eyes of another. One state might send a delegation of government officials to a gathering, or civilians to function as such in practice, while another one might be represented only by opposition parties or other organizations on their own initiative.13 The blurred lines between state and non-state spaces, in terms of both participating states-in-waiting and the many semi-official Afro-Asian conferences in the early Cold War, have guided the selection of events in this chapter. Afro-Asianism and its Asianist antecedents are analysed as discursive strategies in the context of anti-imperialist activism. They are not analysed in a teleological sense as proto-foreign policy: anti-imperialist conferences from the League Against Imperialism to the Cold War era

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included ultimately unsuccessful independence movements, as well as political groups who later became marginalized or in the opposition.14 The causes and effects of Asian regionalism at the League Against Imperialism and its successors can be brought into full view only when looking beyond the anti-imperialists who ended up in positions of (state) power, to the broader network of Indian anti-imperialists. Regionalism at the First League Against Imperialism Conference When the Brussels Congress opened at the Egmont Palace on 10 February 1927, a number of delegates brought experiences of early Asianism along with them. The best-known example is Jawaharlal Nehru. Much has been written about his anti-imperialist internationalism.15 During the interwar years he often expressed sympathy for Asianist projects, although he primarily acted as a voice of reason in putting the brakes on unrealistic federalist projects, including that of Indian National Congress President Chittaranjan Das in 1921.16 It is no coincidence that his own biggest Asianist triumphs, the Asian Relations Conference of 1947 and subsequent regionalist projects, did not happen until twenty years later, with the organizational power and political weight of first the Provisional Government (during the Asian Relations Conference) and later the government of independent India behind them.17 At the Brussels conference Nehru was one of the main reasons that British imperialism in Asia featured so prominently on the agenda. Aside from building solidarity with associates like Liao Huanxing, a prominent Guomindang representative, and Sen Katayama, one of the founders of the Japanese labour and socialist movements, he also emphasized that Asian antiimperialisms were inherently interlinked.18 This was not limited to professions of international solidarity. On the opening day, Nehru stated that Afghanistan, Burma, Persia, and Mesopotamia had suffered at the hands of the British primarily because India, their prized possession, had to be safeguarded.19 However, statements such as these had an unintended side-effect: their Indo-centric nature fitted a larger pattern. As noted below, at later Asian and Afro-Asian conferences, accusations of (at best) Indian paternalism and (at worst) Indian expansionist designs emerged as a darker side of anti-imperialist Asianism.20 A very different Asianist trajectory was present at Brussels in the person of Maulana Barkatullah, an Indian revolutionary exile who spent much of his life moving between Japan, the US, and Europe. He had been appointed Professor of Hindustani at the University of Tokyo in 1904, and developed his own blend of Pan-Asianism and Pan-Islamism from

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there, publishing the results in Islamic Fraternity, a periodical he founded. Taken aback by its anti-British tone, one British Embassy official in Tokyo was shocked to note that it “advocated an alliance of the Asiatic nations against the domination of the white races.”21 In terms of his writings, though, Barkatullah would become better known for his pamphlet entitled Bolshevism and the Islamic Nations. This text was written shortly after his meeting with Lenin and Mahendra Pratap, another Pan-Asianist veteran with later links to the League against Imperialism.22 The pamphlet was written in Persian and translated into various Central Asian languages, and ended up circulating from Soviet Central Asia to Indonesia.23 Due to his long years of Asianist and other peregrinations, the League Against Imperialism Conference in Brussels was actually where Barkatullah met Nehru for the first time.24 He attended the Brussels conference as a representative of the Hindustan Ghadar Party, an Indian revolutionary party headquartered in San Francisco with a history of sponsoring Asianist missions—including those of Pratap and Barkatullah.25 Pratap had corresponded with Nehru several times over the course of the interwar years about Pan-Asian projects.26 In Barkatullah’s case, however, the first contact between Nehru and himself on Asianist projects is likely to have taken place in Brussels. In the sparse historiography of the League Against Imperialism that this volume seeks to remedy, Asianism as a theme has not received much attention.27 This is strange, considering that the very foundations of the League Against Imperialism were Pan-Asian in character: a group of students from several colonial and semi-colonial areas had come together in a Pan-Asiatic League in Berlin prior to the Brussels Congress, and were involved in preparations for the latter.28 The intent of having the Brussels Congress function as a platform for Asian delegates to meet and organize ways of coordinating anti-imperialist activities was clear from the outset. As noted elsewhere in this volume, the Asian delegates to Brussels discussed the possibility of founding a more permanent Pan-Asian Organiation in a separate meeting.29 It is worth noting that the resolutions arrived at in Brussels demonstrate Asianism at two different levels. On the one hand, the Asian contacts that were fostered there served specific political ends. China and India arrived at a joint statement denouncing the use of Indian troops and resources in the British suppression of China. Their resolution read, “Ever since the unholy Opium War from 1840 to 1842, Indian troops have been sent to China time and again, in order to secure the power of British Imperialism in that country. Eighty-seven years have Indian troops been abused in this way, and thousands of

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Indians were stationed as police officers today in Hong Kong, Shanghai etc. They were later used to shoot Chinese workers, which has caused Chinese hostilities against the Indian people to grow.”30 While no Pan-Asian plans were directly apparent from this resolution, it was predicated on the idea that China and India shared a historical trajectory and affinity that had been interrupted by colonialism, but was worth recovering. This rhetoric was reminiscent of the cultural Asianism espoused primarily by Tagore and his colleagues at the Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan. Founded in 1921, it gained traction as an Asianist centre while the League was building up. Tagore believed that “Asia owes it to humanity to restore her spirit of generous cooperation in culture, and heal the suffering peoples of modern age now divided by cruel politics and materialistic greed.”31 The resolution also built on Asianist engagements dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century, such as the Indo-Chinese League mentioned in Anna Belogurova’s chapter in this volume. At the League the Sino-Indian resolution was prefaced by the statement that “[f]or more than three thousand years, the people of India and China were united by close cultural relations. From the days of the Buddha to the end of the Mughal period and the start of British rule, these friendly ties were ever-present. British Imperialism, which has kept us in isolation from one another in the past and has brought so much injustice, is now the very power that unites us in our struggle against it.”32 As a rhetorical device, the idea of ancient cultural bonds and the revival of pre-colonial ties proved especially durable and, as shown below, developed into a regular feature of post-war conferences. The Sino-Indian resolution was one of the few bilateral resolutions arrived at in Brussels. Most resolutions were based either on the particular situation in one country or on collective stances against imperialist exploitation. Another exception was a resolution by the Asian delegations: twenty-eight delegates from China, fourteen from India, four from Indonesia, three each from Korea and Indo-China, and two from the Philippines.33 Their statement, too, was predicated on the idea of a common Asian cultural and political heritage, which now united them in their anti-imperialist struggle: “[t]he International Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism, considering, that there are no areas in Asia free from colonial imperialism; considering, that all Asian lands have been the heritage of indigenous nations since centuries; considering, that these nations themselves have built states; considering, that these Oriental nations, who possess an old civilization, have a right, as much as the

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Western peoples, to determine the course of their own history; considering that political independence is an absolute requirement for a people, and that no nation may be subjected to a power it rejects, demands, that all groups participating in this Congress as well as the current organization, which must be built on these decisions, must undertake all necessary action, to free Asia from Imperialism and Colonial Oppression.”34 But if the Indian delegates brought a longer history of Asianism to the League, this was actively facilitated behind the scenes as well. Before the Brussels Congress, the Comintern sent “secret instructions” to a number of trusted delegates. Aside from an appeal to keep the ranks firmly closed and prevent factions from forming at any cost, they read that “[p]arallel with work at the plenary sessions, indefatigable work should be carried on among the delegations. After the ground has sufficiently been prepared … it is desirable that the Chinese and Indian representatives should sign a joint declaration on mutual support of the national liberation movement against imperialism.”35 The instructions also flagged the intervention in China, the brutalities of Dutch imperialists in Indonesia, and new imperialist ventures in Syria as key concerns. Finally, the instructions read that connections with and between revolutionary parties from the British Empire were considered “of most interest.”36 Soviet attempts to amplify Asian anti-imperialism through the League had not gone unnoticed by British authorities. For Indian political intelligence officers, too, it appears that the Asianist threat was of particular concern. David Petrie, officer in the Indian Imperial Police and later director of MI5, noted that the Brussels Conference had stimulated Pan-Asian initiatives.37 Fear of the “Pan-Asiatic threat” grew when, in the months after the Brussels conference, reports surfaced that the Comintern had indeed purposely funded the travel of several Asian delegates to Brussels.38 Asianism and the League after Brussels As the League expanded its activities after the Brussels Congress, it soon became clear that its reach went far beyond the walls of Egmont Palace. As shown elsewhere in this volume, its impact ranged from European workers to the Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean diaspora. The League’s voice was further amplified when the International Secretariat in Berlin founded a journal, The Anti-Imperialist Review.39 By then, the League’s Indian membership had grown, and the first issue had a number of prominent Indian activists and politicians among its authors. Forewords by Sòng Qìng-líng, widow of the late Sun Yat-sen and honorary president of the

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League, and S. Srinivasa Iyengar, former president of the Indian National Congress, were published alongside each other. The first issue itself, also discussed by Disha Karnad Jani and Michele Louro in this volume, was mainly intended to advertise the outcomes of the Brussels Congress and the League’s aims for the future. It is telling, therefore, that this included the republication of several of Lenin’s publications about Asia, such as The Awakening of Asia (1913), in which that awakening was heralded as “a new stage of world history.”40 Excerpts from Conservative Europe and Progressive Asia (1913) declared that “[i]n Asia a mighty democratic movement is growing, expanding, and becoming stronger … hundreds of millions of men and women are awakening to life, to the light and to liberty … no power on earth can prevent its victory.”41 The decision on the part of the Indian National Congress to affiliate with the League at the Annual Session in December 1927 is now well known.42 Dr. Ansari, President of the Congress, qualified this decision further in a speech in which he spoke of the “absolute necessity of forming a federation of Asiatic peoples for the united struggle against imperialism,” to which associating with the League was “the first step.”43 It is no coincidence that Ansari cast Indian participation in the League in this light. He himself had a history of regionalist activism, having led an ambulance mission in solidarity with Turkey during the Balkan Wars in 1912.44 After the war, when campaigns against the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate emerged all over India and many Indian Muslims left for Turkey in solidarity, Ansari stated publicly that the cause of the Khilafat was the cause of “all the enslaved Asiatic people from the thraldom of the West.”45 Given the strong Indian involvement in both the Brussels Congress and the International Secretariat in Berlin and the prominence of Asianist rhetoric among anti-imperialist statements in the League’s publications, it is worth looking into the regionalist ideas of some of the League’s Berlin-based workers, of whom Virendranath Chattopadhyaya—known to his comrades as “Chatto”—is the best-known. Like Barkatullah above and M.P.T. Acharya below, his early political life had included participation in the Berlin-India Committee or, in British intelligence parlance, the “Indo-German Conspiracy” during the First World War.46 By the mid-1920s, he was known as “the most prominent Indian living in Germany” and as a noted anti-imperialist activist.47 It was also Chatto who had persuaded Nehru to attend the Brussels conference in the first place, and continued to work with him after Brussels to expand Asian participation in the League.48 As he wrote to Nehru in early 1929, “There is every reason to believe that we shall succeed in drawing the parties

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into active cooperation with the League. If that is attained, we shall have the satisfaction of recording the affiliation of all the national movements from Morocco to Indonesia.”49 This definition of Asia, in which all of North Africa is included, was not an uncommon one in anti-imperialist circles: as shown below, this too would carry over into the Asian Relations Conference as well as the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference, and further facilitated the transition from anti-imperialist Asianism into the Afro-Asianism of the early Cold War. But “Chatto” was not alone in the League. Alongside him worked, among others, his old acquaintance, M.P.T. Acharya. Acharya was a seasoned Indian revolutionary exile with such an impressive record of activities that he managed to cover only the first decade of his exile in his memoires, and sadly never found time to record the years after 1915.50 His early anarchism and later communism had earned him a permanent warrant for his arrest, which meant that he could not set foot on British soil.51 He was familiar with Berlin long before the League moved there, having joined the Hindu-German Conspiracy on recruiting missions among Indian prisoners of war in German camps.52 After the Bolshevik Revolution he moved to the Soviet Union where he helped to found the first incarnation of the Communist Party of India in Tashkent. The Central Asian crossroads of Tashkent proved a fertile breeding ground for a number of Pan-Asianist activities. Acharya met Mahendra Pratap, perhaps one of India’s most inveterate Pan-Asianists, and joined him on a mission that included a meeting with Lenin in 1918.53 A year later, Acharya and his associates succeeded in rerouting some of the Khilafatists to Tashkent as well. Having thus brought together a sufficient number of Indian activists in the city, Acharya assisted Abdur Rab Barq in forming the Indian Revolutionary Association in Tashkent in 1920. His experience with the Khilafatists and his success in inflecting their various understandings of Pan-Islamism towards more Pan-Asianist ideas caused him to bring several former Khilafatists to the Comintern-organized Congress of the Oppressed Peoples of the East in Baku in 1920.54 Fourteen Indian delegates attended this Congress, which tested much of the antiimperialist and regionalist rhetoric that would resurface in Brussels in 1927. It was but a small step for Acharya to continue in the role of typist and secretary for the Eastern Section of the League Against Imperialism.55 Soon after the establishment of the Anti-Imperialist Review, the logistics of the second congress of the League in Frankfurt were hammered out. When the Congress opened on 20 July 1929 it convened a slightly different set of anti-imperialist activists: participation from Asia had markedly

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increased, and delegations no longer consisted primarily of associations of exiles, students, or professional groups abroad, but included trade unions and other local organizations. The shift was due, at least in part, to Nehru and Chatto’s active networking amongst Asian anti-imperialist movements. It also rendered visible what was to cause a rift in the League: the increasing influence of the Comintern on the organization and its commitment to world revolution on the one side, and the focus on national independence of many anti-imperialists from the colonies on the other. This split between revolutionaries and reformists, or moderates, as they were known at the time, was part of a global trend of hardening ideological lines during Stalin’s Third Period. It also affected Asian projects in the field of trade unionism, some of which were connected to the League. In the case of the League itself, Indian participation quickly became more radical, and Nehru came to be regarded as a traitor to the cause.56 By and large, Mohammed Hatta and Chiang Kai-shek suffered the same fate. As one British official noted, “[T]hey had once been members of the League. Now … they have been expelled from its ranks.”57 As the 1930s progressed, Soviet funding of Asian anti-imperialist projects declined. The League did not survive the interwar years although, as Michele Louro has shown, Nehru remained in contact with his comrades from the early League and harboured no ill will against the organization.58 Asianist projects, which looked to sources of inspiration other than the Bolshevik revolution, likewise saw their opportunities dwindle. Many had focused on Japan, and withdrew as Japanese imperialism became more manifest. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 many organizations and institutions ceased operating, their hopes of Pan-Asian solidarity crushed. For instance, attempts to create an Asian women’s movement independent of western feminists was stranded in attempts to convene a conference in Japan—even after a first successful conference in Lahore in 1931.59 And while the democratic socialist Asiatic Labour Congress, first convened in Colombo in 1934, did convene a second conference in Japan in 1937, as a result it lost all goodwill in India and was disbanded.60 The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War ended the interwar years in Asia. As a turning point in the history of Asianist anti-imperialism, however, the Second World War turned out to be an interruption rather than an endpoint. After 1947, the key features of the League’s Asian regionalism—the idea of Asia as a connected space with shared historicalcultural characteristics and a commitment to anti-imperialist solidarity— returned in full force, albeit in a changed world.

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Towards Afro-Asianism: Echoes of the League The rhetoric of anti-imperialist regionalism returned soon after the war. And not unlike in the interwar period, the idea that the decolonizing world had to stand together to end imperialism resulted in a wide array of international conferences between the late 1940s and the 1950s. Before 1960, in which year sixteen African countries achieved independence, antiimperialist solidarity continued much as it had before the war. But there were new concerns that required a collective stand. The most important of these were to make the United Nations more than an extension of Western geopolitical interests; to ensure that hard-won independence would not be immediately lessened by surrendering autonomy to Cold War powers; and to combat Western hegemonies through direct intra-Asian and AfroAsian exchanges of people, goods, and ideas.61 Three post-war initiatives stand out in particular. Interestingly they were all spearheaded by women whose careers had started in the interwar years; who were intimately familiar with the League against Imperialism; and who called for international solidarity using the same Asian, and later Afro-Asian, idiom that had been successful in the League. These initiatives also had in common with each other and with the League Against Imperialism an existence in the ambiguous space between the state and the non-state, the official and the non-official. They convened political actors, but they were representatives of states-in-waiting, of anti-imperialist movements that would not be successful, and of voices of opposition from sitting governments. And, like the League, all three included allies and sympathizers from outside the colonial world, as well as close observation by imperial powers. In 1945, Nehru’s sister and close political ally, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, led the Indian delegation to the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco.62 Held prior to Indian independence, this was not an official delegation. The official delegation represented British India, whereas Pandit represented the Indian National Congress.63 Vijayalakshmi Pandit participated in the conference to promote Indian independence and lay the groundwork for post-independence relationships.64 Accounts of her success vary, but she found receptive audiences and was able to maintain such high visibility that she became head of the official delegation to the UN after independence, eventually leading the General Assembly in 1953.65 In 1945, however, her visit was primarily part of an Indian goodwill tour of the United States: to win sympathy and support for Indian decolonization and to create allies. Her focus, however, was less on power than on people. She met with Indian and other diasporic groups in

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the United States, and with allies from both America and Asia. In Tucson, she received a considerable sum of money crowd-funded in sympathy with Nehru’s continued imprisonment in Ahmednagar Fort.66 In New York an “Indian Independence Dinner” was organized by the India League of America, in which the American Declaration of Independence was read alongside resolutions from the Indian National Congress.67 Among the speakers for the night was famous Hokkien Chinese writer Lín Yǔtáng, who had just published Vigil of a Nation, in which he gave an account of wartime China and looked ahead to China’s post-war “role in Asia and in world cooperation.”68 By the time the San Francisco conference opened in April, the American press had taken note of Pandit’s tour, and so had the other Asian delegations. Fifty nations were represented at the conference, twelve of which were from the Afro-Asian region. Pandit developed especially close ties with the Arab delegations, who had well-founded fears that the United Nations would prove to be a continuation of the League of Nations: they perceived the United Nations’ trusteeship system as a continuation of the mandate areas. In the end, a separate meeting consisting of the Asian delegations to San Francisco—“Asia” once more loosely defined and including the whole Arab world—was convened. Interestingly, the Asian presence at San Francisco included another sibling of the original League leadership: Sòng Zǐwen, brother of former Honorary LAI President Sòng Qìng-líng and head of the Chinese delegation.69 At the Asian meeting the idea of an Asian organization was floated, should the UN prove ineffective in representing Asia. The plan emerged to organize an Asian Conference to evaluate the workings of the United Nations, and Pandit and her colleague, B. Shiva Rao, another interwar veteran who could count many League Against Imperialism members among his trade union contacts, offered to take the lead.70 In December of that same year, after Nehru had been released from prison, this idea started taking shape and Nehru started alluding to the idea of an Asian federation, or at least an Asian organization, in the international press.71 The Asian Relations Conference and the short-lived Asian Relations Organization established there, opened in New Delhi on 23 March 1947. This conference emblematized the ambiguous space between the official and the non-official: arranged effectively by the Provisional Government, boycotted by the Muslim League, but organized by the Indian Council for World Affairs as a cultural and academic gathering.72 Like the Indian delegation at the San Francisco conference, this conference too had been engineered by Nehru, but led by a “League sibling”: Sarojini

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Naidu, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya’s sister. The two shared a love for poetry, and Chatto often boasted of his sister’s success in that area.73 The two had political differences, especially where the Indian National Congress’ reformist rather than radical tendencies were concerned.74 Antiimperialism and the need for Asian solidarity, however, were not among their disagreements. As an anti-imperialist, Sarojini Naidu’s politics were closer to those of Gandhi than of her brother. During the salt marches, she took over leadership after Gandhi’s arrest, until she too was arrested.75 This arrest caused her to miss the aforementioned All-Asia Women’s Conference in Lahore, organized by the All-India Women’s Conference which she had helped build. In recognition of her sacrifice she was elected president of the Lahore conference anyway.76 The complexities and contradictions in Sarojini Naidu’s feminism have been noted elsewhere.77 But it was as co-convener of this women’s conference, alongside Rameshwari Nehru (below) and her and Chatto’s sister-in-law, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, that her Asianism was best expressed. As a lyrical poet, finally, Sarojini Naidu had a history of celebrating the diversity and interregional connection of Asia: “[i]n brotherhood of diverse creeds, and harmony of diverse race / The votaries of the Prophet’s faith, of whom you are the crown and chief / And they, who bear on Vedic brows their mystic symbols of belief / And they, worshipping the sun, fled o’er the old Iranian sea / And they, who bow to Him who trod the midnight waves of Galilee. / Sweet, sumptuous fables of Baghdad the splendours of your court recall / the torches of a Thousand Nights blaze through a single festival. / And Sakisingers down the streets pour for us, in a stream divine / From goblets of your love-ghazals, the rapture of your Sufi wine.”78 At the Asian Relations Conference, she was able to combine her two selves as an anti-imperialist activist and a poet. Addressing the crowds on the opening session of the Congress as “Comrades and Kindred of Asia” amidst continued cheers from the audience, the opening words of her speech closely resembled the preamble to the Sino-Indian resolution at Brussels: “I wonder how many of you who have come journeying across steep mountain passes, floating on the vast bosom of many-colored seas, riding amidst the clouds of dawn and darkness realize that we stand today, here and now, not only in the heart of Asia, but in the very core and center of India’s heart. This Purana Qila, this historic ruin, the broken arches, what do they signify? They signify the dawn of history, the history of many forgotten ages. They also symbolize the dawn of a new era beckoning today.”79 Her activist self, however, spoke more plainly and stated simply

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that “we may have our own movements for freedom, but we have come here to take an indestructible pledge of the unity of Asia.”80 Sarojini Naidu was not alone in invoking historic connections between the nations of Asia and condemning imperialism for interrupting both. Nehru, in his speech, phrased this clearly: “one of the notable consequences of the European domination of Asia has been the isolation of the countries of Asia from one another. India has always had contact and intercourse with her neighbor countries … with the coming of British rule in India these contacts were broken off … A similar process affected the other countries of Asia also. Their entire economy was bound up with some European imperialism or other; even culturally they looked towards Europe and not towards their friends and neighbours from whom they had derived so much in the past.”81 As Sarojini Naidu had done, Nehru too hammered home the message of Asian solidarity straight away in one simple sentence: “[w]e seek no narrow nationalism.”82 In terms of participation numbers, Asian representation, and laying important groundwork for the Bandung Conference, the Asian Relations Conference was a great success. However, it also laid bare some cracks in the wall of Asian solidarity.83 As had been the case in Brussels in 1927, too great a focus on India could also result in fears of Indian domination, real or discursive. And both Nehru and Sarojii Naidu had given the audience cause for concern. Nehru in his speech claimed Egypt as “Asian” before stating that “[w]e in Asia have a special responsibility to the people of Africa. We must help them take their rightful place in the human family.”84 However well-intentioned, this was not universally read as a horizontal statement of solidarity. And, as Antoinette Burton reminds us, such statements were part of a history of racialized capitalist relations and colonial-era racial hierarchies, causing the hyphen in “AfroAsia” to elide tensions that strained anti-imperialist solidarities.85 Closer to home, Sarojini Naidu sounded almost belligerent in defending India as the location of the conference: “[i]f India, my India, has issued an invitation and summoned the people of the east and west of Asia, has she—who has been the custodian of our own cultures as of yours, one of the great achievements of Asia—not the right to do so? Did we not send to Southeast Asia the great treasure of ours in India, Gautama Buddha— the teaching of peace? Did we not send to China, to Japan, to Ceylon, to Burma, the influence, philosophy and wisdom of India? … Did we not send to Babylon, to Egypt, to the furthermost corners of Asia with our merchandise, the treasure of our arts, the teachings of our literature, the wisdom of our sages and the splendor of our ideals?”86 It is no wonder,

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perhaps, that one Burmese delegate noted in the conference’s session on cultural problems that while it was terrible to be ruled by a European power, it would be worse to be ruled by an Asian power.87 More reminiscent of the League Against Imperialism, however, was a resolutely anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-militarist congress in New Delhi eight years later: the Congress of Asian Countries on the Relaxation of International Tensions. Because of its more extreme positions and because it almost literally coincided with Bandung, threatening to take some of the wind out of the latter’s sails, Nehru dissociated himself completely from this event. It was organized, however, by another Nehru, completing the trifecta of familial connections to the League: Rameshwari Nehru, social worker, organizer, long-time friend of Sarojini Naidu, and married to Nehru’s uncle Brijlal.88 This conference could not have taken place without the previous two. Like San Francisco, it was strongly committed to policing the United Nations and ensuring it was representative of the Afro-Asian world. Like the Asian Relations Conference, it professed to be an unofficial cultural-academic gathering but ended up drawing large participation from political actors. But it resembled the League in two ways in which San Francisco and the ARC did not: those political actors were, if not card-carrying communists, at least fellow travellers; and behind the scenes, there was considerable Soviet influence.89 Of the three, this 1955 Delhi conference best demonstrates the “creative interplay” between anti-imperialists and international communists noted by Michele Louro elsewhere in this volume. Rameshwari Nehru was a prominent member of the Indo-Soviet Cultural Society. Though not a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, she was involved in the All-India Peace Council (AIPC), the Indian chapter of the Soviet-dominated World Peace Council (WPC). She organized the event with the help of AIPC and WPC members, several of whom were also Indian MPs who had started their political careers during the interwar years. Her correspondents, too, included foreign leaders from across a broad leftist political spectrum: from Egypt’s Anwar Sadat to hardliners like North Korea’s Pak Cheong-ae.90 This roughly corresponded to the “Asia” at this conference: it was loosely Afro-Asian, drawing attendance from most of the Arab world, and this time it gave rise to a set of explicitly Afro-Asian meetings that continued throughout the 1950s. At the conference, Nehru’s opening speech resembled its predecessors: “[t]here was a spirit of unity underlining the civilizations of all our countries. We, the Asian countries, lived in peace and tranquility. We

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never entertained any aggressive designs against each other … Then the change came over us. These great people of Asia fell asleep. They lost their initiative … These were really dark and sad times of our history. But then, the cycle of time changed again and we all woke up simultaneously … We yearned for freedom, which was our birthright.”91 However, the conference as a whole was, like the LAI, anti-imperialist first and Asianist second. This time the anti-imperialist idiom had come to include the Cold War and its bloc formation. As noted by Pakistani delegate Maulana Bhashani, “Even after seeing this mood of Asia the foreigners refuse to give up hopes. They have become more desperate. On all sides they are spreading the net of blocs … Wherever the imperialists extend their net of war either in the form of military agreement or alliance, the lamp of democracy goes out. Any work for the defense of world peace and democracy is branded ‘subversive’, ‘communist’, ‘fellow-traveler’, etc., … The countries of Asia do not want war as much as they do not want to enter into a pointless armament race.”92 The Asian Solidarity Committee that had organized the conference followed a pattern of solidarity committees that operated in the larger orbit of Soviet cultural diplomacy. A few months after the conference, the committee renamed itself the Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee, and set about organizing the next meeting in Cairo. An international team of activists and writers organized the conference, the Indian members of which had organized the Delhi gathering, but it was actively sponsored and supported by Nasser. Convening in December 1957, every effort was made to include independence movements from throughout Africa by organizing them in local solidarity committees. The Cairo conference convened a much more representative portion of the Afro-Asian world— much more so than Bandung had two years previously, because it included still-colonized nations—and gave rise to an enduring institution: the AfroAsian People’s Solidarity Organization (AAPSO), which still exists today. It welcomed five countries that had gained their independence between the 1955 and 1957 conferences—Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana, and Malaya—which, along with the international support and solidarity Egypt had received during the Suez crisis the year before, was seen as a cause for optimism.93 As Rameshwari Nehru said in her Cairo address, “We may have to pass through many trials, it may yet take a little time, but we may be sure that the last victory is going to be ours. Only let us, my brothers, dedicate ourselves to the bond of friendship with which we have bound ourselves and take a pledge that together we resist all aggression and injustice one to any of us.”94

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Conclusion Since the moment the League Against Imperialism was founded, the cartography behind the regionalist rhetoric of anti-imperialist internationalism has been a shifting one. Stretching the map of Asia to include the whole Arab world, effectively Chatto’s “Morocco to Indonesia,” demonstrated that “Asia” was used primarily as a rallying point for antiimperial solidarity, rather than as a bounded geographical space. This enlarged map of Asia was due, in large part, to the international interlocutors of early League Against Imperialism members like Maulana Barkatullah and M.P.T. Acharya, who could count many Pan-Islamists among their comrades. It also facilitated the transition from anti-imperialist Asianism to Afro-Asianism in later years, as the precise demarcation of Asia had never been a concern. Alternatively called “proletarian solidarity” or “subaltern internationalism,” anti-imperialist regionalism was meant to be expansive and include the decolonizing world.95 Of the anti-imperialist gatherings and institutions discussed in this chapter, the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization became the closest approximation to a “spiritual successor” to the League Against Imperialism. This was due in no small part to the fact that, at long last, the geographical backgrounds of the anti-imperialists it convened matched the conceptual reach of its regionalism. In Cairo in 1957, Asia was no longer the dominant voice. As more meetings were convened in AAPSO’s institutional orbit, this trend continued. At the Afro-Asian Jurists’ Conference (Damascus, 1957), the Afro-Asian Writers’ Conference (Tashkent, 1958), and the Afro-Asian Women’s Conference (Cairo, 1961) representation was much more equitably spread over the Afro-Asian region and the size of Indian delegations was more proportional than had been the case in the past. The 1950s, in this sense at least, were the high point for Afro-Asian organizing and for its importance as a force for decolonization. Much of this was the result of the relentless efforts of anti-imperialists, who had continued to build regional contacts and networks from the interwar period onwards. In these efforts a broad range of Indian activists created a regionalist idiom flexible enough to last beyond independence. However, as Gerard McCann has shown, after the 1950s much of the Afro-Asian goodwill of the “Bandung Era” dwindled. African anti-imperialists became more hesitant towards Nehruvian calls for international solidarity, for reasons that included, but were not limited to, their strong presence in international institutions. Under new geopolitical circumstances beginning in the mid-1960s, Indian influence waned once African nations won their liberty and worked in new international constellations.96

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Notes 1

2 3

4 5

6

7

8

9 10

“Message to the Peoples of the World,” in The Indian Delegation Reports on Afro-Asian People’s Conference, Cairo: December 26, 1957 to January 1, 1958. Resolutions and Speeches of the Indian Delegation (New Delhi: Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Committee, 1958), 11. International Institute for Social History (IISH), League Against Imperialism Archive (LAIA), File 1: Invitation. Though there is some disagreement on the extent of Soviet influence, few historians would deny agency to the many prominent political activists who participated in the League. For extensive treatment of the links with the Comintern, see Fredrik Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, The League Against Imperialism and the Comintern, 1925–1933 (Lewiston: Queenston Press, 2014), 2 vols. “Resolutions,” The Indian Delegation Reports on Afro-Asian People’s Conference, Cairo, 12. Here, I follow recent historiography of the Cairo conference, rather than the representation of this organization in Cold War era scholarship. For the former, see Reem Abou El-Fadl, “Solidarity and Internationalism in Egypt’s Afro-Asian Hub: the 1957 Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference in Context,” Journal of World History 30:1–2 (2019). For the latter, see Charles Neuhauser, Third World Politics: China and the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organization, 1957–67 (Cambridge MA: East Asia Research Center, 1968). For an account of new pressures on India, see David Engerman, The Price of Aid: the Economic Cold War in India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). For an overview, see Carolien Stolte and Harald Fischer-Tiné, “Imagining Asia in India: Nationalism and Internationalism (ca. 1905–1940),” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54:1 (2012), 65–92. Inspired by Çemil Aydin’s work, this chapter locates the distinction between Asianism and Pan-Asianism in political intent: the former encompasses discursive attempts to frame Asia as a relatively homogenous space for a variety of agendas; the latter refers to projects that seek to unite Asia for concrete political purposes. See Çemil 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). John Steadman, The Myth of Asia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), 15. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), Oral History Project, interview L.C. Jain. Jain was a student volunteer at the conference.

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11

12

13

14

15

16 17

18

19

George McTurnan Kahin (ed.), The Asian African Conference: Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956), 40. As noted in Stutje’s chapter, Sukarno himself did not attend the Brussels Congress. Many historians, too, have cast the League as the precursor to Bandung. One of the first was Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: a People’s History of the Third World (New York: New Press 2007). For this argument, see Su Lin Lewis and Carolien Stolte, “Other Bandungs: Afro-Asian Networks in the Early Cold War,” Journal of World History 30:1–2 (2019). On this issue, see Lydia Walker, “Decolonization in the 1960s: on Legitimate and Illegitimate Nationalist Claims-Making,” Past and Present 242:1 (2019), 227–64; Quito Swan, “Blinded by Bandung? Illumining West Papua, Senegal, and the Black Pacific,” Radical History Review 131 (2018), 58–81. Most recently by Michele Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Miloslav Krása, “The Idea of Pan-Asianism and the Nationalist Movement in India,” Archiv Orientálni 40 (1972), 38–60: 46. On this Asian Relations Conference, see Carolien Stolte, “‘The Asiatic Hour’: New Perspectives on the Asian Relations Conference, New Delhi, 1947,” in Nadia Miskovic, Harald Fischer-Tine, and Nada Boskovska (eds.), The NonAligned Movement and the Cold War: Delhi – Bandung – Belgrade (London: Routledge, 2014), 57–75; Vineet Thakur, “An Asian Drama: the Asian Relations Conference, 1947,” The International History Review (2018), 1–23. On its regionalist aftermath, see Geoffrey H. Jansen, Afro-Asia and NonAlignment (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 79–162. On Liao Huanxing, see Belagurova in this volume, as well as Thomas Kampen, “Solidarität und Propaganda, Willi Münzenberg, die Internationale Arbeiterhilfe und China,” Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte 5:2 (2004), 99–105. On Katayama, see Nozomu Kawamura, “Sociology and Socialism in the Interwar Period,” in Thomas Rimer (ed.) Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals during the Interwar Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 61–82: 63–4; on his influence as an international communist, see Minkah Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). Speech by Nehru on the opening day of the Congress. Louis Gibarti, Das Flammenzeichen des Palais Egmonts (Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 1927), 55.

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20

21

22 23 24

25

26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38

See below and T.A. Keenleyside, “Nationalist Indian Attitudes Towards Asia: A Troublesome Legacy for Post-Independence Indian Foreign Policy,” Pacific Affairs 55:2 (1982), 210–30. British Library, India Office Records (BL IOR): Memorandum regarding Japanese co-operation with Indian revolutionary agitators. G. Eliot to Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Foreign Office, 1 February 1923. National Archives of India (NAI), Home Political 831/II (1926), memorandum, 15 December 1926. Gangadhar Adhikari (ed.), Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India, vol. 1 (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1976), 121. P. Roy, S.D. Gupta and H. Vasudevan (eds.), Indo-Russian Relations 1917– 1947: Select Documents from the Archives of the Russian Federation (Calcutta: the Asiatic Society, 2000), 375. On the Ghadar Party see, in particular, 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). NAI, Mahendra Pratap Personal Papers: Nehru correspondence. Exceptions include Michael Brecher, Nehru: A Political Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 109–10; Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism; Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, The League Against Imperialism, and the Comintern. N.K. Barooah, Chatto: The Life and Times of an Indian Anti-Imperialist in Europe (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 248. Brecher, Nehru, 109–10. IISH, LAIA, File 26: Joint Sino-Indian resolution. German original. Rabindranath Tagore, Journey to Persia and Iraq (Kolkata: Viśva Bharati Press, 2003), 153. IISH, LAIA, File 26: Joint Sino-Indian resolution. IISH, LAIA, File 2: List of organizations and delegates. IISH, LAIA, File 28: Joint Resolution by the Asian Delegations. Emphasis in German original. Rossiskii Tsentr Khraneniya I Izucheniya Dokumentov Noveishei Istorii (hereafter RTsKhIDNI) 495-18-534/41-43. Many of the Center’s documents relating to India have been translated and published in Roy, Gupta and Vasudevan, Indo-Russian Relations. Ibid. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/404: Workers and Peasants Parties. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/266: New Scotland Yard to India Office, 15 September 1927.

towards afro-asia?  367

39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59

On the history of this journal, see also Fredrik Petersson, “‘Why We Appear:’ the Brief Revival of the Anti-Imperialist Review,” Viewpoint Magazine, 1 February 2018. V.I. Lenin, “National and Colonial Revolution,” Anti-Imperialist Review 1:1 (1928), 61–4: 61. Ibid., 62. Michele Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism, 118. ‘Report on the Development of the League Against Imperialism’, AntiImperialist Review 1:1 (1928), 83–93: 92. On the mission, see S.T. Wasti, “The 1912–13 Balkan War and the Siege of Edirne,” Middle Eastern Studies, 40:4 (2004), 59–78. Birendra Prasad, Indian Nationalism and Asia (New Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1979), 83. Barooah, Chatto, esp. 34–60. According to the Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten. Barooah, Chatto, 246. Barooah, Chatto, 249. P.C. Joshi Archives, New Delhi, LAI Papers, File 6: Chattopadhyaya to Nehru, 3 March 1929. B.D. Yadav (ed.), M.P.T. Acharya, Reminiscences of an Indian Revolutionary (New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1991). Now partly remedied by the publication of Acharya’s essays edited by Ole Birk Laursen, We Are Anarchists: Essays on Anarchism, Pacifism and the Indian Independence Movement, 1923– 1953 (Minneapolis: AK Press, 2019). Yadav, M.P.T. Acharya, iv. On this part of the conspiracy, see Franziska Roy, Heike Liebau and Ravi Ahuja, When the War Began, We Heard of Several Kings: South Asian Prisoners in World War Germany (New York: Social Science Press, 2011). Carolien Stolte, “‘Enough of the Great Napoleons!’ Mahendra Pratap’s PanAsian Projects (1929–1939),” Modern Asian Studies 46:2 (2012), 403–23. On the Baku Congress, see John Riddell (ed.), To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920—First Congress of the Peoples of the East (New York: Pathfinder, 1993). Roy, Gupta and Vasudevan, Indo-Russian Relations, 374. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/271: New Scotland Yard Report, 15 October 1930. BL IOR, L/P&J/12/271: Report 24 July 1931. See also Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, The League Against Imperialism and the Comintern, vol. 2, 682. Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism, esp. 181–213. On this conference, see Shobna Nijhawan, “International Feminism from an Asian Center: the All-Asian Women's Conference (Lahore, 1931) as Transnational Feminist Movement,” Journal of Women’s History 29:3 (2017), 12–36.

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60

61

62

63 64

65

66 67 68 69

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

Carolien Stolte, “Bringing Asia to the World: the Long Road towards the Asiatic Labour Congress, 1934–7,” Journal of Global History 7:2 (2012), 257– 78. On examples of concrete exchanges of activists and expertise in the 1950s, see the special issue “Trade Union Networks and the Politics of Expertise in an Age of Afro-Asian Solidarity,” Journal of Social History 52:4 (2019). On Vijayalakshmi Pandit and the San Francisco Conference see, among others, the second chapter of Manu Bhagavan, India and the Quest for One World: the Peacemakers (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2013); Julie Laut, India at the United Nations: a Postcolonial Nation-State on the Global Stage, 1945– 1955 (The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: PhD Dissertation, 2016). Both the secretary and the military advisor of the official delegation, moreover, were British. Jansen, Afro-Asia and Non-Alignment, 42. Rakesh Ankit, “In the Twilight of Empire: Two Impressions of Britain and India at the United Nations, 1945–7,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 38:4 (2015), 574–88: 574. Long marginalized in historiography or dismissed for her use of emotional registers in diplomatic exchange, her role has only recently been re-evaluated. See particularly the first chapter in Laut, India at the United Nations. South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), Community Event for Visit by Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, 1945. SAADA, Indian Independence Day dinner booklet, 26 January 1945. Lin Yutang, The Vigil of a Nation (New York: John Day Book Company, 1944), 1. In contemporary sources usually T.V. Soong or Soong Tse-Ven. He was also a former classmate of Lin Yutang both at the St. John’s University in Shanghai and at Harvard. Jansen, Afro-Asia and Non-Alignment, 41–2. See, amongst many others, “Federation of Asia Predicted by Nehru,” The China Weekly Review 26/1/1945, 154. Stolte, “The Asiatic Hour,” 58. Barooah, Chatto, 247. Ibid., 271. Padmini Sengupta, Sarojini Naidu (London: Asia Publishing House, 1966), 230–4. All-Asian women’s conference, first session, Lahore, Jan. 19–25, 1931 (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1931). Hasi Banerjee, Sarojini Naidu – The Traditional Feminist (Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi, 1998), esp. 83–109.

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78 79

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

90

91 92 93

94 95

96

Sarojini Naidu, “Ode to the Nizam of Hyderabad,” The Golden Threshold (London, 1896). Asian Relations, being Report of the Proceedings and Documentation of the First Asian Relations Conference New Delhi, March-April 1947 (New Delhi: ARO 1948), 27. Ibid., 28. Ibid., 23. Ibid., 26. See also Thakur, “An Asian Drama.” Ibid. Antoinette Burton, Brown over Black: Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation (Gurgaon: Three Essays Collective, 2012), 2. Ibid., 30. Quoted in W. Henderson, “The Development of Regionalism in Southeast Asia,” International Organization 9:4 (1955), 463–76: 466. Om Prakash Paliwal, Rameshwari Nehru: Patriot and Internationalist (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1986), 19. For a more comprehensive account of this conference, see Carolien Stolte, “‘The People’s Bandung:’ Local Anti-Imperialists on an Afro-Asian Stage,” Journal of World History 30:1–2 (2019). NMML, Rameshwari Nehru Personal Papers (RNPP), Personal Correspondence. Pak Cheong-ae, (Pak Den-ai), was the only woman ever to serve in the Politburo of the Workers Party of Korea. NMML, RNPP, Conference of Asian Countries, Bulletin 1 (1955), 3. NMML, RNPP, Speech Moulana Bhasani, 7 April 1955. On this point, see Reem Abou el-Fadl, Foreign Policy as Nation Making: Turkey and Egypt in the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Conference (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958). The former was coined by David Kimche, The Afro-Asian Movement: Ideology and Policy of the Third World (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1973). For the latter, see Çemil Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World: a Global Intellectual History (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). Gerard McCann, “From Diaspora to Third Worldism and the United Nations: India and the Politics of Decolonizing Africa,” Past and Present 218:8 (2013), 258–80: 259.

Chapter 15

From Bandung to Havana: Institutionalizing the Contentions of Postcolonial Internationalism Jeffrey James Byrne In the post-1945 era the end of the Eurocentric imperial order coincided with the consolidation of a new kind of international society, featuring the proliferation of international organizations, NGOs, and other transnational entities. Membership of the United Nations quickly became the essential, uncompromisable goal of anti-colonial militants around the world who vowed to fight on until their flag flew on UN plaza in midtown Manhattan. Once they attained independence, most post-colonial political elites continued enthusiastically to embrace international institutionalization. In 1961, for example, the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, dedicated millions of dollars from his impoverished country’s budget to building a grand modernist secretariat building and adjacent conference hall to house first the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and then the Organization for African Unity (OAU), founded two years later. Selassie justified the expense on the basis that this palace to globalism and continentalism would be “an inspiring symbol of the noble aspirations of the African people.”1 Similarly, in 1965, the government of the still war-ravaged, newly independent Algeria threw significant resources (mostly loaned from abroad) into the construction of a grandiose and ornate complex that included state-of-the-art conference facilities and a luxurious hotel, in order to host the Second Summit of Afro-Asian Heads of State, or “Bandung 2.” In the same way as the Ethiopian authorities took pride in Addis Ababa “opening its doors to the world,” Algeria’s leaders boasted that the Nadi Snober complex (or “Pine Tree Club”) reflected how their own national capital had become “an important crossroads in global affairs.”2 A few months later, in January 1966, the Cuban government redecorated and illuminated large sections of Havana in order grandly to host the Tricontinental Conference, which brought together delegates (and entertainers) from around the world so that they might jointly combat imperialism. However, the spirit of antiimperial solidarity was somewhat tarnished as numerous delegations 371

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argued vehemently over which country should have the honour of hosting a new permanent secretariat for the Afro-Asian-Latin American Solidarity Organization.3 Such squabbles reflected how greatly most Third World elites valued opportunities to become nexuses of internationalism. Decolonization and the consolidation of international society were mutually constitutive processes. If much of the historical literature on international society has focused on the West, the examples above reflect the fact that the extension of the post-1945 international order to the nonWestern world also gave rise to influential new expressions of international organization and supranational solidarity. These included globally-minded initiatives such as Afro-Asianism, the Non-Aligned Movement, the G77, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), as well as more clearly delimited, regional entities like the Organization of African Unity and the Arab League. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was arguably one of the most influential international bodies to emerge from the post-colonial context. While its cartel powers are now much reduced from their peak in the 1970s, Christopher Dietrich has recently shown that OPEC nonetheless helped to establish the contested principle of national sovereignty with respect to natural resources.4 That accomplishment was noteworthy, given that, as the meaning of “decolonization” was hashed out in the in 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, certain Western interests had often sought to establish structures that would have diluted post-colonial sovereignty over natural resources—such as France’s vision of a supposedly shared and “internationalized” Sahara that would, in practice, have remained the preserve of French firms.5 Indeed, as the OPEC example demonstrates, many of the most significant accomplishments of “Third Worldist” diplomacy, from the 1950s to the 1980s, are somewhat occluded by the relative obscurity and arcana of such international organizations and institutions. The OAU, for example, helped to maintain the improbable durability of postcolonial national borders on a continent consistently beleaguered by weak governance, insurgency, and civil conflict. The Non-Aligned Movement helped, for a time, to preserve the international legitimacy of terrorism as a form of anticolonial resistance, in spite of concerted Western efforts to place it outside the bounds of global morality.6 Coalitions of developing countries, such as the Group of 77 (G77) and the regular participants in the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), have had only modest success in applying their vision for the global economy, but the continued failure of the major industrial countries to conclude a new round of World Trade talks is one ongoing legacy of this sort of mobilization.7

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Third World resistance to Western conceptions of a global human rights regime has been more successful, with this decades-long battle being fought primarily in the constellation of UN-related organizations, though entities such as NAM, the OAU, and the OIC certainly help post-colonial countries to rally themselves and coordinate their approach.8 Therefore, one value of studying international organizations in the Third World is to fully appreciate the contribution of anticolonial and post-colonial political thought to global normative debates and moral regimes. Moreover, while the post-1945 era saw a great increase in the number of independent states and international organizations, post-colonial internationalism was also a continuation of anticolonial internationalism from earlier years. In the 1920s and 1930s, the obvious inequalities and imperialist interests of the League of Nations system spurred a rapid increase in anticolonial internationalist mobilization. The League Against Imperialism (LAI), founded in Brussels in 1927, was a powerful condemnation of the status quo and also a model for future forms of postcolonial internationalism. Then, in the mid-1930s, the League of Nations’ failure to prevent fascist Italy from conquering Ethiopia thoroughly dispelled any lingering hope that Woodrow Wilson’s creation would challenge the imperial order. As Michele Louro’s and Carolien Stolte’s chapters in this volume show, key participants at the 1955 Bandung Conference, including Jawaharlal Nehru and other Indian nationalists, participated in the 1927 Brussels event or took their inspiration from it.9 Of course, one significant change at Bandung in comparison to Brussels— repeatedly celebrated by the participants—is that the conference took place outside the West, without Western participation. Several chapters in this volume, including those by Michael Goebel, David Murphy, and Sana Tannoury-Karam, describe transnational solidarities forged in the interwar period. Many of these solidarities—most obviously panArabism and pan-Africanism—then saw their institutionalization in the post-Second World War and post-colonial era.10 The twentieth century witnessed a contest to define the principles of a globalizing, integrating, institutionalizing world: would the management of global affairs constitute a deepening of the imperial order, a more thorough institutionalization of Western dominance, or would the age of internationalism sweep the structures of imperialism aside? This chapter focuses on some of those efforts, in the 1950s and 1960s, to transform anticolonial solidarities into more substantive form, including permanent institutionalization. The transition from transnational solidarity to post-colonial cooperation was not straightforward. Anticolonial

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movements could freely espouse all sorts of ideals, commitments, and identities in their search for allies and support. But sovereign states had more obligation to follow through on commitments. Moreover, in the immediate post-colonial context most newly independent countries had very limited supplies of qualified diplomats, administrative personnel, and all the resources—financial and otherwise—to support and sustain missions abroad. Foreign observers keenly observed where and in what order newly-independent countries deployed diplomatic missions, frequently attaching political import to decisions that might have been made for purely pragmatic reasons (the availability of staff with the relevant language skills, for example). These practical constraints interacted with more profound divergences and contradictions with respect to national identities and foreign policy goals. The argument that broke out at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in January 1966 over where the AfroAsian-Latin American Solidarity Organization should be headquartered is a good example of how difficult it could be to translate the high-minded rhetoric of anticolonial solidarity into something more tangible. Was a country like Algeria, which gained independence in 1962 and became a particularly active participant in Third Worldist diplomacy, more “African” or more “Arab”? Was Yugoslavia, birthplace of the formalized Non-Aligned Movement, part of the “Third World”? What was the difference between Afro-Asianism and Non-Alignment, and which should take priority? This chapter traces some of the key divergences and tensions that emerged in the Third World’s effort to construct a post-colonial international order, from the 1955 Bandung Conference to the Tricontinental, a decade later and more than half a world away. The Emergence of Non-Alignment, from Bandung to Belgrade The 1955 Asian-African summit in Bandung and the 1961 Non-Aligned summit in Belgrade are widely seen as two of the most significant events in establishing the foundations of post-colonial international affairs for the next several decades (and possibly beyond). While the theme of neutrality with respect to the Cold War featured prominently in the Bandung proceedings, scholars are now increasingly aware that the Belgrade summit, six years later, did not in fact take place as a smooth, logical, and natural sequel to the 1955 event. Behind the diplomatic niceties and all the repeated assurances that Afro-Asianism and NonAlignment were wholly compatible and complementary, the mere fact of putting on international events under the specific aegis of one theme or another required greater precision and, inevitably, contestation over

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those themes’ actual meaning. Notably, although NAM did not really acquire institutional substance until the end of the decade, the simple fact of formalizing Non-Alignment as an organization rankled some, such as India’s Nehru, who feared that the drive for institutionalization would perforce sap the Third World’s limited diplomatic resources at the expense of higher priorities (such as the UN and its related bodies). Additionally, a second fundamental tension in post-colonial international affairs emerged in these years, which was the coexistence of newly-independent postcolonial states with a great many national liberation movements. Such movements craved participation in events like the Bandung and Belgrade conferences because of the international legitimacy they bestowed. On the other hand, the representatives of post-colonial sovereign states were often torn between the desire, on the one hand, to support such movements and, on the other, their concern that the credibility and prestige of postcolonial diplomacy not be endangered by the colourful idiosyncrasies of revolutionaries and freedom fighters. The experiences of the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), which fought a lengthy and very large-scale war of independence from France between November 1954 and March 1962, highlight these dynamics. As Dónal Hassett’s chapter in this volume discusses in depth, the Algerian nationalist movement grew in concert with global anticolonial trends during the interwar years.11 Messali Hadj, a key figure in the development of Algerian nationalism—though one violently at odds with the founders of the FLN—was a delegate of the League Against Imperialism conference in Brussels in 1927.12 Successors of Messali, the leaders of the FLN likewise sought out opportunities for international recognition and support. The Algerian revolutionaries celebrated in particular their participation (as observers) in the 1955 Bandung Conference, merely a few months into their seven-year war, sharing in the general consensus of those present that this was a momentous event in global history that heralded the emergence of a powerful new moral force in international politics. The participating countries’ statement of support for the Algerian cause had exceeded their most optimistic prior expectations for the event.13 Consequently, they became fully invested in the success of the Third World project, deeming it vital to the success of their own nationalist goals. Simultaneously, the FLN’s progression from the more disengaged Cold War neutrality espoused at Bandung to, a few years later, a more provocative form of non-alignment that deliberately goaded the superpowers to intervene in the war in Algeria, was symptomatic of developments within the Third World movement as a whole.14

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Clearly, one of the Bandung Conference’s most significant legacies was to disseminate and popularize the basic idea of Cold War neutrality throughout the developing world, though the specific term “nonalignment” was not quite yet in common use. Yet it was clear at Bandung that various participants were citing themes like “neutrality” and “active neutralism” with different interpretations in mind, which prompted Nehru to complain of the need to move beyond such conciliatory vagueness toward a more actionable specificity.15 In this respect and many others, the April 1955 event was strong on generalities and atmospherics, and weak with regard to substance and specifics, leaving the participants with a lot of work to do in terms of definition and implementation on their return home. It is clear though that the Indian concept of Panchsheel—the Five Principles of peaceful international relations espoused by Nehru— fundamentally influenced the discourse.16 Indonesian president Sukarno’s stirring opening speech reflected back to the League Against Imperialism’s conference and other such moments of anticolonial mobilization that previously had perforce taken place in major Western capitals: “[t]his is the first intercontinental conference of coloured peoples in the history of mankind! … It is a new departure in the history of the world that leaders of Asian and African peoples can meet together in their own countries to discuss and deliberate upon matters of common concern. Only a few decades ago it was frequently necessary to travel to other countries and even other continents before the spokesman of our peoples could confer.” At the same time, the Indonesian president also captured much of the moral, quasi-religious tenor of Panchsheel. He condemned the destructive history of the Western powers, and predicted that the developing nations would transform international life by mobilizing “all the spiritual, all the moral, all the political strength of Asia and Africa on the side of peace.”17 That said, the September 1961 Non-Aligned Summit in Belgrade would eventually signal the ascendance of a more overtly “engaged,” or provocative, conception of neutrality. This progression away from the overt pacifism of Bandung, which owed much to the intellectual and moral influence of Mohandas Gandhi as well as Nehru, was symptomatic of a gradual diminution of Indian influence in a widening Third World. The decolonization of Africa, in particular, placed the needs of armed national liberation movements higher up the solidarity agenda. Indeed, signifying a marked departure from transnational anticolonial dynamics in the 1920s and 1930s, India’s largely self-imposed abstention from the contentions of violent anticolonial resistance was a central aspect in the changing nature of the Third Worldist trend.18

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Existing military alliances notwithstanding—in reality, of the twenty-nine participating countries only a dozen were actually free of military commitments with the West or USSR—all of the delegates hailed Nehru’s call to reject participation in the conflicts between the great powers, to condemn the universal peril of nuclear weapons, and to recognize each country’s right to pursue its own internal policies free from outside interference. Naturally, recent events in Indochina and Korea were paramount in the predominantly Asian attendants’ minds: those two countries demonstrated the potentially schismatic consequences of superpower interference in national affairs. Nehru was greatly alarmed that the new alliance between Pakistan and the United States was bringing the dangers of the Cold War right to India’s doorstep.19 In that sense, therefore, the rhetoric of Bandung was quite emphatically anti-Cold War, branding it a grave threat to the prosperity and security of the developing world. Even a staunch US ally like the Philippine delegate, Carlos Romero, argued that a reduction in tensions would bring with it a muchneeded peace dividend because the superpowers could reallocate arms race expenses as economic assistance for the Southern Hemisphere—although his challenge to Washington to counter the Soviets with a “Marshall Plan for the Third World” showed that he also saw some beneficial possibilities arising from Cold War competition. It must be recognized, however, that this conception of non-alignment was very much the product of Indian and, to a lesser extent, Chinese geopolitical interests.20 As historian Robert McMahon has pointed out in his study of US-Indian relations in this era, non-alignment had its philosophical roots in Indian culture, the tenets of Hinduism, and the Nehru-Gandhi strain of Indian nationalism, but it also addressed the country’s foreign policy concerns after independence. McMahon argues that non-alignment would allow Delhi to pursue economic relations and aid agreements with both the communist and capitalist blocs, and by ostensibly rejecting Cold War ideological alliances the government reduced the risk of antagonizing various domestic constituencies.21 As mentioned above, this domestic political motivation for non-alignment was shared by the FLN at that time. Additionally however—and quite unlike the considerations of a country like Algeria—the basis of the shortlived Sino-Indian alliance of the mid-1950s that paved the way for the Bandung meeting was Beijing and Delhi’s mutual belief in their own emergent great power credentials. As recent scholarship using Chinese and Indian evidence vividly shows, when Nehru visited Mao in Peking in 1954 the leaders of the

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world’s two most populous countries agreed that it was their destiny to dominate Asian politics and to play a global role in international politics thereafter. They saw Cold War tensions and American involvement in the region as impediments to their own countries’ natural ascent. For Nehru, non-alignment and peaceful coexistence were expressions of the desire to get the US out of Asia, or at least greatly to reduce its involvement, clearing the way for its own influence to grow. “America and some European countries,” he told Mao, “have seen Asian countries becoming strong and are envious. They envy China becoming strong, they also envy India becoming strong.”22 In this respect, China and India were unlike all the other countries of the Third World, which were more concerned with finding leverage among the established powers than clearing the field of rivals. “If we had been some odd little nation somewhere in Asia or Europe,” Nehru later observed, “[our non-aligned foreign policy] would not have mattered much. But because we count … [e]verything we do becomes a matter for comment … [W]e are potentially a great nation and a big Power.”23 Already by the mid-1950s Delhi was distinguishing itself with its reluctance to invite controversy or stoke international tensions, calculating that doing so would only invite superpower interest and interference. Notably, Nehru was reluctant to admit national liberation movements such as the FLN to the Bandung Conference even as observers. He explained apologetically to one of the most important Algerian representatives, Hocine Aït Ahmed, that the conference was threatened by “all sorts of plots” and that it was imperative that the participating governments avoid controversial issues—of which Algeria was most certainly one.24 Subsequently, India’s relatively restrained lobbying on Algeria’s behalf became a source of some irritation. Speaking to an FLN representative in March 1958, for example, Nehru pleaded impotence in the face of French intractability at the UN. “We have done all that we can,” he said rather unconvincingly, “but [if] France won’t budge … what can we do?”25 The difference of priorities could not have been starker between, on the one hand, an India behaving in the manner almost of a status quo power and, on the other, a transnational revolutionary movement desperate for international attention. Subsequently, Nehru joined forces with Egypt’s new president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito to form the triumvirate that gave non-alignment more concrete form and promised to make it a powerful force in international politics.26 Nasser had returned from the conference in Indonesia inspired by the potential of the Third World

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coalition, and Tito and he shared Nehru’s impulse to free their countries of entanglements with one bloc without falling into the orbit of the other. So diverse in style and background, together the non-aligned triumvirate appeared the epitome of internationalism and diplomatic innovation with their well-publicized confabs. Nasser’s longstanding confidante, Muhammad Haykel, later observed that the trio were an “an unlikely casting for Porthos, Aramis, and Athos, and yet they behaved like the Musketeers: ‘All for one, and one for all’.”27 There was compelling logic and historical heritage behind IndoEgyptian cooperation: in the 1930s both Gandhi and Nehru had visited Egypt en route to London, and found common cause with the nationalist Wafd party which in turn sent delegations to the subcontinent.28 In strategic terms, after independence the Suez Canal continued to be vital to India’s communications and trade, so that Delhi was reliant on the goodwill of whoever controlled it. Notably, between them India and Yugoslavia provided more than a quarter of the troops for the United Nations Emergency Force in the Sinai Peninsula after the 1956 Suez Crisis.29 Less cynically, India and Egypt each boasted a rich civilizational identity, wealthy and well-educated local elites, and the comparable experience of a more indirect form of colonial subordination to Britain.30 Nasser in turn found Tito’s Yugoslavia inspirational in terms of both its apparently successful socialist path to industrialization and the adroitness with which Belgrade maintained its independence from the Soviet bloc.31 Yet there were also profound differences of means and objectives between the three states they represented, and India’s great power aspirations and preference for avoiding confrontation increasingly set it apart from the other two. In particular, whereas Delhi strove to exclude the Cold War from Asia, at Suez it was the intervention of the two superpowers on Egypt’s behalf that had turned an imminent catastrophe into Nasser’s greatest triumph. Certainly that was the lesson drawn by many observers in decolonizing Africa: in the late 1950s Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sékou Touré each played the Cold War game to reduce the influence of the former colonial power in their countries (as did Patrice Lumumba, with disastrous results). Similarly, while India was large and important enough to attract substantial development assistance from both East and West, many of the leaders of the new countries gaining their independence across Africa worried that the great powers might overlook them altogether when it came to distributing economic aid. Consequently, these new governments felt greater need to provoke a sense of competition between Washington and Moscow—or Bonn and Berlin. It was with such

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calculus in mind that Sukarno admitted to the Algerian revolutionaries, in early 1960, that he shared their fears that détente between Washington and Moscow would be a negative development for the Third World.32 Meanwhile, because Nasser and Tito both saw the Third World milieu as a way to amplify their influence in different regions, both Yugoslavia and Egypt were more aggressive than India in supporting the multitudinous national liberation movements and “radical” regimes that were shaking up international life.33 In the words of one sympathetic analysis written in the late 1960s, India “became more emphatic in this period [the late 1950s] than ever in rejecting agitational approaches in international politics and having, instead, the diplomatic approach of a sober type commensurate with her dignity and self-respect.”34 For example, Delhi did not recognize Antoine Gizenga’s Lumumbist government based in Stanleyville in eastern Congo, and was reluctant to allow either the Congolese or Algerian rebels to participate in the Belgrade Non-Aligned Summit in September 1961. However, the “agitational approach” was in the ascendency in Third Worldist circles, and perhaps Nehru’s aristocratic bearing was at odds with an era of guerrilla chic and thundering populism. In April 1961, one of the FLN’s representatives urged Nehru, effectively, to dirty his hands by supporting liberation movements more wholeheartedly (he said that he hoped to see India “sortir de sa réserve”).35 These issues aside, perhaps the most fundamental difference of opinion between Nehru, on the one hand, and his friends and peers Sukarno, Nasser, and Tito on the other was the Indian prime minister’s concern that formalizing a movement of non-aligned countries would create a “mini-bloc” within the wider Afro-Asian movement. That is to say, he feared that Belgrade would actually divide the Afro-Asian movement rather than complementing and deepening it. As a result, in the months prior to the Belgrade event he urged that invitations be sent as widely as possible, expanding the participation so that it more closely resembled Bandung, while simultaneously watering down the ideological purity preferred by the Egyptian, Yugoslavian, and Indonesian governments, who preferred to invite only those deemed adequately militant on controversial issues such as Congo, Algeria, and Cuba. Sukarno wrote to Nehru in early August to urge him to attend, promising that “both you and I could make joint endeavours to approach the coming conference with the same determination to make the conference a success along the lines we both desire.”36 Likewise, Nasser urged his Indian friend to attend, saying that they should not fear “the mere imagination of committing the blunder of forming a third bloc,” by which he meant that smaller or more localized

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expressions of post-colonial solidarity did not threaten the cohesion of the Afro-Asian movement as a whole.37 In the end Nehru yielded and NAM’s founding conference proceeded largely along the lines desired by the Yugoslavian, Egyptian, and Indonesian governments, meaning that it consisted of a rather select group of countries which almost all took a strongly anticolonial stance with respect to liberation movements, Congo, and the like. The FLN’s continuously growing prestige throughout the developing world ensured its admission to the Belgrade Conference on 1–6 September 1961 (its position was firmly backed by Sukarno and Nkrumah in particular).38 Moreover, the GPRA participated with the status of a sovereign government—a major diplomatic coup. One internal GPRA report enthused beforehand that this would be “practically the first time that Algeria is participating on an equal footing in an international conference of such importance,” and the achievement would be remembered as having an importance comparable to the FLN’s admission to the original Bandung conference.39 Against Indian preferences, the rebel government of Congo, led by Antoine Gizenga from the eastern town of Sharpeville, also participated as the official government of that country. The Ghanaian delegation had threatened to walk out of the proceedings if the Congolese rebels were not admitted. Indeed, nineteen other African liberation movements were allowed to attend with observer status.40 The presence of so many liberation movements reflected the Egyptian and Yugoslavian governments’ desire to increase their influence in Africa, and indeed they had used the Congo crisis as a litmus test to assess which governments were sufficiently militant in their anti-imperialism to merit an invitation. The Algerian nationalists welcomed this development, since it fulfilled their hope of harnessing the power of the non-aligned or neutral countries behind the anticolonial cause. In their speech to the non-aligned heads of state the GPRA delegates were emphatic on this point. “For us the policy of non-alignment is a reflection of our most profound desires,” they asserted. “We cannot imagine that a country can avail itself of the advantages of a non-alignment policy without fully pledging itself to the peoples struggling for independence.”41 Therefore, the Belgrade event was a departure from Bandung in several important ways, not least the list of participating governments. But perhaps the single most important difference was NAM’s embrace of subversive and “agitational” diplomacy. If the Bandung participants had wanted to prove that they deserved membership of the club of “civilized nations,” that they represented a higher moral calling, then those at Belgrade showed their

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willingness to flout the rules and norms of international society that were in any case imposed by the West.42 In a sense, if Bandung’s neutralism had been a rejection of the Cold War, then Belgrade’s non-alignment was a means of participating in it. Formalizing the Third World’s Schisms, from Belgrade to Havana The years following the 1961 Belgrade conference saw greater efforts to formalize and institutionalize post-colonial solidarity along multiple lines. In addition to the creation of NAM, which proceeded to hold conferences almost every year in the early 1960s, the independent states of Africa founded the OAU in Addis Ababa in 1963. The first UNCTAD conference took place in Geneva the following year, which in turn spurred the formation of the closely related G77 group. In fact, these three entities—NAM, the OAU, and UNCTAD/G77—would in time prove to be among the most durable and consequential institutions of Third World internationalism. While the OAU had a continental scope, rather than a global one, it was arguably the most effective manifestation of regional solidarity. Asian and Latin American governments looked rather enviously at the unity that the African countries maintained in the UN and other organizations, despite the many contentions between them. However, the formalization of post-colonial solidarity did exacerbate divergences and disagreements, as Nehru had feared. The failure to hold the Second Afro-Asian Heads of State Summit, or Bandung 2, in Algiers in 1965 proved to be Afro-Asianism’s eclipse in favour of the betterorganized Non-Aligned Movement. Likewise, in the wake of Bandung 2’s collapse, the Havana Tricontinental Conference in January 1966 saw that particular organizing theme supplant Afro-Asianism rather than reinforcing it. These were years of intensifying divisions within the world-wide coalition of “anti-imperialist” countries, which included the large part of the Global South as well as the communist world. A heated debate reigned over the nature and purpose of the Third World project. The moderate/ radical divide persisting, with the so-called “radical” elements of the Third World being those more willing to support armed liberation movements and more willing directly to challenge Western interests. As noted above, the Belgrade Conference was largely the initiative of those countries that took a more militant stance with respect to supporting the Algerian FLN, the Congolese rebels, Castro’s Cuba, and so on. The Third World’s centre of gravity was shifting westwards to incorporate Africa, and thereafter Latin America, which in itself necessitated a diminution of the influence

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of Asian countries.43 Contentious issues like armed liberation struggles were much more pressing in the African context, too. At the same time, arguably the greatest challenges to the Third World’s cohesion were the intensifying ideological and geopolitical rivalries among the communist countries, especially that between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Some Third World governments and liberation movements saw competition between the communist powers as a boon; the FLN, for example, had indeed exploited Sino-Soviet tensions as early as 1958.44 But as it intensified in the early 1960s the Sino-Soviet split gradually became a tedious and unavoidable obstacle to ongoing efforts to formalize and deepen Third World solidarities. China effectively attempted to squeeze its European rivals—the Soviets and Yugoslavs—out of the Third World by promoting a very geographically and racially literal understanding of the term “Afro-Asian.” For Beijing, the Non-Aligned Movement was a tool of the Yugoslavians as well as the Indians, with whom China now also had a fierce border dispute. As Nehru complained to Nasser, “China’s main purpose seems to be [to] disrupt the policy of non-alignment which has gained widespread support, not only among the Afro-Asian countries, but also from the Great Powers. I think our own conflict with China should be seen against this background.”45 In a transparent effort to steer the newly-independent countries of Africa away from close relationships with the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, Mao Zedong told the continent’s leaders that “when we talk to you, there is no feeling that I bully you or you bully me, nobody has a superiority complex, we are both of a colored race.”46 Fearing for the possible ramifications of Belgrade’s efforts to gain influence in Africa, Tito complained bitterly to Algeria’s first president, Ahmed Ben Bella, that Chinese propaganda was peddling the dangerous notion that “all blacks are good and all whites bad.”47 In hindsight, few African political figures appear to have been much convinced or influenced by this rather crude messaging on China’s part, but the degree to which it plainly bothered Soviet, Yugoslav, and also Arab officials testifies to the great diversity and many potential fault-lines that always existed beneath the warm and fuzzy public rhetoric of antiimperial, Third Worldist unity. Therefore, when Cuba attended the Belgrade Conference in 1961 it entered a Third World milieu that was increasingly riven by complicated, overlapping tensions. The communist powers were locked in a bitter, public feud. India and China had clashed over border disputes; Indonesia sought to annex Malaysia. China had put Afro-Asianism in competition with non-alignment; India therefore defended NAM from China’s

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attacks, but also worried that the movement was too oriented towards guerrilla combat, insurgencies, and other contentions that alienated the great powers. China’s unrestrained support for guerrilla combat earned the appreciation of many leading NAM participants, who were not impressed by Moscow’s reluctance to assist armed liberation movements directly in order to pursue détente, or “peaceful coexistence” in Soviet parlance, with the West. However, Egypt and Algeria, which were both particularly active in supporting liberation movements south of the Sahara, also worried that China’s efforts to stoke racial tensions might distance them from the rest of Africa. Therefore, some of the key early participants in NAM, including Cuba, Algeria, Egypt, and Yugoslavia, shared a willingness directly to assist violent anti-colonial struggle, but also shared a vision of a more expansive and inclusive conception of the Third World. While visiting Belgrade in March 1964, Ben Bella told Tito that Algeria’s preference was to unite all “progressive forces” regardless of geographical, ideological, or racial distinctions. The Yugoslav premier agreed wholeheartedly.48 The Algerian, Cuban, Yugoslavian, and Chinese governments all shared a particular interest in sub-Saharan Arica and in supporting armed resistance movements there.49 China’s readiness to sow division among the anti-imperial countries also informed the Algerian and Cuban approaches to the two impending Third World meetings that were so important to them both: Bandung 2 in Algiers in 1965 and the Tricontinental in Havana shortly afterwards, in January 1966. It encouraged both countries to advocate an inclusive, programmatic understanding of the Third World—one that was open to any who shared the same anti-imperialist goals. Ben Bella, for example, agreed with Tito that “the wrongheaded idea of divisions according to race merits the [Non-Aligned states’] strongest censure.”50 Ben Bella’s government favoured including the Soviet Union in the impending Bandung 2 conference, though as hosts the Algerians were careful not to take a public position on the issue. They also desired to expand NAM and the Afro-Asian group to include Latin America and beyond. As Ben Bella told his Yugoslavian counterpart, “in addition to Asian countries, Latin American and European countries … [should] participate in the conference too. We also think that ideas about continents and skin color need to be overcome because progressive forces exist all around the world.”51 The original suggestion for a “Tricontinental conference” actually issued from a January 1961 meeting of the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization (AAPSO). Headquartered in Cairo, AAPSO had started

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three years before as a Soviet-orchestrated initiative to harness the energies of anti-colonial nationalism that had been so powerfully evident at Bandung. The communist world was well represented in this organization, but AAPSO was no Comintern nor a League Against Imperialism, located as it was outside Soviet territory and being largely staffed by Egyptians and other representatives of the Global South. By proposing, in 1963, to host this Tricontinental event in Havana, the Cuban government had numerous objectives in mind. Castro’s government hoped to extend the Afro-Asian bloc into Latin America, to blur the lines between the NAM and AAPSO constituencies, to counter the diplomatic isolation imposed on the island by the US and other Latin American governments, and also to reinforce its credentials as an autonomous Third World actor, rather than a mere Soviet satellite. Indeed, the Soviets had actually preferred that Brazil host the Tricontinental, before the right-wing coup that overthrew the socialist government there in 1964.52 In that respect, the Cuban desire to host the Tricontinental conference reflected smaller and medium-sized countries’ efforts to institutionalize Third Worldism in the face of larger countries’ hesitancy. The destructive feuds between the more powerful countries of the Global South and the communist bloc motivated those most invested in Third Worldist diplomacy to place it on a more secure, institutionalized footing. Yugoslavia and Egypt had mostly driven the founding of the NAM, despite Indian and, especially, Chinese and Soviet wariness of the project. Yugoslavian publicity material happily described the Belgrade summit as “a conference of small and medium-sized countries.”53 In that spirit, the likes of Algeria, Cuba, and Ghana came on board. Nasser’s government hosted a succession of Third World-related meetings after Belgrade—AAPSO meetings, nonaligned meetings, and the second summit of the Organization of African Unity in 1964. At the same time as the Cubans were bidding to host the Tricontinental, the Algerians bid, successfully, to hold the second AfroAsian heads of state summit, or “Bandung 2,” in 1965. Smaller countries saw the institutionalization of solidarity as a means to magnify their influence—especially if they achieved even greater prominence (and a real, though limited, degree of influence over the agenda) by hosting major meetings and permanent secretariats. On the other hand, weighty countries like India, China, and the Soviet Union had little need of such institutions unless they were extensions of their own influence (as perhaps the Soviets and Chinese hoped to have with AAPSO, in the manner of the interwar Comintern). All told, one prominent dynamic of Third Worldist diplomacy in the 1960s was a tension between smaller

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countries that saw value in formal organization and institutionalization, and larger countries that saw too rigid a multilateralism as constraints on their freedom of action. In the years prior to Bandung 2 and the Tricontinental Conference, the Sino-Soviet split greatly damaged AAPSO in particular. Soviet and Chinese officials openly traded barbs and polemics at AAPSO meetings in Tanganyika and Algeria in 1963 and 1964, respectively.54 Their ideological point-scoring made little impression on the other participants, especially those from Africa (as one African diplomat complained to his communist counterparts, “most of us haven’t read a line of [Karl Marx’s] ‘The Capital’. So what interest have we in your doctrinaire quarrels?”).55 As a result, even though the Soviet Union and China continued to be extremely important allies for a great many developing countries, general enthusiasm for AAPSO seems to have waned in those years. Following yet another discordant meeting in Ghana in 1965, the next one did not take place until 1972. In that light, the Cuban government favoured creating the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (OSPAAL) at the Tricontinental Conference as a substitute for the foundering AAPSO.56 Tricontinentalism, it was hoped, would be freer of the great powers’ internecine squabbles. Still, the close association with AAPSO somewhat oriented the new organization towards those who openly identified with communism, which in part explains why many of the most prominent national liberation movements over the subsequent decade—in Palestine, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and other places— had a more orthodox Marxist-Leninist or Maoist character than their predecessors in the late 1950s and early 1960s.57 Separate from the fortunes of AAPSO specifically, which always had an association with the communist bloc, rivalries within the Third World coalition also discredited the more fundamental concept of Afro-Asianism that had been so powerfully and movingly espoused at Bandung. In addition to the Sino-Soviet feud, the effort to hold a “Bandung 2” in Algeria in June 1965 also fell foul of the heated disagreements between India and China, on the one hand, and Indonesia and Malaysia, on the other. In each case, protagonists in these disputes threatened not to attend should their rival be invited. The strongest and most inescapable dispute was China’s campaign to have the Soviets excluded, and Moscow’s counterbalancing campaign to win support for its attendance. But these arguments over participation and invitations also intersected with one other, with India tending to side with the Soviets against China, while Beijing and Jakarta backed one another’s positions. Furthermore, in the

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weeks prior to the conference’s scheduled opening, many African countries expressed their inclination not to attend because the preparations were so befouled by communist and Asian quarrels that it could only distract from Africa’s pressing concerns. African objections intensified greatly when the Algerian president, Ben Bella, was toppled in a coup d’état just days before the conference was to begin in late June 1965. At its core, the coup was the product of internal rivalries at the apex of Algeria’s government. Orchestrated chiefly by the Minister of Defence, Hoauri Boumedienne, and his close ally, Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the coup constituted a reshuffling of the ruling elite rather than a fundamental political or ideological rupture.58 But Ben Bella had been an especially prominent and charismatic supporter of the continuing anticolonial struggles in southern Africa. Many of his friends on the continent refused to countenance participating in an AfroAsian summit in Algiers until, at the very least, Ben Bella’s wellbeing had been demonstrated and his release obtained (though the latter would not occur for another decade and a half). African capitals also feared that participating in Bandung 2 after the coup would also mean that the AfroAsian movement would be giving its imprimatur to Boumedienne’s new government—a concern that Fidel Castro also volubly expressed.59 The coup in Algeria was, therefore, as much a reflection of AfroAsianism’s power as of its fragility. Boumedienne and his associates removed Ben Bella from power before Bandung 2 took place because they feared that hosting the conference would so enhance his power and prestige that he would be untouchable afterwards. Moreover, while the coup provided the immediate rationale for the cancellation of Bandung 2, many of the key decision-makers in various foreign ministries across the Global South were actually happy to seize on the coup as a pretext for taking an action they already desired. The new government in Algiers attempted to hold the postponed conference a few months later, in November 1965, in order to enjoy the legitimization of the Third World. But China’s disputes with the Soviet Union and with India, combined with the seeming loss of its Indonesian ally due to anti-communist massacres there and the diminution of Sukarno’s authority, induced Peking to successfully obstruct multilateral efforts to keep Bandung 2 alive.60 In the sceptical view of the Indian delegation, China belatedly discovered “that Asian and African countries had a mind and will of their own … As the Conference could not be bent to its will, China set about scuttling it.”61 The Algerian authorities themselves were ambivalent; faced with continued African and Cuban hostility, there is reason to think that

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the hosts themselves preferred not to hold the event than to hold it with a notably limited attendance. The Indians strongly felt that, on surveilling the diplomatic landscape, Bouteflika then yielded with unseemly haste to calls to postpone indefinitely.62 Consequently, Afro-Asianism effectively died as a meaningful organizing theme in international affairs in Algiers in 1965.63 A few months later, across the Atlantic, the same pernicious factionalism greatly limited Cuba’s success in ensuring that the expanded theme of Tricontinentalism might provide a genuine successor to Bandung. In many respects, the January 1966 Tricontinental Conference was actually a less ambitious and more narrow-minded event than the cancelled Algiers conference had been intended to be. Because it grew out of AAPSO, an organization created in order that Moscow might capture the energy of Afro-Asianism, the Tricontinental was actually a mostly communist and non-governmental event, the 612 delegates coming mostly from communist parties and other allied organizations such as political parties, unions, liberation movements, and the like. Amilcar Cabral, the Marxist nationalist leader of the independence movement from Portuguese Bissau, was one of those who came to Havana in search of military and diplomatic support.64 Communist infighting naturally influenced the proceedings greatly; the Soviets and Chinese fought over the invitation list beforehand, each trying to stack the crowd in their favour. At Chinese insistence Yugoslavia was excluded, though the Egyptians subsequently facilitated the attendance of a Yugoslavia delegation with “observer” status, which was a particularly inconsequential achievement at a nongovernmental conference.65 All told, the Tricontinental’s efforts to expand the geography of anticolonial revolution met severe challenges. Chinese objections helped greatly to limit the actual participation of sympathic Latin American movements, since these tended to be pro-Soviet rather than pro-Chinese. For the same reason, China opposed Cuba’s proposal to institutionalize the Tricontinental by creating a new secretariat in Havana, the Organización de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latin (OSPAAL), or Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In this China failed, but, in time, the influence of the new OSPAAL would prove to be curtailed by more prosaic regional rivalries. Egypt was loath to see AAPSO, headquartered in Cairo, supplanted altogether. Many African attendants were also wary of Afro-Asianism acquiring too heavy a Latin American focus. The conference’s emphatic emphasis on denouncing Yanqui imperialism in the strongest terms, with

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only a cursory reference to European colonialism, encouraged their fears. The observing Indian chargé d’affaires concluded that “if the Conference succeeded in creating a permanent secretariat in Havana, it created a house divided in itself, whose effectiveness and the wisdom itself of the choice of … site was contested from the very start by the builders themselves. It will now be lived in by triumphant Latin Americans, disgruntled Africans, the warring partisans of the Soviet and Chinese camps, apart from the gullible many who are likely to be stampeded into submission in the SinoSoviet war of nerves!”66 His analysis was itself an example of schism within the Third World, with Indian diplomacy eager to see Chinese ambitions foiled and the influence of militant revolutionary factions curtailed. In that respect, his report is doubly proof of the roiling rivalries within the anticolonial solidarity movement a mere decade after Bandung. Conclusions In the post-colonial era international institution-building was an essential facet of the continued struggle against the imperial order, on a global scale, that had begun with the League Against Imperialism (if not before). By and large, the new political elites of the Global South concurred that post-coloniality at the national level could not succeed without the construction of a properly post-imperial international system. Therefore, the transnational networks of support and solidarity that so profoundly shaped anticolonial struggle before independence continued and evolved. One purpose of movements and organizations such as NAM and Tricontinentalism was to extend support from the newly independent states to those anticolonial movements that had not yet attained their nation’s liberation, but a second was to reshape the international order to ensure the success of post-colonial statehood. This dual purpose was in itself a source of tension within the Third World, as many of those charged with governing sovereign states were averse to the obligations and controversies that came with supporting armed liberation struggles. But the more profound impediment to solidifying post-colonial internationalism was the fact that, while the years of anticolonial struggle fostered a sense of equality and solidarity among nationalist militants around the world, independence and statehood brought recognition of profound disparities of interest and power among the nations of the Global South. These divergences were not fatal to the Third World’s cohesion or to the success of the “Third World project” as a whole, but they did ensure that the effusive rhetoric of solidarity concealed a wealth of oldfashioned diplomatic politicking, manoeuvring, and competition. In that

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respect, Bandung was the easy part, which is why studies of Third World internationalism that focus on the speeches and pageantry of April 1955 do a great disservice to the thousands of officials from across the Global South who strove, over decades, to construct the post-colonial order. Post-colonial political elites, generally speaking, saw international institutionalization as a continuation of the process of decolonization, even if they also recognized the potential challenge that global governance structures could pose to the Third World’s autonomy, given that those structures were, in numerous aspects, a continuation and modification of imperial governance structures.67 Among Western publics, the critique that global governance represented a new form of imperialism gained popularity in the 1980s in particular, in the context of IMF structural adjustment programmes, but the fact is that the Third World political apparatchiks always had a nuanced and ambivalent attitude to such institutions. On the one hand, the United Nations plainly formalized international inequality through the implementation of veto-wielding permanent Security Council members, yet admission to the General Assembly was nevertheless the only viable means of confirming one’s independence and sovereignty. Hence the new elites of the Global South insisted forcefully on the centrality of the UN in the post-imperial international order, even while strongly urging its reform. Even the controversial Bretton Woods institutions were (and are) valued, before and after the neoliberal counter-revolution of the late twentieth century.68 At the same time as they called for reform of Western-centric institutions that they deemed irreplaceable, post-colonial elites also supported the construction of new entities independent of the great powers, such as the Organization of African Unity, UNCTAD, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Of course, which initiatives should take precedence, and how much they should be allowed to distract from efforts to increase the Third World’s representation in the core UN constellation, became intensely contested issues. Post-colonial elites supported international institutionalization when they saw it as complementary to national institutionalization. It is for this reason that Western-driven efforts to construct a global human rights regime, premised on notions of individual sovereignty and the rights of subnational minorities, has arguably become the most contested realm of global governance between the West and the Global South. Even the neoliberal epoch of development economics has not posed such a fundamental, existential threat to the post-colonial nationalist order as the promotion of minority and individual rights. In the sphere of international organization, the post-colonial world is a world frozen in time, that time

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being roughly the third quarter of the twentieth century. Post-colonial political borders, and the social borders dividing new national elites from the people in whose name they governed, have proven extremely resilient, thanks in part to the strong lattices of international organization that intertwined with new national structures. In that respect, decolonization was a process whereby subversive transnational networks of anticolonial solidarity turned into intergovernmental collaboration to preserve the new status quo. In truth, Third Worldist internationalism was always highly socially exclusionary: the globalist palaces of the Global South—Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, the Pine Tree Club outside Algiers—were inaccessible to local commoners. The post-colonial statesmen that helped to construct our contemporary world complained frequently, after years spent in far-flung embassies and international organizations in New York, Washington, or Geneva, that they had lost touch entirely with the countries they were supposed to represent, countries that had changed dramatically since the transition of power. Very often, small groups of self-appointed leaders of nations—the Algerian FLN, Palestine’s Fatah, the Angolan MPLA, among others—did indeed come to be treated as rulers simply by dint of gaining admission to the Third World’s exclusive diplomatic realm. For many anticolonial movements participation in the Non-Aligned Movement eventually proved to be a more important determinant of success than the support of the actual colonized populations in whose name those movements fought. Post-colonial and anticolonial diplomacy were, therefore, important elite-making exercises, which has inspired glamourization and resentment in equal measure. Still, for better or for worse, post-colonial diplomacy deserves to be recognized for having made a significant contribution to the evolution of international society, on a fully global scale. Notes 1 2 3 4

Jay Walz, “African Showplace: Addis Ababa Fleeting Hall Is Symbol Of Haile Selassie’s Goal for Continent,” New York Times, 18 May 1963. “Alger: Carrefour Du Tiers-Monde,” Révolution Africaine, 6 December 1965; “De Nadi Snober à Zeralda,” Révolution Africaine, 6 December 1965. National Archives of India (NAI), Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), File WII/162/14/65, series 247, AMS: Soni to Singh, 10 February 1966. Christopher R. W. Dietrich, Oil Revolution: Sovereign Rights and the Economic Culture of Decolonization, 1945 to 1979 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

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Berny Sèbe, “In the Shadow of the Algerian War: The United States and the Common Organisation of Saharan Regions (OCRS), 1957–62,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 38:2 (2010), 303–22. Roland Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 57–8; Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 180–2. John Toye, “Assessing the G77: 50 Years after Unctad and 40 Years after the Nieo,” Third World Quarterly 35:10 (2014), 1759–74; Vijay Prashad, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (London: Verso Books, 2014), 180–90; Vanessa Ogle, “State Rights against Private Capital: The ‘New International Economic Order’ and the Struggle over Aid, Trade, and Foreign Investment, 1962–1981,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 5:2 (2014), 211–34; Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 190–4. Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights, 112–4; Meredith Terretta, “‘We Had Been Fooled into Thinking That the UN Watches over the Entire World’: Human Rights, UN Trust Territories, and Africa’s Decolonization,” Human Rights Quarterly 34:2 (2012), 329–60; Bradley R. Simpson, “Self-Determination, Human Rights, and the End of Empire in the 1970s,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 4:2 (2013), 239–60. See the chapters in this volume by Michele Louro and Carolien Stolte. See the chapters in this volume by David Murphy, Anna Belogurova, Sana Tannoury-Karam, and Michael Goebel. See the chapter in this volume by Dónal Hassett. Jeffrey James Byrne, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 64. For a point of comparison, see also Klaas Stutje’s chapter in this volume on the Indonesian nationalist who attended the Brussels Congress, Mohammad Hatta. “L’action internationale du FLN par M’hammed Yazid,” August 1957, in Mohammed Harbi, ed., Les Archives de La Révolution Algérienne (Paris: Éditions Jeune Afrique, 1981), 172–4. Matthew Connelly, “Rethinking the Cold War and Decolonization: The Grand Strategy of the Algerian War for Independence,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33:2 (2001), 221–45.

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23 24 25

26

Cindy Ewing, “The Colombo Powers: Crafting Diplomacy in the Third World and Launching Afro-Asia at Bandung,” Cold War History 19:1 (2019), 1–19. The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence were formally stated in a treaty between India and China in April 1954: mutual respect for territorial sovereignty; non-aggression; non-interference in one another’s domestic affairs; equality; peaceful coexistence. “Address given by Sukarno (Bandung, 18 April 1955),” in Asia-Africa Speak from Bandung (Djakarta: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia, 1955), 19–29. See the chapters in this volume by Carolien Stolte and Michele Louro. Andrew J. Rotter, Comrades at Odds: The United States and India, 1947–1964 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 67–9. Itty Abraham, “From Bandung to NAM: Non-Alignment and Indian Foreign Policy, 1947–65,” Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 46:2 (2008), 195–219; Shu Guang Zhang, “Constructing ‘Peaceful Coexistence’: China’s Diplomacy toward the Geneva and Bandung Conferences, 1954– 55,” Cold War History 7:4 (2007), 509–28; Chen Jian, “Bridging Revolution and Decolonization: The ‘Bandung Discourse’ in China’s Early Cold War Experience,” The Chinese Historical Review 15:2 (2008), 207–41. Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India, and Pakistan (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994), 38–9. Quoted in Sulmaan Wasif Khan, “Cold War Co-Operation: New Chinese Evidence on Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1954 Visit to Beijing,” Cold War History 11:2 (2011), 197–222. See also Gilles Boquérat, “India’s Commitment to Peaceful Coexistence and the Settlement of the Indochina War,” Cold War History 5:2 (2005), 211–34. Quoted in Peter Willetts, The Non-Aligned Movement: The Origins of a Third World Alliance (London: Pinter, 1978), 5–7. Yves Courrière, La Guerre d’Algérie: Le Temps des Léopards (Paris: Fayard, 1969), 77. Algerian National Archives (ANA), archives of the Ministère aux affaires éxternelles of the Gouvernement provisoire de la République Algérienne (GPRA-MAE), Dossier 3.13: Report on the GPRA mission to India, March 1958. Aleksandar Životić and Jovan Čavoški, “On the Road to Belgrade: Yugoslavia, Third World Neutrals, and the Evolution of Global Non-Alignment, 1954– 1961,” Journal of Cold War Studies 18:4 (2017), 79–97.

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27

28 29 30

31 32

33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41

42

Mohamed Heikal, The Cairo Documents: The Inside Story of Nasser and His Relationship with World Leaders, Rebels, and Statesmen (Garden City: Doubleday, 1973), 253. Geoffrey H. Jansen, Afro-Asia and Non-Alignment (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 33. Gabriella Rosner, The United Nations Emergency Force (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 122–3. Mithi Mukherjee, “‘A World of Illusion’: The Legacy of Empire in India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–62,” International History Review 32:2 (2010), 253– 71. Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Yugoslavia and the Nonaligned World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 242–6. ANA, GPRA-MAE, Dossier 8.3: See message from Brahimi in Jakarta, 15 January 1960; ANA, GPRA-MAE, Dossier 46.2: Memcom of Krim, Francis and Subandrio in Cairo, 25 April 1960. John C. Campbell, Tito’s Separate Road: America and Yugoslavia in World Politics (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1967), 76–8. Deva Narayan Mallik, The Development of Non-Alignment in India’s Foreign Policy (Allahabad: Chaitanya Publishing House, 1967), 216–7. ANA, GPRA-MAE, Dossier 7.3.3: “Rapport d’activité de la Section Afrique Asie,” 9 May 1961. On the support the FLN received from more radical African states, see Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, Africa: The Politics of Independence and Unity, Bison Books (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 28. NAI, MEA, CON/27/61/AFRI, Series 17: Cable from Sukarno to Nehru, 6 August 1961. NAI, MEA, CON/27/61/AFRI, Series 17: Letter from Nasser to Nehru, 4 August 1961. ANA, GPRA-MAE, Dossier 8.13.5.3: “Note d’information: Communication de l’Ambassadeur de Yougoslavie,” 22 May 1961. ANA, archives of the Conseil National de la Révolution Algérienne (CNRA), Dossier 8.9: “Rapport de politique étrangère,” August 1961. Matteo Grilli, “Nkrumah’s Ghana and the Armed Struggle in Southern Africa (1961–1966),” South African Historical Journal 70:1 (2018), 56–81. Conference of Heads of States or Government of Non-Aligned Countries, Belgrade, September 1–6, 1961 (Belgrade, Yugoslavia: The Publishing House Beograd, Yugoslavia, 1962), 243. Robert A. Mortimer, The Third World Coalition in International Politics (Boulder: Westview, 1984), 12–3.

from bandung to havana  395

43

44 45 46

47

48 49

50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Manfred Halpern, “Afro-Asians at Moshi,” Africa Report 8:3 (1963); James G. Hershberg, “‘High-Spirited Confusion’: Brazil, the 1961 Belgrade NonAligned Conference, and the Limits of an ‘Independent’ Foreign Policy during the High Cold War,” Cold War History 7:3 (2007), 373–88. Byrne, Mecca of Revolution, 93–5. Heikal, Cairo Documents, 295–6. Sergey Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 82. See also Jeremy Scott Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 55. Tito quoted in “Zabeleske o Jugoslovensko-Alzirskim Razgovorima i Sastanku Pretsednika Tita i Ben Bela” (Minutes from the Yugoslav-Algerian talks and the meeting between President Tito and Ben Bella), Archives of Josip Broz Tito, Belgrade (AJBT), Cabinet of the President of the Republic (KPR), series 837, 1-3-a/2-8, 11 March 1964. Ibid. For example, see Jodie Yuzhou Sun, “‘Now the Cry Was Communism’: The Cold War and Kenya’s Relations with China, 1964–70,” Cold War History 20:1 (2020), 39–58; Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Robert A. Mortimer, “The Algerian Revolution in Search of the African Revolution,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 8:3 (1970), 363–87. AJBT, KPR, 1-3-a/2-8, series 837: “Zabeleske o Jugoslovensko-Alzirskim Razgovorima i Sastanku Pretsednika Tita i Ben Bela” (Minutes from the Yugoslav-Algerian talks and the meeting between President Tito and Ben Bella), March 11, 1964. Ibid. Friedman, Shadow Cold War, 97–8. Jansen, Afro-Asia and Non-Alignment, 306. Omar Ali Amer, “China and the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization, 1958–1967” (Université de Genève, 1972), 120–1. Quoted in David Kimche, The Afro-Asian Movement: Ideology and Foreign Policy of the Third World (New York: Halsted Press, 1973), 185–6. Friedman, Shadow Cold War, 148–9, 197–8. On the turn to Marxism-Leninism in Africa national liberation movements in the 1970s, see Joshua Eisenman, “Comrades-in-Arms: The Chinese Communist Party’s Relations with African Political Organisations in the Mao Era, 1949–76,” Cold War History 18:4 (2 October 2018), 429–45; Forrest

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58 59 60

61

62 63

64

65 66 67

68

D. Colburn, The Vogue of Revolution in Poor Countries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), chapters 7, 8; Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), chapters 6, 7. Houari Boumediène, “The Future of the Algerian Revolution,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 6:3 (1968), 425–425. See also Geoffrey H. Jansen, “Postponement of the ‘Second Bandung,’” The World Today 21:9 (1965), 398–406. Jeffrey James Byrne, “Beyond Continents, Colours, and the Cold War: Yugoslavia, Algeria, and the Struggle for Non-Alignment,” The International History Review 37:5 (2015); Lorenz M. Lüthi, “The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War, 1961–1973,” Journal of Cold War Studies 18:4 (2016), 98–147; Lorenz M. Lüthi, “Non-Alignment, 1946–1965: Its Establishment and Struggle against Afro-Asianism,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 7:2 (2016), 201–23. NAI, MEA, (PM)/162/3/64, Series 300: Singh, “Report of the Indian delegation to Algiers, 28 October – 2 November 1965,” 13 December 1965; NAI, MEA, HI/1011(79)66, Series 224: “Annual Report for 1965,” Embassy in Algiers, 23 March 1966. NAI, MEA, (PM)/162/3/64, Series 300: Singh, “Report of the Indian delegation to Algiers, 28 October – 2 November 1965,” 31 December 1965. On this interpretation, see Mortimer, Third World Coalition, chapter 2; Guy J. Pauker, “The Rise and Fall of Afro-Asian Solidarity,” Asian Survey 5:9 (1965), 425–32. Manuel Barcia, “‘Locking Horns with the Northern Empire’: Anti-American Imperialism at the Tricontinental Conference of 1966 in Havana,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies 7:3 (2009), 208–17. J. J. Brieux, “La Tricontinentale,” Politique Étrangère 31:1 (1966), 19–43. NAI, MEA, WII/162/14/65, Series 247: Soni to Singh, 10 February 1966. Jessica Lynne Pearson, “Defending Empire at the United Nations: The Politics of International Colonial Oversight in the Era of Decolonisation,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 45:3 (2017), 525–49; Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). J.F.J. Toye, Dilemmas of Development: Reflections on the Counter-Revolution in Development Economics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); Prashad, Poorer Nations.

Afterword: The Zigzag of the Global in the Histories of the League Against Imperialism Antoinette Burton Bandung exercises a powerful gravitational pull on histories of the League Against Imperialism. Speakers at the 1955 conference hailed the LAI as an avatar and actively recruited it as a legitimating ground upon which to launch a post-colonial new world order. The citationary apparatus built upon the League, and upon the 1927 Brussels conference which propelled it, has allowed the LAI to remain suspended in a kind of radical temporality. Bandung punctuates the global anti-imperial timeline: it is the becoming of a Third Worldism begun in Brussels and made manifest, if imperfectly, by anticolonial leaders-turned-statesmen like Nehru and Sukarno. Historically, the League and Brussels with it are icons of a much-anticipated globalism whose interwar origins were a powerful lieux de memoire. And to the extent that the League has been treated historiographically, it has depended for its iconic sheen on its genealogical relationship to Bandung in scholarly accounts as well. What Vijay Prasad has said recently of Bandung has proven uncannily true of Brussels: it was a site of dreams, glimpsed nostalgically perhaps, but less for what it was than what it could have been—and for what it continued to suggest into mid-century and beyond.1 To some degree this politics of citation is historically and affectively intelligible. There was enough continuity in participation between the two conferences to make it a touchstone. And while few historians have focused on the cultural experiences of the events themselves, it is clear how and why the atmosphere of anti-imperial solidarity among a generation of men in the early stages of their political lives should give rise to a sense of collective purpose in reality and in memory. And yet, as the essays collected here suggest, it is past time to untangle the League from both the Brussels Congress and Bandung per se. In the first instance, the launch of the LAI is not as significant as its ten-year life as a motor of transcontinental anticolonial activity and propaganda—from Argentina to China, Palestine to Ireland to South Africa to Japan, to name just a few of the sites where the League had contacts, if not fully operating branches. This affiliation of proto-national movements was, to be sure, loose and even precarious, but it signals the ambition and the international reach 397

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of LAI ideas and connections. Second, unmooring the League from Brussels per se means conceiving of its impact beyond both Europe and its founding moment in 1927. There is no doubt that Berlin was a mise en scene for LAI work and that Willi Münzenberg was its tireless director; or, for that matter, that the Comintern’s investment in its activities was part of a struggle over the very future of the west and the world. But Brussels often catalyzed political plans, interests, or cadres that were already underway in places like Algeria and Indonesia. Elsewhere, the League was a reference point and even, as in India, a major vehicle for the development of radical diasporic strategies in such diverse and centripetal ways that we have to rethink what has been a presumptively Eurocentric history of the LAI. Last but not least, detaching League activity from the call and response of Bandung challenges the teleological approach to post-colonial history and its global character that has underwritten much of the story of twentieth-century anti-imperialism since the Cold War. Shaking free of these entanglements—or, at a minimum, recasting them in a more expansive temporal and geographical framework—gives us the opportunity to see the LAI’s limits and possibilities anew. There is a host of provocative histories that this approach allows us to discern for the first time. As one might expect, the shift from Brussels to vantage points that careers like Mohammed Hatta’s or sites like Syria and the revolt there offer is eye-opening. We are able to appreciate what a young and comparatively minor player like Hatta was able to do with the experience he gained in 1927—an experience which burnished his reputation out of proportion, perhaps, to his actual significance at Brussels but which tracks with the larger development of post-colonial Indonesia as much as, if not more so than, a focus on Sukarno (such a staple of the Bandung story) does. In the Syrian case we have the opportunity to see traditions of Arab anti-imperialism that predate the interwar period and to understand how those histories intersected with Brussels and the League in ways that provincialize them both in the narrative of twentieth-century global anti-colonial activity. That reorientation brings other equally consequential formations into view. I am thinking here of the SyroPalestinian Congress of 1929, which reveals the shifting class composition of Arab resistance, the unevenness of Comintern influence, and a vein of discourse about Palestine and Zionism that invokes the Meerut conspiracy in a networked critique of British imperial power. The entrée points these new histories provide are as methodologically consequential as they are empirically significant. For they suggest that assumptions about the Berlin-Moscow/League-Comintern axis that has long shadowed histories

afterword: the zigzag of the global  399

of the League must be read against what might seem like peripheral events but which represent, in fact, significant localized and regionalized forces. Ironically, longstanding emphases on 1927 in Brussels risk reproducing a core-periphery model at the heart of anti-imperialist narratives unless we recognize and continue to fill out histories of the kind collected here. While it is tempting to think of such histories as “local,” I prefer the term “distributed” because it acknowledges what is happening at the “centre” without perforce prioritizing it—it allows us to imagine, in other words, a geography of struggle, subversion, and rebellion that is linked (albeit unevenly) across a terrain where established nation-states are vulnerable to forces from within and without because of the deterritorialized character of the League itself. Münzenberg—with Chatto’s help—may have been key to creating the LAI as a transnational space, but this volume requires us to rethink the League as an assemblage of networked geographies and to pluralize our vision of when, where, and under what conditions LAI politics happened (not to mention when such politics qualified as “League” politics and when they did not). If that means rethinking the centrality of Berlin, it also calls for our understanding of the role of Moscow to be properly calibrated. It is clear that several contributors to this project have profited from the opening up of Comintern archives. One result is that the story of its role in both imperial centres and colonial spaces is more nuanced and, perhaps surprisingly, less Comintern-centric as well. The story of relations between Algerian nationalists and the French branch of the LAI is instructive here: what began as apprenticeship through Cominternbased anti-imperial connections ended up as a “home-grown” Algerian formation at odds with Paris and hardly evenly aligned with Moscow. Significantly, 1927 was key to forward motion, especially for the ENA which embraced a more global and less Algerian-inflected politics after Brussels—where, not incidentally, they hardly registered as players or in the LAI archives of the event. The case of black internationalism, too, underscores the ways that alliances between communists, socialists, and nationalists were perpetually halting, precarious, and non-linear. What David Murphy writes about Lamine Senghor is arguably true across the whole history of the LAI, almost regardless of where it operated: [his] decision to leave the UIC, a shift from a communist-inspired to a black movement, appeared to assert the primacy of race over class: as with so much of Senghor’s career as a militant, though, appearances could be deceptive, with genuine and potentially

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contradictory motives hidden in a tangled web of ideological leanings, personal connections, gut feelings, and underhand political tactics, typical of both the anti-colonial movement (both in its far-left and nationalist guises) and the colonial state’s security forces that sought to undermine them. In that sense, it was not just the Comintern that “zigzagged its way through the interwar period,” promoting alliances that would break down often within months, if not weeks. The terrain that the LAI, its supporters, and its enemies operated in was kinetic and ever-shifting precisely because the post-First World War world was already decolonizing from the margins into a centre hollowed out, politically, economically, and socially, by the lingering effects of world war. The dynamic character of that newly global interwar terrain practically guaranteed and certainly helped to determine the zigzag as a condition of statecraft and radicalism equally. The circuitous and unpredictable mobility of all players was part of this decolonizing effect, and no one—not Hatta nor Senghor, but not the Comintern or Münzenberg either—could fully grasp, let alone control or manage, the non-iterative geopolitics of the 1927–1937 decade. This deterritorialized, decolonizing history poses narrative challenges that, in fact, are best met at this juncture in the history of twentieth-century Third Worldism by exactly the kind of distributed approach that a multi-sited collection like this one takes up. As a heuristic, then, the zigzag is a useful way of visualizing the discontinuous trajectories of the LAI during its comparatively short life. A pattern made up of small corners at variable angles, the zigzag is also the model of the global that emerges from LAI activity as captured in this volume. And here I might make a few pedagogical distinctions. The editors rightly point out that the League was “deeply influenced by global events, and by new impulses for international cooperation.” Added to that is the idea of the global which contemporaries of the League invoked and that later Bandung wallahs laid claim to. And then there is the history of the global that emerges once we have read and digested the whole of this collection. Thanks to this project, I want to think of the global less as an idea or a dimension of an era than as a pattern that emerges— not an index of events as they happen but a pattern that is visible from the way those events and their activists cauterize. And here is where the zigzag can work to disrupt some conventional approaches to the global. As a formation made up of small corners at variable angles, the zigzag is less regularly horizontal and interconnected than it is up and down and

afterword: the zigzag of the global  401

interrupted; less tied by shared linkages than serrated and jagged. It is not simply decentred and decentring but, practically and even operationally, it is all edges. Reading across all the case studies in this volume, that is the pattern that predominates: more breakdown and disconnect and friction than connections that are durable and unified and sustained—on the ground, at any rate. The zigzag might help further to explain the case of Latin America which, as Michael Goebel suggests, cannot easily be contained by the discourse of anti-imperial solidarity, with the connective tissue it tends to assume, both rhetorically and affectively. Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Paris: latinamericanisma is subject to its own particular zigzag, shot through by serrations of race and anglophonicity. Meanwhile, if we are to be sceptical of the pull that Banding exerts on Brussels and the League because we are committed to rigorously historicizing accounts of the League’s global character, then we must seek and find critical distance from the versions of the global that Leaguers and their interlocutors themselves articulated. That scepticism is one methodological approach for getting outside the teleological impulses that have tied Brussels and Bandung for so long. What is ultimately most compelling about the zigzag is that its serrations and edges always trace a path between two parallel lines, which means that even the zigzag lives inside a set of vertical frames (west/non-west, north/ south, Europe/USSR, colonizer/colonized) it cannot exceed. Whether zigzag or not, the global is not a follow-on from the imperial, but one of its identity logics both during and after the age of empires. The LAI models a particularly and, given its short life, a peculiarly charismatic form of that entanglement, from Brussels to Bandung and down to the very present. As comprehensive as this collection is, we leave it with a sense of all that is left to be done. As I have remarked elsewhere, the apparently homosocial culture of radical Third Worldism then and now is nothing less than stunning.2 What would it mean to ferret out a history of the political culture of Brussels, one that gave us more than mere glimpses of the tea rooms where “Asian” delegates gathered; one that plumbed the depths of affective relations between men from different class, ethnic, linguistic backgrounds; one that confronted in a sustained way the exclusions and microaggressions arising from racial difference and racism, both political and personal? Would that we had a Richard Wright for the interwar years.3 What do we know, what could we know, about how men gathered and argued and rubbed shoulders in Syria and Algiers, in the Pine Tree Club and Africa Hall? Whom did they leave behind when they travelled, who served them tea, whom did they love, whom did they

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hate, whom did they hold hands with, how did they touch, whom did they sleep with? How or whether or to what degree these histories shape what we know about transnational solidarity matters. It is a dimension of geopolitical life and global cultures of radical being and becoming that are absolutely consequential for a fuller history of the League and its legacies. Who knows what the next decades of the twenty-first century will make of these desires and possibilities? Notes 1

2

3

Vijay Prasad, “Preface,” in Christopher J. Lee, Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2019), xi. See my “The Sodalities of Bandung: Toward a Critical 21st Century History,” in Lee, Making a World; and Africa in the Indian Imagination: Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). Richard Wright, The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference (Cleveland: World Pub. Co., 1956).

Index

A Abyssinia (Ethiopia), 29, 93, 94, 230, 273, 274, 295, 296, 371, 373 Acharya, M.P.T., 37, 354, 355, 363 Action Committee Against the Colonial Politics of the Imperialists, 118, 172, Afghanistan, 350 African National Congress (ANC), 18, n.45, 250, 327, 329, 330-337, Afro-Asia(n), 8, 54, 96, 275, 276, 335, 336, 338, 340, 347- 350, 355, 357, 358, 360-365, 368, 369, 371, 372, 374, 380-388 Afro-Asian Solidarity, 347, 349, 355, 362-364, 368, 369, 372, 374 Afro-Asian Writers, 335, 336, 363 Against Cruelties in Syria Committee, 108 Algeria(n), 7, 23, 38, 41, 79-87, 90100, 109, 120, n.132, n.152, 219, 224, 257, 318, 336, 371, 374, 375, 377, 378, 380-387, 391, 398, 399 Aliens Act (1905), 189 Aliens Order (1920), 189 Aliens Restriction Act (1914), 189 Alimin, 314 All-American Anti-imperialist League (AAAIL), 136, 145, 151 All-Asia Women’s Conference (AAWC), 359 All-India Peace Council (AIPC), 361 All-India Trade Union Congress, 193, 258 All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC), 359

All-Parties Conference, 1928 (India), 266 Alliance for the Support of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Revolution in America (ASCWPRA), 145 American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), 58-60, 63, 65, 68 Amsterdam, n.47, 90, 164, 166, 169, 176, 179, 289, Amsterdam/Pleyel Anti-War Movement, 164, 178, 303 Annam, 147 Ansari, Mukhtar Ahmed, n.255, 354 Anti-colonial internationalism, 33, 122, 263, 284, 373 Anti-imperialism, 7, 14, 17, 20, 22, 28, 29-31, 33, 36, 37, 39, 41, 55, 58, 60-64, 66-68, 70, 71, 79-84, 86-100, 107-111, 117, 122, 126, 137, 147, 162, 163, 180, 187, 192, 199, 206, 237, 238, 243, 244, 247, 248, 251, 252, 257-259, 261-265, 267, 271, 272, 274-277, 296, 298, 326, 353, 356, 381, 398 Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas (LADLA), 57-59, 61-63, 65, 67, 70 Anti-Imperialist League of the East in Shanghai, 147 Anti-Imperialist Review, 22, n.46, 227, 240, 257, 262, 263, 353, 355 Anti-militarism, 219 Argentina, 22, 56, 60, 61, 64, 68, 397 Arslan, Shakib (Chekib), 94, 96, 107111, 117, 120, 121, n.128, n.132 Asian Relations Conference (1947), 349, 350, 355, 358, 359-361

404  the league against imperialism

Asian Relations Organization, 358 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, 14, 31, 32, 54, 71, 96- 98, 259, 273, 275, 276, 299, 349, 360-363, 371, 373-390, 397, 398, 400, 40 Asianism, 34, 239, 249, 299, 338, 348, 349-353, 355, 357, 359, 363, 372, 374, 382, 383, 386-388 Assimilation(ist/ism), 65, 138, 213, 221 Association Républicaine des Anciens Combattants (ARAC), 219, 224 al-Bakri, Mazhar Bey, 86, 120, 318 B Baku (Congress), 355 Baldwin, Roger, 27, 222, 286 Baldwin, Stanley, 120, 191, 199, Balkan Wars, 354, Bandung Conference – see AsianAfrican Conference in Bandung Bar(a)katullah, Muhammad (Maulana), 23, 37, 260, 261, 350-352, 354, 363 Barbusse, Henri, 88, 194, 202-204, n.210, 219, 220, Barq, Abdur Rab, 355 Batavia (Jakarta), 315 Belgrade Conference, 374-376, 380383, 385 Ben Bella, Ahmed, 383, 384, 387 Benn, William Wedgewood, 196 Berger, Joseph, 116 Berlin, 14, 19, 22, 25, 28, 29, 34, 35, 64, 116, 118, 125, 137, 139-142, 144, n.154, n.155, 160, 161, 163, 165-172, 175-177, 179, 187, 188, 197, 199, 238, 260, 262, 266, 270273, 285, 286, 318, 320, 351, 353, 354, 355, 379, 398, 399 Bierville, 312, 313 Black Atlantic, 331, 339, 340 Black internationalism, 8, 211, 213, 229, 239, 399 Bloncourt, Max, 67, 214, 219, 250,

Boedi Oetomo, 313 Bolshevism/Bolshevik, 11, 13, 27, 111, 113, 135, 141, 160, 161, 189, 223, 327, 330, 331, 351, 355, 356 Bose, Subhas Chandra, 266, 267, Brazil, 22, 63, 67, 385 Bridgeman, Reginald, 28-30, 163, 165, 167, 178, 195, 197, 199, 201, 202, 205, 272, 273, 284, 285, 287, 289291, 294, 296-298 British Independent Labour Party, 17, 28, 125, 203, 259, 285 British Labour Party, 28, 41, n.46, 125, 196, 259, 285, 290-293, 296, 297, n.300 British National Section of the LAI, 28, 262, 263, 272 Brockway, Archibald Fenner, 17, 159, 193, 238, 259, 260, 285-288, 290, 291, 297 Brown, William John, 200, 202 Brussels (Congress) (1927), 11, 12, 17, 18, 21-28, 31, 32, 35, 38, 41, 42, 44, 54, 55, 57-72, 81-88, 94, 96-99, 111, 119-122, 136, 140-143, 145, 148, 159, 160, 163, 165-167, 169-174, 179, 187, 198, 202, 212-217, 219, 222-230, n.233, n.235, 238-241, 243, 246, 248, 249, 251, 257, 259264, 266, 268-276, 285, 295, 309, 310, 316, 317, 319, 325, 326-329, 347-355, 359, 360, 373, 375, 397401 Buchanan, George, 203 Budeiri, Khalil, 124 Bukharin, Nikolai, 170, 329, 330 Burma, 262, 350, 360, 361 Burns, Emile, n.183, 268 C CAI – see Service de Contrôle et d’Assistance aux Indigènes Cai Yuanpei, 140

index 405

Canada, 14, 145, 265, 334 Canton, 136, 147 Capitalism, 113 Caribbean, 37, 66, 68, 215, 220, 228, n.232, 353 Central Asia, n.129, 337, 338, 351, 355 Chamberlain, Austen, 193, 195 Chattopadhyaya, Virendranath (Chatto), 12, n.15, 19, 22, 23, 143, 165, 166, n.183, 198, 260, 261, 262, 266, 270, n.278, 286, 354-356, 359, 363, 399, Chiang Kai-shek, 12, 25, 260, 261, 277, 356 China, 11, 19, 20, 22, 23, 29, 34, 36, 37, 39-41, 56, 59, 64, 88, 118, 122, 135-141, 143, 145-151, 167, 169, 171, 202, 224, 245, 247, 250, 259263, 265-267, 274, 276, 277, 283, 284, 295-298, 312, 315, 322, 329, 351-353, 358, 360, 378, 383, 384388, n.393, 397 China Day (India), 274 Chinese Anti-Imperialist Alliance (CAIA), 150 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 12, 25, 36, 39, 135, 136, 138-151, n.158, 315 Chinese Communist Youth Union of Western Europe, 141 Chinese faction of the CPUSA, 145, 146 Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang, GMD), 25, 26, 28, 36, 39, n.50, 56, 59, 70, 135, 158, 167, 260-263, 277, n.278, 309, 315, 316, 350 Chinese overseas, 143, 146, 149, 150 Chinese-language faction of the KPD (Degong Zhongguo yuyanzu), 137 Clynes, J.R., 200-202 Cold War, 30, 32, 37, 72, 99, n.182, 259, 275-277, 326, 332, 338, 348,

349, 355, 357, 362, 374-379, 382, 398 Colombo, 356 Committee for the Defence of the Negro Race (CDRN), 211-214, 220, 221, 222, 224, 229, n.231, n.233 Communist International (Comintern), 11-13, 15, 19, 23-25, 27, 30-32, 35, 36, n.45, n.47, 53, 55-66, 70, 71, 79, 87-89, 91, 96, 97, 109, 113, 116, 118, 120, 122, 123, 125, 126, n.131, 135-137, 139-151, n.155, n.158, 160-180, n.182, n.184, 196, 200, 212, 213, 216, 218, 228, 229, 239, 243-245, 248, 249, 258, 260, 263, 268, 270-272, 285, 286, 288, 290, 291, 293, 294, n.300, n.304, 310, 314-319, 326, 328-332, 336, 347, 353, 355, 356, n.364, 385, 398-400 Communist Party of Great Britain, 28, 29, 163, 166, 168, 190, 262, 264, 268, 283-285, 288, 289, 294, 295299, n.300, n.306 Communist Party of India (CPI), n.49, 355 Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), 326-330, 332, 333, 335, n.342 Communist Party of the USA, 144, 146, 169 Communistische Partij Holland (Dutch Communist Party, CPH), 320 Congo, 336, 380, 381, 382 Congress Foreign Department, 272-275 Congress of the Oppressed Peoples of the East – see Baku Congress Cook, A.J., 197, n.301 Cuba, 22, 54, 58, 60, 63, 65, 66, 68, 70, 72, 137, 145, 150, n.234, 334, 371, 380, 382-388

406  the league against imperialism

D Da tong, 138 Daily Worker, 201, 202, 268 Darsono, 314 Das, Chittaranjan, 350 Delhi Manifesto, 270 Deng Yanda, 143 Diagne, Blaise, 214-218, 225 Die Rote Fahne, 142 Dobos, László – see Gibarti, Louis Doriot, Jacques, 121, 168, 219 Du Bois, W.E.B., 222, 339 Dutch Communist Party – see Communistische Partij Holland Dutch imperialism, 316 Dutt, Clemens, n.45, 166, 168, 177 E Eastern Secretariat of the Communist International, 147, n.157, 169, 170, 172, 174 Éditions du Carrefour, 162 Egmont Palace (Palais d’Egmont), 17, 54, 57-60, 63, 68, 70, 79, 117, 159, 350, 353 Egypt, 19, n.49, 69, 86, 109, 110, 114, 118-120, 122-124, n.129, 159, 171, 191, 217, n.231, 267, 273, 318, 320, 360-362, 378-381, 384, 385, 388 Einstein, Albert, 19, 38, 42 Ethiopia – see Abyssinia Étoile Nord-Africaine (ENA), 82-97, 100, n.103, 120, 224, 226, n.230, 318, 399 Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI), 23, 118, 126, 142-145, 147, 151, 168-170, 175, 316 Executive Committee of the LAI, 19, 22, n.45, 188, 193, 197, 227, 347

F Far Eastern Bureau of the Comintern, 145, 147, 148 Far Eastern Secretariat of the League Against Imperialism (FESLAI), 147, 148 Fascism/Anti-fascism, 21, 29, 58, 61, 91, 93, 120, 121, n.128, 150, 160, 164, 168, 179, 180, 196, 237, 272274, 284, 286, 291, 295, n. 305, 331, 373 Ferdi, Bekar, 19, 166, 168, 177 Fimmen, Edo, 20, 27, 28, 175 First World War, 11, 28, 33, 39, 65, 70, 108, 110-113, n.130, 135, 188, 189, 197, 211, 215-217, 220-222, 311, 320, 354, 400 France, 11, 12, 19, 22, 39, 41, 68, 69, 72, 80, 81, 84, 87-91, 93, 96, 98, 100, 109, 113, 117, n.130, 141, 142, 147, 172, 177, 188, 190, 211, 213, 215-218, 221, 222, 225-228, n.231, n.232, 293, 372, 375, 378 Franco (Bahamonde), Francisco, 273 331 Frankfurt Congress (1929), 22, 27, 30, 70, 89, 108, 122-124, 145, 166-169, 174, 175, 229, 238, 239, 246, 251, 268, 269, 273, n.281, 285, 286, 355 French Communist Party (PCF), 70, 80-84, 87, 91, 95, 99, n.103, 117, 135, 168, 212, 214, 218, 219, 225, 226, 229, n.232, n.234, 290 Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), 97-100, 336, 375, 377, 378, 380383, 391 G Gandhi, Mohandas, 14, 38, 42, 137, 260, 262, 264-271, 289-291, 359, 376, 377, 379 Garvey, Marcus, 221, n.233, 250, 326, 327, 330

index 407

German branch of the CCP (Lü De zhibu), 143 Germany, 11, 19, 22, 35, 41, 118, 138142, 144, 150, n.153, n.155, 160, 161, 167, 168, 171-177, 199, 200, 272, 291, 354 Ghadar Party, 260, 351, Gibarti, Louis, 19, 58, 165, 166, 172 Global South, 12, 21, 53, 54, 277, 326, 382, 385, 387-391 Gross, Babette, 161, 165, 177, 178, n.180 Gumede, Josia Tshangana, 17, 18, 250, 329 Guomindang – see Chinese Nationalist Party Gupta, Shiva Prashad, 269 Gyptner, Richard, 168 H Hadj Ali, Abdelkader, 82, 83, 219 Haiti, 62, 65-69, 250 Hands Off China, 118, 139, 171, 202 Hankou Conference, 169, 261 Hatta, Mohammed, 12, 19, 27, 32, 38, 39, 84-86, 175, 212, 276, 277, 309322, 349, 356, 398, 400 Havana, 145, 335, 371, 374, 382, 384, 385, 388, 389 Haya de la Torre, Víctor Raúl, 58, 6063, 68 Heimo, Mauno, 169 Henderson, Arthur, 196 Hirtzel, Arthur, 193 Hitler, Adolph, 161, 177, 178, 203, 272 Ho Chi Minh, 32, 72, 80, 135, 136, 212 Hong Kong, 352 Hu Hanmin, 136, 139, 140, 146, 147 Hughes, Langston, 331, 339 al-Husseini, Hamdi, 124, 125, 201

I India, 12, 14, 18, 19, 22, 28, 29, 37, 41, n.49, 61, 65, 69, 86, 88, 98, 119, 120, 122, 125, 135-137, 142, 146-148, 159, 165, 169, 171, 174, 187-200, 205, 245, 247, 250, 257277, 283-298, 309, 310, 312, 316, 320, 322, 347-363, 373, 375-383, 385-389, 398 India League for Freedom, 273, 274 Indian communists, 290 Indian Independence League, 266-269 Indian National Congress (INC), 193, 195, 257-276, 268, 285, 288, 309, 316, 319, 350, 354, 357-359, Indian Passport Act (1920), 189 Indian Political Intelligence Service (IPI), 190, 194 Indische Vereeniging – see Perhimpoenan Indonesia Indo-China, 32, 72, 88, 95, 135, 136, 273, 334, 352 Indonesia, 12, 19, 23, 31, 32, 39, 41, n.47, n.49, 54, 85, 86, 88, 96, 135, 146-148, 175, 212, 257, 259, 275277, 309-322, 349, 351-355, 363, 376, 378, 380-383, 386, 387, 398 Indonesia Merdeka, 312, 321 Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU), 327 Inpresskorr, 142, Intercolonial Union (UIC), 212-214, 216, 218, 219, 229, n.230, n.232, 399 International Lenin School, 143, 332 International Red Aid, 92, 176 International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, 164 Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (International Workers Relief, IAH), 118, 139, 148, 160, 162, 166, 171177, 309, 310, 316

408  the league against imperialism

Internationalism, 20, 21, 33, 36, 37, 40-42, n.48, 88, 94, 109, 111, 112, 127, 135, 138, 145, 148, 161, 162, 211, 213, 229, 239, 240, n.254, 263, 277, n.278, 284, 287, 310, 332, 334, 340, 348, 350, 363, 371-373, 379, 382, 389-391, 399 Iran – see Persia Iraq – see Mesopotamia Iwa Koesoema Soemantri, 321 J Japan, 19, 22, 23, 48, 64, 137, 138, 141, 146-151, 167, 168, 176, 203, 241, 243, 247, 274, 284, 296, 312, 350, 356, 360, 397 Java, 36, 136, 148, 273, 313, 315, 317, Jhabvala, S.H., 264 Ji Chaoding, 144 Joesoef, Mohammed, 321 Johnstone, John Wilson, 193 K Kadalie, Clements, 327 Knight, George Wilfrid Holford, 203 Koestler, Arthur, 161, 162, n.182 Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party, KPD), 137, 139, 142-144, 161, 164, 165, 168, 172, 175-177, 179, n. 184 Korea, 19, n.49, 136, 147, 148, 238, 241, 242-3, 247, 250, 318-9, 352, 361, 377 Kouyaté, Tiémoko Garan, 229 Krishna Menon, V.K., 29, 272, 283299 Kuusinen, Otto W., 163, 170, 174 L L’Humanité, 107, 114, 219, 226, 227, n.232, 313 Labour and Socialist International (LSI), 27, 40, 162, 174, n.181

La Guma, Jimmy, 326-340, n.342 La Guma, Justin Alexander (Alex), 38, 325-340 Lahore, 267, 356, 359 Lansbury, George, 19, 20, 41, 42, 203, 224, 259, 285, 287 Latin America, 13, 17, 23, 37, 53-72, 88, 173, 240, 326, 329, 382, 384386, 401 Latinoamericanismo, 63, 64, 68 Le Paria, tribune des populations des colonies, 212, 215, n.232, 313 League Against Imperialism (18981900), 137 League for the Defence of the Negro Race (LDRN), 93, 135, 164, 213, 225, 226, 229, n.234 League of Nations, 34, 94, 109-114, 117, n.128, n.130, 295, 358, 373 Lebanon, 107, 108, 113-116, 119, n.127, n.130 Lenin, V.I., 12, 35, 56-60, 64, 69, 71, n.74, 80, 89, 96, 112, 113, 121, 143, 144, 160, 161, 180, 218, 244, 245, 247, 325-340, n.341, 351, 354, 355, 386, Leninism. 56, 144, 325, 326, 328, 331, 334, 335, 337, 339, 340 Li Lisan, 147 Liao Huanxing (Liao Hansin), 12, 17, 20, 42, 137, 139, 140, 144, 151, 159, 167, 179, 262, 309, 310, 350 Liao Zhongkai, 136 Ligue Contre l’Oppression Coloniale et l’Impérialisme (LCOCI), 61, 88, 92, 118, 170, 172 Lin Yutang, 358, n.368 Liu Shipei, 138 Lohia, Rammanohar, 273, 275 London, 14, 25, 28, 29, 34, 35, n.48, 58, 142, 163, 164, 167, 178, 191, 201, 202, 238, 271-274, 284, 287294, 320, 379

index 409

Lu Zhonglin, 20, 26 Lumumba, Patrice, 336, 379 M MacDonald, Ramsay, 120, 125, 188, 196, 203 Madame Sun Yat-sen/Soong Ching-ling, 19, 42, 195, 247, n.278 Madras Congress (or Annual Session of the Indian National Congress, Madras 1927), 195, 265-267 Malaka, Tan, 135 Malaya, 39, n.50, 147, 148, 362 Manuilsky, Dmitri, 170, 172 Mao Zedong, 140, 141, 277, 377, 378, 383, 386 Maran, René, 215 Mardy Jones, Thomas, 193 Marxism, 55, 141, 144, 326, 328, 333, 337, 339 Maxton, James, 175, 194, 197-199, 204, 247, 286, 288 May Fourth Movement (1919), 138, 141 Meerut Conspiracy Case (1929-1933), 28, 29, 125, 196, 258, 269, 272, 273, n.278, 287-291, 294, 398 Mella, Julio Antonio, 23, 58-63, 68, 70, n.234 Mesopotamia (Iraq), 110, 124, 350 Messali Hadj, Ahmed Ben, 23, 38, 39, 79-100, 318, 375 Mexico, 19, 22, 23, 57-61, 65, 67, 68, n.74, 136, 145, 240, 329, 401 Mexico City, 57-63, 68, 329, 401 MI5, 283, 289, 297, 353 Minzu guoji, 136, 148, 149, n.157 Mononutu, Arnold, 312, 313 Moore, Richard B., 250 Morocco, 23, 108, 120, 214, 218, 224, 322, 355, 362, 363

Münzenberg, Willi, 12, n.15, 19, 22-24, 28, 38, 41, 44, 58, 59, 61, 64, 108, 118, 137, 139, 143, 144, 159-180, n.186, 188, 194, 199-206, 227, 228, 257, 262, 270, 272, 285, 289, n.303, 309, 310, 316, 398, 399, 400 Musso, 314 N Naidu, Sarojini, 359-361 Nanyang, 139, 148, 149 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 362, 378-380, 383, 385 National Arab Congress of Palestine, 121 Nazism, 28, 31, 139, 150, 161, 163, 177, 178, 187, 203 Negritude, 222, 225 Negro Welfare Association, 164 Nehru Report, 1928, 266-269 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 12, 19, 20, 23, 27, 28, 38, 39, 56, 65, 82, 85, 89, 96, 98, 199, 159, 165, 174, 175, 193, 198, 257-277, 283-288, 291-299, 309, 310, 318, 319, 347, 349, 350, 351, 354, 356-358, 360, 361, 363, 373, 375-383, 397 Nehru, Motilal, 262 Nehru, Rameshwari, 347, 359, 361, 362, Nicaragua, 22, 57, 61-64, 66 Nkrumah, Kwame, 379, 381 Non-Aligned Movement, 372, 374, 375, 377, 378, 381-383, 390, 391 O Opium War, 137, 351 Oppressed peoples, 85, 86, 136, 139, 149, 241, 245, 250, 312, 347, 355 Order in Council (1915), 189 Organization for African Unity (OAU), 371-373, 382

410  the league against imperialism

Oriental Branch of the American AntiImperialist League, 145 Ottoman Empire, 11, 108, 109-115, n.128, n.130, 246, 354 P Pacifism, 30, 32, 88, 160, 161, 172, 180, 219, 223, 237, 287, 312, 313, 376 Padmore, George, 29, 66, 229, 296, 339 Pak Cheong-ae (Pak Den Ai), 361, n.369 Pakistan, 362, 377 Palestine, 22, n.49, 107, 109-111, 114, 116-118, 121-126, n.127, n.128, n.132, 201, 202, 258, 273, 386, 391, 397, 398 Pamontjak, Nazir, 317 Pan-Arabism, 13, 64, 373 Pan-Asianism – see also Asianism, 13, 14, 34, 41, n.49, 138, 148, 249, 348, 350-353, 355, 356, n.364 Pan-Islamism, 13, 37, 109-111, n.128, 239, 350, 355, 363 Panchsheel, 376 Pandit, Vijayalakshmi, 299, n.308, 357, 358 Paris, 14, 28, 34, 35, 58, 59, 62-65, 67, 68, 79-81, 85-88, 90, 92, 95, 96, 99, 100, 107, 112, 116, 117, 141, 142, 159, 161, 163, 164, 166, 169, 176179, n.182, 215, 219, 222, 225, 238, 272, 312, 313, 319, 399, 401 Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party), 313, 315 Parti du Peuple Algérien (PPA), 95, 97 Peel, William, 189, 195 Perhimpoenan Indonesia (Indonesian Association, PI), 310-313, 316, 320322 Persia (Iran), 19, 28, n.49, 240, 241, 246, 252, 267, 318, 319, 350, 351

Peru, 23, 58, 63, 65, 145 Petrie, David, 353 Piatnitsky, Osip, 167, 170, 173, 178 Pollitt, Harry, 23, 268, 288, 289, 291, 294 Popular Front, 91, 93-95, 272, 284, 295, 296, n.300 Pringgodigdo, Abdulkarim, 321 Provisional Government, 98, 350, 358 Puerto Rico, 17, 19, 22, 61-63, 67, 68, 71, 72, 240 Purna Swaraj, 267-270, 275 Q Quijano, Carlos, 62, 63, 65, 67-70 R Ramadan Bey, Mohammad Hafiz, 9, 24, 119, Rassemblement Colonial, 95 Rif War, 11, 214, 218 Rivera, Diego, 57, 70 Roland Holst, Henriëtte, 23, 44, n.51 Rolland, Romain, 19, 289, 290, 295 Romero, Carlos, 377 Roy, M.N., 65, 169, 172, 173, n.183, 244, 245, 314 Russia – see also Soviet Union, 11, 25, 68, 70, 138, 141, 161, 163, 170, 205, 244, 267, 298, 331, 332 Russian Archive for Social and Political History (RGASPI), 163 S Sadat, Anwar, 361 Saklatvala, Sharpurji, 123, 187, 188, 190-200, 205, 206, 262, 263, 287290, 294, n.304 Samuel, Herbert, 203, 204 San Francisco, 145, 351, 357, 358, 361 Sangnier, Marc, 312 Sarekat Islam, 313, 316, 322

index 411

Sarekat Kaoem Boeroeh Indonesia (Indonesian Workers’ Union, SKBI), 321 Sarekat Rakjat, 316 Sastroamidjojo, Ali, 311, 321 Save the Emperor Society (Baohuanghui), 137 Second World Congress of the LAI – see Frankfurt Congress Second World War, 21, 30, 32, 37, 38, 42, 44, 54, 67, 72, 296, 298, 315, 322, 331, 332, 336, 356, 373 Semaoen, 314, 316, 317 Sen Katayama, 24, 350 Senghor, Lamine, 13, 23, 32, 38, 41, 42, 85, 86, 96, 135, 137, 159, 211230, n.230-n.235, 249, 399, 400 Service de Contrôle et d’Assistance aux Indigènes (CAI), 214, 221, 223-225, n.230-234 Shanghai, 12, 29, 136, 138, 140, 141, 143, 145, 146, 148, 149, 171, 261, 352 Shipman, Charles, n.73, 136 Singapore, 36, n.50, 148 Sino-Indian Resolution, 352, 359 Sino-Japanese War, 137, 356 Sjahrir, Sutan, 311 Slavery, 18, 53, 89, 211, 217, 218, 221, 222, 237, 250 Sneevliet, Henk, 136 Sociaal Democratische Arbeiderspartij (Dutch Social Democratic Labour Party, SDAP), 320 South Africa, 17-19, 22, 38, 41, n.49, 249, 325-340, 391, 397 South African Coloured People’s Organization (SACPO), 332, 333 South African Communist Party, 325, 329, 330, 332-337 Soviet Union (USSR), 11, 25, 72, 88, 109-113, 139, 150, 164, 167, 168, 173, 179, 192, 197, 198, 239,

243, 247, 274, 276, 298, 325, 328, 329-332, 335-340, 347, 355, 377, 383-387, 401 Spain, 29, 61, 63, 65, 67, 68, 71, 203, 273, 274, 283, 284, 295, 331 Spanish Civil War, 284, 331 Special Branch, 201 Srinivasa Iyengar, S., 262, 354 Sudan, 362 Suez Crisis, 336, 362, 379 Sukarno (Soekarno), 32, 54, 96, 275, 321, 349, 376, 380, 381, 387, 397, 398, Sun Yat-sen, 36, 42, 51, 135, 136, 138140, 144, 148-151, 224, 353 Sun Yat-sen, Madam – see Madame Sun Yat-sen/Soong Ching-ling Swaraj, 264-270, 275, 289 Syria, 11, n.49, 86, 88, 93, 107-122, n.128, n.130, n.131, 172, 224, 258, 273, 318, 322, 353, 398, 401 Syrian Revolt (1925), 11, 107-109, 115-119, 258 Syrian-Palestinian Congress, 110, 111, 117, 121 T Tagore, Rabindranath, 352 Taiwanese Communist Party, 147 Taroenomihardjo, Gatot, 321 Tashkent, n.49, 334, 338, 355, 363 Tata, J.N., 190, 191 Tata, Ratan, 190 The Chinese Vanguard, 146 The Netherlands, 20, 23, 41, 42, 188, 310-322 The Philippines, 19, 22, 37, 39, 61, 137, 145-148, 150, 352 Third World(ism), 31, 53, 54, 60, 63, 64, 70, 72, 84, 99, 336, 340, 372378, 380, 382-391, 397, 400, 401 Thögersen, Hans, n.183, 270 Tianxia, 138

412  the league against imperialism

Tito, Josip Broz, 378-380, 383, 384 Tokyo, 14, 138, 350, 351 Touré, Ahmed Sékou, 379 Tricontinental(ism), 13, 54, 64, 69-72, 371, 374, 382-389 Tunisia, 82, 86, 88, 362 Turkey, 166, 267, 354 Twain, Mark, 137 Twenty-One Demands (1915), 141 U Ugarte, Manuel, 61, 68, 70 UNCTAD, 372, 382, 390 Union Intercoloniale (Intercolonial Union), 80, 82, 86, 95, 135, 212214, 218, 229 Union of the Oppressed Peoples of the East (Dongfang beiyapo minzu lianhehui), 136 United Front Policy, 11, 12, 24-27, 35, 36, 167, 179, 293 United Nations, 14, n.308, 357, 358, 361, 371-373, 375, 378, 379, 382, 390 United States of America, 11, 13, 17, 22, 34, n.48, 54, 57, 61-66, 68-72, 143-146, 148, 166, 169, 171, 173, 197, 222, 228, 249, 276, 283, 286, 297, 329, 350, 357, 358, 377, 378, 385 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), 327 Uruguay, 22, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68

V Vaillant-Couturier, Paul, 219 Varga Bureau, 142 Vasconcelos, José, 17, 18, n.45, 57, 58, 61, 65-70, 240 Venezuela, 63 Vietnam – see Indo-China W Wafd Party, n.129, 379 Wallinger, John, 190 Wang Jingwei, 140 Wang Ming, 144 Webb, Sidney, 201, 202 Wilson, Woodrow, 11, 69, 81, 112, 247, 328, 373 Windmüller, Ella, 143, n.183 Wittfogel, Karl August, 169, n.183¯ Workers International Relief (WIR) – see Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (International Workers Relief, IAH) Workers’ Party of America, 136, 145, 169 World Peace Council (WPC), 361 Wu Zhaohao, alias Petrashevsky, 142 Y Yazbik, Yusuf Ibrahim, 107-109, 112, 114, 117, 123, 127 YMCA, 140, 141 Yugoslavia, 374, 378-381, 383-385, 388 Yun Daiying, 141