(Dis)continuities in postcolonial internationalism across three courses
Fontaine de l’Observatoire: four continents holding up the celestial globe (Source: EUtouring.com)
This month’s blog is derived from our presentation to the centennial congress of the International Geographical Union, hosted in Paris. The occasion presented us with the opportunity to reflect on the contested histories and geographies of internationalism, particularly in relation to postcolonial diplomatic training.
We understand internationalism as a distinct political project with a contested, non-linear history and uneven geography – to the point that it may be more accurate to speak in terms of internationalisms. Decolonisation was a key historical moment where the fulfilment of the internationalist principle of self-determination led not only to a rapid rise in the number of sovereign states, but also overcame the colour line that had a maintained White, European domination of international spaces.
In both anglophone and francophone scholarship there is an important literature on the public diplomacy worked out in the transnational social circulation of diplomats, scientists, students and activists. The recent Placing Internationalism project led by Steve Legg, Mike Heffernan, Jake Hodder and Ben Thorpe focuses on conferences as key places where internationalism emerged in the post-war period. In chapters by Peter Docking and Marc Matera, the focus is on decolonial and anti-imperial conferencing – particularly how the dynamics of ‘host’ and ‘guest’ shaped proceedings, with imperial hosts (in this case the British government) attempting to shape the conference environment to influence its outcomes. Like earlier work on the geographies of the international conference, they highlight the ways in which geopolitics are performed – through both constructions of legitimacy and articulations of dissent.
Other work has focused particularly on the geopolitics of scholarship programmes in for African students during the Cold War as a form of both US and USSR cultural assistance, which African students pragmatically navigated throughout the process of decolonisation. The cité internationale universitaire in Paris provides an important case study, both as a site for the articulation of education, pacificism and internationalism, and in its international student mobilisations during decolonisation. Françoise Blum details how the African students living in the Maison de la France d’Outre Mer “rose up against the arbitrary mode of governance applied uniquely in the colonial student halls” before formal decolonisation, and later in 1968 demanded a change of name and status corresponding to the reality of independence, throwing the ‘colonialist’ director out of his office.
Enacting internationalism through training
Continuing this kind of historical, geopolitical enquiry, our question is how the different diplomatic training programmes we are studying reproduced and circulated different internationalisms. Whilst international in their outlook and ambition, each course contained a particular focus on their host country’s foreign policy and diplomatic philosophy.
At the Geneva Carnegie course, whilst technical skills such as international law and economics were taught by an international team of academics, training in diplomatic practice was primarily delivered by serving Swiss diplomats. Whilst according to the Kwame Nkrumah’s private secretary A.L. Adu[1], Geneva was chosen to host the course in part due to the appeal its strict neutrality held for African leaders, the Swiss foreign ministry nonetheless consistently sought opportunities to build its influence – particularly in establishing and protecting economic interests in Africa. It would have been helped by the course’s privileging of a Swiss-style liberal internationalist doctrine of political neutrality and non-interference in domestic affairs.
The Paris course was located on Avenue de l’Observatoire, close to the fountain pictured above. As the example below shows, this classical image of international cooperation was extensively in the course’s promotional material. The central figure represents Africa, with a broken chain around her ankle, and joins the other continental allegories in upholding the world. The course’s directors believed the French model of centralised governance was uniquely suited to the needs of developing countries, and its mission was in many ways an extension of the colonial ‘mission civilisatrice’. It included a placement of several months in a French embassy or consulate, privileging bureaucratic process and the rigorous application of universal theoretical principles. A continuation of the former Ecole Coloniale, it represented internationalism coloured by French exceptionalism, and a strong role for the state in economic and social affairs.
Institut International d’Administration Publique Brochure, c. 1980s (Source: Archives Nationales de France)
The Oxford course, which like its Parisian counterpart grew out of a prior course for colonial officers, differed in many ways pedagogically and institutionally. Its primary focus was on soft skills and networking. Its trainees were called ‘members’, placed within Oxford colleges, and given as much as possible of the ‘Oxford experience’. Rather than technical training, its director advocated a focus on soft skills – all the more so to ensure the success of “a genuinely multi-national school for the training of young diplomats”, where it was paramount that trainees “develop a sense of unity and purpose as a group”.[2] It privileged pragmatism and policy flexibility, but above all espoused model of internationalism predicated on strong interpersonal relations within a liberal framework.
Western hegemony unchallenged?
Different understandings and articulations of internationalism were therefore a part of the geopolitics of these courses. Formal diplomatic training in an international environment was a new phenomenon, but one, arguably, that remained firmly within the hegemonic Western liberal framework inflected by the national perspectives of host states. The common rationale and format of these courses point towards a broadly liberal internationalism – new states needed help, but were joining a community of sovereign states within a world system, working together for mutual benefit. Each functioning state within the world system would be a benefit to all others by facilitating trade, development and peace. Underlying this of course was an understanding of the soft power value of attempting to influence the diplomats from newly independent countries and maintain friendly relations with former colonies. It also highlights the assumption that the world system was a settled one, which countries in the global North would continue to dominate.
Within a few years however, diplomatic training courses and their attendant internationalisms were moving away from a Eurocentric model, to be more centred on an African diplomacy that was asserting itself internationally. Both in Europe and in Africa, diplomatic training courses provided space for the reinforcing of Western liberal internationalism, but also for it to be questioned, contested, and undermined.
[1] HEI 2259/2 Report by Professor Norman D. Palmer prepared for the meeting on January 26th, 1960 of the Advisory Committee on the Young Diplomats Program, Appendix A pp.2
[2] FSP papers, Reflection on 1973 discussions: June 1973