Jonathan HARRIS, King's College London, United Kingdom
Ruth CRAGGS, King's College London, United Kingdom
Fiona MCCONNELL, Oxford University, United Kingdom
Recent trends in political geography towards the study of everyday human and non-human agency at various scales have sharpened focus on the seemingly mundane connections and practices relegated to the background of geopolitical narratives of the state. One such area of focus is on the production and transmission of knowledge through international conferences, exhibitions, summits and scholarships, the geographies of which demonstrate the uneven, unequal scope and nature of internationalism(s). Our paper traces the ways that concepts of internationalism were developed and contested in and through spaces and practices of diplomatic training in the mid/late twentieth century.
From the late 1950s, African countries emerged from colonial status to represent themselves internationally as sovereign states, triggering an expansion in diplomatic training, as hundreds of African diplomats-in-training travelled to the global North to attend bespoke programmes run by universities and diplomatic corps. This paper focuses on the geopolitics of this training, tracing the development of courses in Geneva (Graduate Institute), Paris (Institut des Hautes Etudes d’Outre Mer) and Oxford (Foreign Service Programme) from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s. During this period, fundamental questions were raised about how international relations should be practised and taught, how theoretical and practical knowledge should be translated both in the postcolonial, African context and between French and English on bilingual courses, and about where training should take place, as increasingly courses were relocated to Africa from Europe (e.g. Dakar, Yaoundé, Nairobi).
Drawing on early findings of ongoing archival research, this paper unpacks the politics of internationalism being played out in this training, and highlights how it both challenged and maintained colonial values and structures in international relations
Mots clés : Geopolitics|Internationalism|Decolonisation|Training|Diplomacy
A104377JH