The Elusive History of the Pan-African Congress, 1919–27

Hodder, Jake

Abstract

This paper considers the meetings of the interwar Pan-African Congress movement. It examines the Congress in the context of how conferencing became a dominant mode of international politics in the 1920s and the opportunities this offered to non-state actors. The Congress exemplified the hope which race reformers placed in the new international system established after the First World War, and in the League of Nations specifically. The paper considers three key conferencing elements in turn: delegates, venues, and resolutions. In each case, organizers mobilized the framework of conferencing to validate their political demands within this international system whilst, also in each case, their constrained circumstances required them to be strategically ambiguous with the facts of their meetings. As such, the paper encourages a broader methodological reflection on how historians approach seemingly unreliable historical sources. I argue that inconsistencies in reports of the Congress are themselves important historical artefacts of the political manoeuvres undertaken by race reformers. Foregrounding these strategies allows us to consider how political authority was circumscribed in the past, the resourcefulness of those on the political margins, and the promise and failure of international governance on the race question in the 1920s.

Citation

Hodder, J. (2021). The Elusive History of the Pan-African Congress, 1919–27. History Workshop Journal, 91(1), 113-131. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbaa032

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 18, 2020
• Online Publication Date: May 29, 2021
• Publication Date: 2021-04
• Deposit Date: Oct 28, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 30, 2021
• Journal: History Workshop Journal
• Print ISSN: 1363-3554
• Electronic ISSN: 1477-4569
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 91
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 113-131
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbaa032
• Keywords: History and Philosophy of Science; History
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4996266
• Publisher URL: https://academic.oup.com/hwj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/hwj/dbaa032/6288529