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Why Did the Interwar Anticolonial Movement Fracture? - The 1927 Brussels Congress and the League Against Imperialism | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

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Welcome to Sleepy Facts About History. In February
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1927, a young doctoral student from Java named
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Mohamed Hatta walked into a palace in Brussels
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and found something that should not have been
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possible. More than 170 delegates from 37 countries
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gathered in the heart of Imperial Europe to discuss
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the abolition of colonial rule. Among them were
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future leaders, radical organizers, and activists
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who disagreed about nearly everything except
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the central proposition that empire was illegitimate.
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This episode explores how these individuals found
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each other, what roots carried them into the
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same room, and what they imagined they were building.
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The story traces the transnational circuits of
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resistance that emerged after the First World
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War. Imperial capitals like London and Paris
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became unexpected sites of organization where
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colonial students, exiles and workers met in
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boarding houses and cafes to debate politics.
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From the founding of the League Against Imperialism
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to the distribution of anti -colonial newspapers
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by sailors in port cities, the episode examines
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how the very infrastructure of empire was repurposed
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to foster global solidarity. It also follows
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the severe colonial surveillance these networks
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provoked and the ideological fractures that eventually
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caused the movement to collapse. I kept returning
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to one question while working on this episode.
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How do people begin to imagine the end of a system
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that seems permanent? These interwar networks
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did not win independence on their own, but they
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made decolonization thinkable. I wanted to understand
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the courage and improvisation required to connect
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distant struggles before the post -war world
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made those struggles a reality. In February 1927,
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a young man from the Dutch East Indies named
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Mohamed Hatta stepped off a train into the winter
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cold of Brussels. He was 24 years old. a doctoral
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student in economics, and the papers in his pocket
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identified him as a colonial subject of the Netherlands.
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The building he walked toward, the Palais Mondial,
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rose with the confident architecture of internationalism.
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It had broad steps, tall windows, and the promise
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of cooperation among nations. Yet Hatter knew
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what the building's funders did not advertise.
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Much of its construction had been paid for with
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profits extracted from the Congo. Inside, he
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found something that should not have been possible.
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More than 170 delegates from 37 countries and
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territories, most from colonized regions, had
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gathered in the heart of Imperial Europe to discuss
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the abolition of empire itself. Among those present
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were Jawaharlal Nehru from India, representing
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the Indian National Congress, Song Qingling from
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China, widow of Sun Yat -sen. Lamin Senghor from
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Senegal, a wounded veteran of the French army
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who had become a radical anti -colonial organizer.
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Massali Hadje from Algeria, who had later found
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the Algerian nationalist movement. There were
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delegates from Vietnam, from the Philippines,
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from Syria, from the Caribbean, and from across
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Africa. Some were communists. Others were liberal
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constitutionalists. Some were pan -Africanists,
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others pan -Arabists, and others religious reformers.
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They disagreed about nearly everything. They
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disagreed about the shape of post -colonial society,
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the role of religion in politics, and the legitimacy
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of armed struggle. But they agreed on the central
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proposition that colonial rule was illegitimate
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and should end. This gathering, the founding
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congress of the League Against Imperialism, raises
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a question that this episode will pursue. How
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did these people find each other? What roots
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carried a student from Java, a veteran from Senegal,
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and a lawyer from India into the same room in
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Belgium? And what did they imagine they were
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building, not merely for their own colonies,
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but for the system of empire as a whole? To understand
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who was in that room, we need to trace the circuits
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that brought them there. The First World War
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had mobilized millions of colonial subjects as
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soldiers and laborers. Indian troops fought in
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Mesopotamia and France. African soldiers served
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in East Africa and on the Western Front. Chinese
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laborers dug trenches in Flanders. Vietnamese
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workers loaded ships in Marseille. The war was
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fought with imperial propaganda about freedom,
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self -determination, and the rights of small
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nations. When it ended, those words circulated
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back to the colonies along the same routes that
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had carried men to the front. The Peace Conference
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of Versailles in 1919 produced the League of
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Nations and its mandate system. Former German
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territories in Africa and the Middle East, along
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with former Ottoman Arab provinces, were placed
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under the administration of Britain, France,
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and other powers. The official framing was tutelage.
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Preparation for self -rule. The actual effect
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was the continuation and in some cases the expansion
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of imperial control. For many who had hoped the
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war would bring genuine change, this was a profound
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disappointment. It became a catalyst for organization.
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But the war had also created mobility. Colonial
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subjects who had served or worked in Europe had
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seen the metropoles from the inside. Some stayed.
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Others returned with new connections and new
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expectations. Meanwhile, imperial economies required
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continued movement. Students traveled to London
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and Paris for education that their colonies could
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not provide. Sailors manned the ships that connected
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port cities across the Atlantic, Indian Ocean,
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and Mediterranean. Workers migrated to industrial
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centers in search of wages. Exiles fled repression.
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in one colony only to find themselves in another
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imperial capital, where they encountered others
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in similar circumstances. These circuits produced
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places of unexpected encounter. In London, the
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India office and the colonial office administered
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vast territories from Whitehall. Nearby, in Camden
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or Bloomsbury, Indian students lived in boarding
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houses where four or five young men might share
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a room, cook together on Sundays, and debate
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politics late into the night. The West African
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Students' Union formed in London in 1925. Its
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members met in cramped rooms above shops, wrote
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letters to newspapers, and organized lectures
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that drew modest crowds. The India League brought
7:43
together metropolitan sympathizers and colonial
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activists. It held public meetings where the
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audience might include curious Labour Party members.
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curious journalists and police informants taking
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notes in the back row. In Paris, the experience
8:00
was different but parallel. Algerian workers
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crowded into cheap hotels in the Latin Quarter
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or the industrial suburbs. The Étoile Nord -Africaine
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organized them from 1926 onward, holding meetings
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in cafés where mint tea was served alongside
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revolutionary pamphlets. The Ligue Défense de
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la Race Negre, founded by critics of the Senegalese
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deputy Blaise Diané and later developed by Lamine
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Senghor, published the journal La Race Negre
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from a small office near the Gare du Nord. Its
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editors worked on the hand press when funds allowed
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and they skipped issues when paper became too
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expensive. The Pan -African Congresses, organized
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by W .E .B. Dubois, demonstrated the possibilities
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and limits of this transnational space the first
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congress met in paris in 1919 alongside the versailles
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conference with 57 delegates from 15 countries
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subsequent congresses gathered in london and
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lisbon in 1921 in london and paris in 1923 and
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in new york in 1927 the 1921 london session held
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at the Central Hall in Westminster, brought together
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African and Caribbean delegates who had traveled
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from Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Jamaica, and Trinidad.
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They were modest in size and immediate influence.
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But they brought together activists in sustained
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conversation. They established a pattern that
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would repeat the imperial capital as a site where
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colonial subjects could organize against the
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very empire that had brought them there. The
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Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the founding
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of the Communist International in 1919 added
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another dimension. Moscow became a node in the
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anti -colonial network. It offered something
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that liberal or nationalist organizations could
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not. Substantial funding, printing facilities,
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training schools, and an explicit theoretical
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framework that identified imperialism as a structural
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feature of capitalism. peoples of the East in
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1920 brought nearly 2 ,000 delegates to Azerbaijan.
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Many came from Muslim regions of the Russian
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Empire and from Persia, Turkey, and Afghanistan.
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They met in a converted opera house, heard speeches
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through interpreters in multiple languages, and
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debated whether anti -imperial struggle should
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prioritize national independence or socialist
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revolution. The Communist University of the Twilers
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of the East, established in Moscow in 1921, trained
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cadres from across Asia and Africa in a converted
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monastery on the Volga. Its curriculum mixed
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Marxist theory with practical instruction in
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propaganda and organization. For some anti -colonial
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activists, this was a genuine alternative to
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imperial rule. For others, It was a troubling
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association with a foreign power and an alien
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ideology. By the mid -1920s, then, a transnational,
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anti -colonial public sphere existed. It was
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not unified. It was not coordinated. It was fragmented
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across ideologies, regions, and personal rivalries.
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But it was real. Newspapers circulated, sometimes
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carried by sailors in their luggage, hidden among
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shirts and shoes, passed from hand to hand in
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port cities congresses met personal connections
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formed across imperial boundaries and it was
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into this space that the league against imperialism
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stepped with ambitions greater than any previous
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organization these circuits produced not just
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conversation but organization the league against
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imperialism is the most ambitious attempt to
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coordinate them the league was the creation of
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Willy Münzenberg, a German communist organizer
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who had built a remarkable apparatus of international
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solidarity organizations in Weimar Berlin. Münzenberg
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understood that the Comintern's anti -colonial
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work had been largely theoretical. He was confined
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to congresses and resolutions that circulated
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among party cadres but rarely reached colonial
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subjects themselves. He proposed something different.
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a broad coalition that would bring communists
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together with non -communist nationalists, liberals,
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socialists, and religious reformers in a common
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front against empire. The Comintern agreed to
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support it, providing funding and political backing.
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The relationship would prove contentious from
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the start. The Brussels Congress of February
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1927 was the founding moment. The Palais Mondial
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was chosen for its symbolic association with
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internationalism, but the choice also carried
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irony that was not lost on the delegates. The
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building had been constructed with colonial prophets,
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and Belgian police watched the proceedings from
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the hallways, taking notes on the speakers and
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photographing the audience. Some delegates faced
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harassment or threats of expulsion. The Congress
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issued a manifesto calling for complete independence
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for all colonies, the withdrawal of foreign troops,
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and the abolition of the mandate system it established
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a permanent organization with a secretariat in
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berlin a journal called the anti -imperialist
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review and national sections intended to coordinate
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work in individual countries the league's operations
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reveal how anti -colonial networks actually function
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in practice the berlin secretariat staffed largely
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by german communists under munzenberg's direction
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served as a clearinghouse for information funding
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and strategy communication with national sections
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happened through a combination of formal correspondence
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couriers carrying messages across borders and
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the personal travels of activists who would stopping
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berlin to report and receive instructions funding
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moved through channels that were deliberately
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opaque there were donations from sympathetic
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trade unions in europe subsidies from the Comintern
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that arrived in irregular installments, and small
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contributions from diaspora associations that
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could barely cover their own rent. The Anti -Imperialist
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Review gathered reports through a network of
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correspondents. These were journalists, activists,
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and sympathetic missionaries who wrote from colonial
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territories, often at considerable personal risk.
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The editorial staff in Berlin had limited ability
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to verify these reports. They published what
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they received, sometimes with caveats, sometimes
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not. The result was a newspaper that was simultaneously
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a vital information channel and an occasional
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conduit for rumor. Manzenberg's publishing empire
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gave the League material capacity that earlier
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organizations had lacked. He controlled printing
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presses that could produce pamphlets in German,
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French, English, Dutch, and other languages.
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He had distribution networks through European
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leftist organizations that could move publications
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to ports and then across imperial boundaries.
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This was not mass media in the modern sense.
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Print runs were small, sometimes a few thousand
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copies, sometimes a few hundred, but they reached
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audiences that metropolitan newspapers ignored
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entirely. The League moved specific forms of
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knowledge across borders in concrete ways. When
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British colonial authorities arrested communist
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and trade union leaders in India in the Meerut
16:19
conspiracy case of 1929, charging them with conspiracy
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to establish a republic, the League's response
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was operational, not merely rhetorical. The Berlin
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Secretariat organised defence committees in London
16:33
and Paris. It raised funds for legal representation
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through appeals to British trade unionists and
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Labour Party members. It published regular updates
16:44
in the Anti -Imperialist Review that framed the
16:47
trial as an exposure of British repression rather
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than a narrow legal proceeding. The trial lasted
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nearly four years. The defendants were held in
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a specially constructed courtroom in Murrett,
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and the proceedings generated thousands of pages
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of documentation that became, paradoxically,
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a resource for anti -colonial education. The
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League did not create the mere defendants' politics,
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but it amplified their case and connected it
17:17
to a global audience that would otherwise have
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known nothing of their situation. The League
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also attempted to support the Rif Republic in
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Morocco, where Abdel Krim had led resistance
17:28
to Spanish and French colonial forces from 1921
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to 1926. By the time of the Brussels Congress,
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The Reef Republic had already been crushed by
17:39
combined French and Spanish military force. But
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the League continued to publicize its memory,
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organizing protests in European cities against
17:48
French colonial policy and attempting to channel
17:51
medical supplies and funds to Moroccan refugees.
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These efforts were largely symbolic. The League
17:59
had no military capacity, no direct access to
18:03
Morocco and limited funds. but they demonstrated
18:06
how the organization attempted to make distant
18:09
struggles present in European consciousness.
18:12
They also demonstrated how its operational reach
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consistently exceeded its practical effect. The
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League moved people as well as papers. Mohamed
18:23
Hatta, after attending the Brussels Congress,
18:26
returned to the Netherlands and then to Indonesia.
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His continued activism led to his arrest and
18:32
imprisonment by Dutch authorities in 1927. Jawaharlal
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Nehru attended the 1927 Brussels Congress and
18:42
the subsequent Congress in Frankfurt in 1929.
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That smaller gathering revealed the growing tensions
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between communist and non -communist members.
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His involvement with the League connected him
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to a global anti -colonial conversation that
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would shape his later leadership of independent
19:00
India. George Padmore, a Trinidadian journalist
19:04
who had joined the Communist Party and worked
19:07
in the Comintern's colonial bureau, edited The
19:10
Negro Worker from Hamburg. He used the port city's
19:14
shipping connections to distribute the paper
19:16
across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds.
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The paper was small, often poorly printed on
19:24
cheap paper that smudged. and frequently intercepted
19:27
by colonial authorities in ports from Lagos to
19:30
Colombo. But it reached harbors where sailors
19:34
carried copies ashore in their jacket pockets.
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From there, the papers passed into the hands
19:40
of dockworkers, market vendors, and students,
19:43
who passed them among themselves until the pages
19:47
disintegrated. This movement of people, papers,
19:51
and funds was not invisible to the powers they
19:53
opposed. The League's very existence as a coordinating
19:57
body made it a target for coordinated colonial
20:00
surveillance. This surveillance itself became
20:04
internationalized in revealing ways. British,
20:08
French, Dutch and Belgian police exchanged reports
20:11
on League members, monitored their travel and
20:15
pressured governments to suppress the organization.
20:18
The colonial office in London maintained files
20:21
on Nehru's movements, on Padmore's publications,
20:25
and on the Brussels Congress itself. French surveillance
20:28
of the Étoile Nord -Africaine and Messaly -Hardy
20:32
intensified after his Brussels appearance. Police
20:35
noted his contacts, his speeches and his potential
20:39
for mobilizing Algerian workers in Paris. Dutch
20:43
authorities tracked Hatta and other Indonesian
20:45
students in the Netherlands. They opened their
20:48
mail, attended their meetings and reported their
20:51
conversations to the Hague. The surveillance
20:54
was not merely reactive. It was systematic in
20:58
intention, if uneven in execution. Colonial police
21:02
forces developed techniques of transnational
21:05
monitoring that mirrored the networks they sought
21:07
to disrupt. Photographs of suspected activists
21:11
circulated between imperial capitals, pasted
21:15
into files with tight descriptions of their politics
21:18
and associates. Passenger lists were checked
21:21
against watch lists before ships departed. Postal
21:25
correspondence was opened and copied. The seals
21:28
carefully replaced so the recipients would not
21:30
know. Informants reported on meetings in London
21:34
boarding houses and Paris cafes. Sometimes they
21:38
reported accurately. Sometimes they invented
21:41
details to justify their payments. The British
21:45
and French empires, rivals in so many domains,
21:49
cooperated in sharing intelligence about anti
21:52
-colonial activists. They recognized that the
21:56
threat they faced was not merely to individual
21:58
colonies, but to the system of empire itself.
22:02
Yet this surveillance had limits. Imperial police
22:07
forces were hampered by jurisdictional rivalries,
22:10
by the sheer volume of movement they could not
22:13
monitor. and by the legal and practical difficulties
22:16
of acting against subjects in metropolitan territories,
22:19
many activists operated openly or semi -openly,
22:24
exploiting the gap between colonial and metropolitan
22:27
law. A student in London might be beyond the
22:31
reach of his colony's police, subject only to
22:35
the milder constraints of British public order
22:38
law. A sailor in Hamburg could distribute papers
22:42
that would have brought immediate arrest in his
22:44
home port. The network's very fragility, their
22:48
dependence on individual mobility, personal trust,
22:52
and improvised funding made them difficult to
22:55
map and suppress comprehensively. The League
22:59
Against Imperialism, for all its ambition, lasted
23:02
only a few years as an effective organization,
23:05
but its collapse reveals something essential
23:07
about the nature of interwar. Coordination invited
23:11
counter -coordination. The League soon faced
23:15
both external repression and internal fracture.
23:19
The fracture began with a specific decision.
23:23
The Comintern's Sixth Congress, held in Moscow
23:26
in the summer of 1928, adopted a new line that
23:30
identified Social Democrats as the main enemy
23:33
of the working class, labeling them social fascists.
23:38
This theory of social fascism made coalition
23:41
building impossible. Moscow's instructions to
23:45
communist parties and affiliated organizations
23:47
became more rigid. The League's attempt to maintain
23:51
a broad front came under immediate pressure.
23:54
Willy Munsenberg, for all his organizational
23:57
skill, could not override Comintern discipline
24:00
indefinitely. By 1929, Communist members of the
24:05
League were instructed to treat non -communist
24:07
nationalists with suspicion. The Berlin Secretariat
24:11
began purging members who would not accept the
24:14
new line. The effects played out differently
24:17
in different national sections. In Britain, the
24:21
Communist Party's colonial work shifted toward
24:24
attacking the Labour Party's imperial policy,
24:26
rather than building alliances with independent
24:29
nationalists. In India, the Meerut defendants
24:33
found themselves increasingly isolated from broader
24:36
nationalist circles as communist strategy turned
24:38
sectarian. In France, the Etoile Nord -Africaine
24:43
faced the double pressure, colonial repression
24:47
from without, and Comintern pressure from within,
24:50
to conform to the new line. The specific confrontation
24:54
came to a head at the Frankfurt Congress of 1929.
24:58
Communist delegates attempted to control the
25:01
agenda, exclude non -communist speakers, and
25:04
redirect the League's work towards Soviet foreign
25:07
policy priorities. Nehru attended, observed the
25:12
maneuvering, and gradually withdrew his active
25:14
involvement. Other non -communist delegates left
25:18
the Congress convinced that the League had become
25:20
a communist front. George Padmore's break illustrates
25:25
the fracture at the level of individual experience.
25:29
He had been one of the Comintern's most effective
25:32
anti -colonial propagandists, editing The Negro
25:35
Worker from Hamburg and organizing the International
25:39
Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers. In 1933,
25:45
as the Nazi regime consolidated its power in
25:48
Germany, Padmar received instructions from Moscow
25:51
to subordinate anti -colonial work to the new
25:54
priority of building alliances with Western powers
25:56
against fascism. The specific trigger was the
26:00
Comintern's demand that colonial struggles moderate
26:03
their criticism of British and French imperialism,
26:06
since those empires were now potential allies
26:09
against Hitler. Padmore refused. In 1933 or early
26:15
1934, accounts differ on the precise timing,
26:19
he was expelled from the Communist Party. His
26:23
position in Hamburg became untenable and he moved
26:26
to London. There he rebuilt his network through
26:30
personal connections, publications, and the pan
26:33
-Africanist circles that would eventually produce
26:36
the 1945 Manchester Pan -African Congress. His
26:41
break was not unique. Similar ruptures occurred
26:44
across the anti -colonial world, as activists
26:47
discovered that Moscow's support came with strings
26:50
that they were unwilling to accept. The Great
26:54
Depression disrupted the already precarious funding
26:57
that sustained international work. Travel became
27:01
more difficult as economies contracted and immigration
27:04
restrictions tightened. Colonial repression intensified.
27:09
The Dutch arrested Hatta and other Indonesian
27:12
activists in 1927. The French dissolved the Etoile
27:17
Nord -Africaine in 1929 and imprisoned Mesli
27:21
Hadje. The British prosecuted the Myriad defendants
27:25
and restricted Nehru's activities. The League's
27:29
Berlin Secretariat faced harassment from the
27:32
rising Nazi movement. After 1933, the Hitler
27:37
regime destroyed what remained of Münzenberg's
27:39
apparatus. Münzenberg himself fled Germany, eventually
27:44
dying in mysterious circumstances in France in
27:47
1940. Ideological disagreements that had been
27:52
papered over in 1927 became sharper as the practical
27:56
challenges of anti -colonial work mounted. What
28:00
kind of society should replace empire? A liberal
28:04
parliamentary democracy on the Western model?
28:07
A socialist state? A monarchy restored to pre
28:11
-colonial forms? A federation of Arab or African
28:16
states? a theocratic community governed by religious
28:20
law. Feminists within anti -colonial movements
28:24
demanded that independents include women's equality,
28:28
a position that many male nationalists resisted.
28:32
Religious reformers argued for the moral regeneration
28:35
of colonized societies, sometimes in ways that
28:39
clashed with secular nationalists. These were
28:42
not abstract debates. They shaped strategy, divided
28:46
organizations, and determined who could work
28:49
with whom. The League Against Imperialism formally
28:53
dissolved in 1937, though it had been moribund
28:57
for several years before that. By most conventional
29:00
measures, it had failed. It had not coordinated
29:04
a global anti -colonial revolution. It had not
29:08
prevented the intensification of colonial rule
29:11
in the 1930s. It had not survived the combined
29:14
pressures of economic crisis, colonial repression.
29:18
and ideological sectarianism. Yet the League's
29:23
collapse did not end the networks. It scattered
29:27
them, and in scattering they seeded the post
29:30
-war world. Consider what happened to the people
29:33
who had passed through these circuits. Mohamed
29:37
Hatta, imprisoned by the Dutch, survived to become
29:40
the first Vice President of Independent Indonesia
29:43
in 1945. His interwar connections to global anti
29:48
-colonialism informed his negotiations with the
29:51
United Nations and his advocacy for non -aligned
29:55
foreign policy. Jawaharlal Nehru, who had withdrawn
29:59
from the League but retained his international
30:01
contacts, became India's first Prime Minister.
30:05
His vision of a secular socialist state was shaped
30:09
partly by the ideological debates he had witnessed
30:12
in Brussels and Frankfurt. George Padmore, rebuilding
30:16
in London through the late 1930s, organised the
30:20
1945 Manchester Pan -African Congress. It brought
30:24
together delegates from across Africa, the Caribbean
30:27
and the United States in a meeting that directly
30:30
influenced the timing and rhetoric of subsequent
30:32
independence movements. The Congress met at the
30:36
Chorlton Town Hall, a modest municipal building,
30:40
but its participants included future leaders
30:43
of Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and other states. Many
30:48
of them had first encountered anti -colonial
30:50
politics through the newspapers, pamphlets, and
30:54
personal connections of the interwar years. The
30:58
interwar networks did not win independence. They
31:02
did not create the conditions that made decolonization
31:05
possible after 1945. The Second World War. The
31:11
weakening of European powers. The rise of the
31:14
United States and the Soviet Union as superpowers,
31:18
and the specific circumstances of individual
31:21
colonies were all more directly decisive. But
31:25
the networks did something that was, in its way,
31:27
equally important. They made decolonization imaginable
31:31
before it became territorial. They accomplished
31:35
this through the cumulative effect of countless
31:37
small actions. A reader of the Anti -Imperialist
31:42
Review, or the negro worker in the 1930s could
31:47
learn about struggles in distant colonies and
31:50
recognize them as connected to their own condition
31:53
a student who had debated politics in a london
31:57
boarding house returned home with practical knowledge
32:00
of organization publicity and international coordination
32:04
a sailor who carried pamphlets from hamburg to
32:08
lagos created a thread of connection that could
32:11
be pulled taut when circumstances changed. These
32:15
were not heroic achievements in the conventional
32:17
sense. They were modest, often frustrated, sometimes
32:21
invisible even to their participants. But they
32:25
accumulated into something larger, a transnational
32:29
public sphere in which colonial rule could be
32:31
discussed, criticized, and opposed as a system
32:34
rather than merely as a set of local grievances.
32:38
The networks also made empire visible to itself
32:41
in new ways. Colonial surveillance, for all its
32:46
limitations, produced vast archives of documentation
32:50
that reveal how imperial authorities perceived
32:53
the threat they faced. The very intensity of
32:57
police attention to the League Against Imperialism
33:00
and related organizations testifies to the seriousness
33:04
with which imperial powers took the possibility
33:06
of coordinated anti -colonial opposition. They
33:10
understood, perhaps better than some later historians,
33:14
that the mobility of colonial subjects in the
33:17
interwar period was not merely a demographic
33:20
or economic phenomenon. It was a political challenge
33:23
to the spatial logic of empire. The ideological
33:28
diversity of interwar anti -colonialism is worth
33:31
emphasizing because it contradicts a common assumption.
33:35
Colonialism was not a single doctrine, not a
33:39
program coordinated from Moscow or any other
33:42
center, and not a unified movement that temporarily
33:46
concealed its differences for tactical reasons.
33:49
It was a field of contestation in which liberals,
33:53
socialists, communists, nationalists, monarchists,
33:58
feminists, and religious reformers argued about
34:01
the meaning of freedom. and the shape of the
34:04
societies that should replace colonial rule.
34:07
These arguments were often bitter and consequential.
34:11
They shaped the post -colonial world in ways
34:14
that are still visible. Consider the contrast
34:18
between two figures who shared the Brussels platform
34:20
in 1927. Mohamed Hatta would become the first
34:24
vice -president of independent Indonesia, committed
34:27
to a secular nationalist state with socialist
34:30
elements. Meseli Hadje would spend years in French
34:34
prisons and exile, his movements suppressed.
34:37
His vision of an independent Algeria eventually
34:41
realized only through a revolutionary war that
34:44
he did not bleed. The paths diverged because
34:47
of colonial circumstances, because of personal
34:51
choices, and because they imagined different
34:54
futures for their societies. The interwar networks
34:58
connected them momentarily. They did not resolve
35:01
their differences or consider the gender dynamics
35:05
that the Brussels Congress largely ignored. Women
35:09
participated in anti -colonial networks. Sun
35:14
Qingling's presence was significant, and women
35:17
were active in many national sections. But leadership
35:20
remained overwhelmingly male, and the post -colonial
35:24
states that emerged often reproduced colonial
35:26
gender hierarchies in new forms. The network's
35:30
limitations are as instructive as their achievements.
35:34
What remains uncertain, even with the substantial
35:38
archival work that historians have done, is the
35:41
full extent of these networks' reach into ordinary
35:44
lives. We know the names of Congress delegates,
35:48
the titles of journals, and the contents of police
35:51
files. We know far less about the sailors who
35:55
carried newspapers in their luggage. the students
35:58
who read pamphlets in boarding houses, and the
36:00
workers who heard speakers in union halls. A
36:04
British colonial police file on Padmore might
36:07
contain his photograph, his publications, and
36:10
reports of his speeches. It cannot contain the
36:13
experience of a dock worker in Lagos who received
36:17
a copy of The Negro Worker, read it by Lamplight,
36:20
discussed it with his wife, and decided nothing
36:23
in particular. Yet he carried the words with
36:27
him into subsequent conversations years later,
36:29
when political circumstances had changed. The
36:34
network's center of gravity was in cities. London,
36:38
Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Cairo, New York. That
36:42
is where archives were kept and where organization
36:44
was possible. But their periphery extended along
36:48
shipping routes, railway lines, and personal
36:51
journeys that left faint traces. The circulation
36:55
and readership of anti -colonial newspapers is
36:58
particularly difficult to measure. The Negro
37:02
worker was distributed through port cities. But
37:05
how many copies reached their intended readers?
37:08
How were they read, discussed, reinterpreted?
37:12
The police files that document surveillance also
37:16
document failure. Intercepted shipments, unreadable
37:20
reports, informants who knew little. In 1942,
37:25
British colonial authorities in Nigeria reported
37:28
seizing a bundle of the Negro worker copies at
37:32
the Lagos port, but they had no reliable method
37:35
for determining how many other bundles had passed
37:39
through undetected. The network's very illegibility
37:43
to colonial authorities, which made them difficult
37:46
to suppress, also makes them difficult for historians
37:50
to reconstruct. Similarly, The full extent of
37:54
police cooperation across empires remains partially
37:57
obscured. Many surveillance files remain closed
38:01
or were destroyed during the Second World War
38:03
or during decolonization. We know that British
38:07
and French authorities exchanged information.
38:10
We know less about the Dutch, the Belgians and
38:13
the Portuguese. The cooperation that occurred
38:17
was often reactive, triggered by specific incidents
38:20
rather than systematic in design. Colonial surveillance
38:23
was real and sometimes effective, but it was
38:26
not the all -seeing system that both activists
38:29
and officials sometimes imagined. The relationship
38:32
between interwar networks and post -1945 decolonization
38:36
is also a matter of interpretive debate. Some
38:41
historians see direct continuity, the same people,
38:44
the same ideas, and the same organizations re
38:48
-emerging after the war. Others emphasize rupture.
38:52
The war transformed global power relations so
38:55
fundamentally that interwar anti -colonialism
38:58
became largely irrelevant. The truth is probably
39:02
somewhere between. The networks provided personnel,
39:06
precedents, and imaginations that post -war activists
39:09
could draw upon. But they could not have predicted
39:13
or caused the specific circumstances that made
39:16
decolonization possible after 1945. Both circumstances
39:21
included Japanese conquest of European colonies,
39:25
American anti -imperial rhetoric, Soviet support
39:29
for national liberation movements, and the Cold
39:31
War. What can be said with confidence is that
39:35
the interwar period transformed the possibility
39:38
of anti -colonial politics. Before the First
39:42
World War, opposition to empire existed but was
39:45
largely fragmented, localized. or confined to
39:49
metropolitan critics. By the late 1930s, despite
39:54
the failures and fractures of the League against
39:56
imperialism and related organizations, a global
39:59
anti -colonial field had been established. Its
40:03
participants disagreed about nearly everything
40:05
except the basic proposition that colonial rule
40:08
was illegitimate. They had created institutions
40:12
however fragile for communicating across imperial
40:16
boundaries. They had developed strategies including
40:20
legal defense, international publicity, economic
40:23
boycott and labor organization that would be
40:26
refined and deployed in later decades. And they
40:30
had, in their own lives and movements, embodied
40:33
the possibility that empire was not permanent.
40:36
The League Against Imperialism's 1927 Brussels
40:41
Congress, for all its contradictions, marked
40:44
a moment when this possibility became visible
40:47
and nameable. The delegates who gathered in the
40:50
Palais Mondial did not agree on what should replace
40:53
empire. They did not have the power to end it.
40:58
Many of them would spend years in prison, in
41:01
exile, in frustrated obscurity. But they had
41:05
demonstrated that the circuits of empire, its
41:08
shipping lanes, its student exchanges, its metropolitan
41:12
capitals, Its very infrastructure of control
41:16
could be repurposed against it. A colonial subject
41:20
could travel to the heart of the imperial system
41:22
and find not isolation but connection, not submission
41:26
but solidarity, not the impossibility of opposition
41:30
but its collective articulation. This is the
41:34
image to hold, a sailor in the port of Hamburg
41:37
carrying copies of the Negro worker in his luggage,
41:40
hidden among his personal effects. to be distributed
41:44
in Lagos or Dakar or Kingston. A student in London
41:49
returning to India with a suitcase of pamphlets
41:51
and a network of correspondents across three
41:54
continents. An exile in Paris writing for a newspaper
41:58
that will be read in Cairo and Berlin and Algiers.
42:02
These movements were fragile, intermittent and
42:06
often unsuccessful. They depended on individual
42:09
courage, improvised resources. and the gaps in
42:13
colonial surveillance. They did not determine
42:16
the future, but they made a future without empire
42:20
thinkable, discussable, and eventually achievable.
42:25
Decolonization became imaginable before it became
42:28
territorial, through the persistent, mobile,
42:31
contested work of people who moved, wrote, organized,
42:36
and imagined across the boundaries that empire
42:38
had tried to make permanent.