This post outlines the genesis of ‘Rethinking Transnational Activism through Regional Perspectives: Reflections, Literatures and Cases’, an article in the 2024 volume of Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. As a coming together of scholars in this field, the article explores through case studies the regional dimensions that influence historical transnational movements.
Here, Daniel Laqua and Thomas Davies—who organised an initial workshop and served as lead authors—share the background and experiences connected to this article, which collates the perspectives and voices of ten historians.
The 2024 volume of Transactions of the Royal Historical Society is now available online, published by Cambridge University Press.
The manifold histories of social and political activism are full of instances that saw activists frame their causes in universal terms: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s dictum ‘workers of the world, unite’ and the notion that ‘sisterhood is global’ are but two prominent examples.
In such cases, the categories associated with activism were framed as universally applicable even though there were evident limitations in terms of both the assumptions and modi operandi connected to activism. A rich historiography has noted such boundaries. At the same time, more is to be done in assessing how global framings of activism are conditioned by regional contexts and concerns.
Many activist causes were connected across national borders, and staked universal claims, but in fact remained rooted within regional contexts. These are aspects that we explored in a workshop on ‘Transnational Activism in a Divided World: The Regional within the Global’, held at Northumbria University with support from a Royal Historical Society grant in May 2023 and which gave rise to an article—’Rethinking Transnational Activism through Regional Perspectives: Reflections, Literatures and Cases’—which now appears in this year’s volume of Transactions of the Royal Historical Society published in December 2024.
In practical terms, our project aimed at the collaborative development of a publication that would integrate contributions from scholars with different regional specialisms and expertise on different kinds of activism. There were some limitations on what this one-off event could do: the RHS scheme providing funding of £1,000, and while we secured further financial support from Northumbria University, our budget did not stretch to covering transcontinental travel. In the end, our event featured ten contributors from institutions in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands (though the array of national and cultural backgrounds was broader than the list of institutional affiliations).
One additional feature of our workshop was the inclusion of early-career researchers: we were keen to involve them from the outset and, to this end, issued an open call for funded workshop places, which were awarded to Pilar Requejo de Lamo and Matthew Hurst.
Our approach ‘served to highlight how regional dimensions could be understood both from diverse scholarly vantage points and in terms of different historical experiences’.
In the run-up to the workshop, each contributor prepared a historiographical discussion paper, highlighting the state of research in their specific field. Our meeting in Newcastle then allowed us to take another step: rather than summarising their discussion papers, each participant zoomed in on a specific case illustrating the regional features of transnational activism.
This dual approach served to highlight how regional dimensions could be understood both from diverse scholarly vantage points and in terms of different historical experiences. As a third step, our workshop included break-out segments bringing these aspects into dialogue, with a view to drawing out the key themes of our planned publication.
Cover of Ablɔɖe Safui (The Key to Freedom), a newspaper edited by Holiday Komedja, whose print activism in the Ghana-Togo borderlands of West Africa is discussed in the article. With thanks to Kate Skinner for the image and case study.
Articles with significant numbers of co-authors … offer opportunities for more intensive integration and dialogue than multi-article edited volumes and roundtable pieces.
One key decision involved the choice of format for our joint output. A themed journal issue would have been one option—but not for the Transactions, given the limitations of space. A ‘roundtable’ discussion would have been a second possibility but while we understand the value of such texts, we were keen to produce an integrated piece that would go beyond a research conversation. The selected format—an extended, collectively written piece—was developed in cooperation with the Transactions editors, whom we thank for their support throughout the process.
Articles with significant numbers of co-authors have to date been rare in the historical discipline, but they offer opportunities for more intensive integration and dialogue than multi-article edited volumes and roundtable pieces (in which each author’s contribution is presented individually). We considered such an approach to be especially helpful to meet our aim of bringing together insights on a wide range of regional contexts, and of putting such cases into direct dialogue.
To effectively integrate this material, it was important for the writing process to be a genuinely collaborative venture.
Our article for Transactions consists of two principal parts. The first concentrates on historiography, considering how literatures from three macro-regional contexts—South Asia, Western Europe and Latin America—illustrate the ways in which regions may shape activism and activism may shape regions, drawing on the expertise of Maria Framke, Anne-Isabelle Richard and Patricia Oliart.
The second part then turns to case studies. The first pair of examples—drawing on Pilar Requejo de Lamo’s research on Esperantism and Charlotte Alston’s work on Tolstoyans—elucidates the ways in which purportedly universal causes reflected regional roots and were adapted differently across wider regional contexts. The second set of cases—building on Kate Skinner’s research into the Ghana-Togo borderland, Robert Kramm’s work on early Rastafarianism, and Matthew Hurst’s enquiry into transnational advocacy in Hong Kong—unpack different ways in which imperial contexts necessitate rethinking the nature of the regional features of transnational activism to those standardly assumed.
Boat dwellings in the Yaumatei typhoon shelter (1979), relating to a case study discussed in the article (based on Matthew Hurst’s research). Image by Ko Tim-keung, via Hong Kong Memory.
To effectively integrate this material, it was important for the writing process to be a genuinely collaborative venture. As lead authors, we worked to combine and connect the co-authors’ contributions on each regional historiography and case study. Over the course of the article’s preparation, we shared six different drafts with them, ensuring that there were several opportunities to comment and revise.
The feedback from the Transactions’ editors and reviewers provided further, highly valuable perspectives. We hope the outcome is an article that is helpful not only in widening horizons on the regional dimensions of the history of transnational activism, but also in illustrating the possibilities for collaborative writing in the historical discipline beyond traditional formats.
About the authors
Daniel Laqua is Associate Professor of European History at Northumbria University.
He has worked extensively on the history of international movements and organisations. In 2023, Bloomsbury published his monograph on Activism across Borders since 1870: Causes, Campaigns and Conflict in and beyond Europe.
Thomas Davies is Reader in the Department of International Politics at City St George’s, University of London.
His books include NGOs: A New History of Transnational Civil Society and The Possibilities of Transnational Activism: The Campaign for Disarmament Between the Two World Wars.
About Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
Transactions is the flagship academic journal of the Royal Historical Society, published by Cambridge University Press. Today’s journal publishes a wide range of research articles and commentaries on historical approaches, practice and debate. In addition to traditional 10-12,000 word research articles, Transactions also welcomes shorter, innovative commentary articles. In 2023, we introduced ‘The Common Room’—a section of the journal dedicated to commentaries and think pieces by academic historians and historical practitioners.
The journal welcomes submissions dealing with any geographical area from the early middle ages to the very recent past. The journal’s editor and editorial boards are interested in articles that cover entirely new ground, thematically or methodologically, as well as those engaging critically on established themes in existing literatures. You can read more here from the journal’s editor, Jan Machielsen, about Transactions and forthcoming content.
Transactions welcomes submissions covering all historical periods and regions, from authors working in all forms of history. We also invite articles from authors at every career stage. In line with the Society’s commitment to supporting postgraduate and early career historians, the journal seeks to engage constructively and positively with first-time authors.
The journal’s editorial team provides prompt responses and peer review. Articles are published with Cambridge University Press, online via CUP’s FirstView, and in an annual volume.
If you’re currently researching an article or a think piece, please consider Transactions as the journal in which to publish your work. Articles may be submitted here.
From August 2024, all articles accepted for publication in Transactions are published open access, without a charge for any author or reader. This ensures content published in Transactions can be shared, circulated and read by the widest possible readership. We very much hope this initiative will encourage a growing range of submissions from authors, worldwide, including those who practice history outside Higher Education, in related sectors or as independent researchers.
HEADER IMAGE: Detail of the cover of Ablɔɖe Safui (The Key to Freedom), a newspaper edited by Holiday Komedja