Pasts to Be Unveiled: The Interconnections Between the International and the Imperial

Abstract

By addressing the theoretical, methodological, and epistemological challenges connected to the study of the historical co-constitution and intersection between trajectories of internationalism and of imperialism, this text stresses the fruitfulness of integrating both historical processes in a common analytical framework. It unveils the multiple sites, such as international institutions, non-governmental organizations, and bilateral encounters, where the efforts to develop a more integrated international order coalesced with coeval imperial and colonial dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, and how the analysis of these encounters and processes allows for a more nuanced and elaborated reading of the previous century.

* Translated by Sara Veiga

This volume results from researches and debates promoted by the projects Internationalism and Empire: The Policies of Difference in the Portuguese Colonial Empire in a Comparative Perspective and Change to Remain? Welfare Colonialism in European Colonial Empires in Africa (1920–1975), both funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Refs: FCT-PTDC/EPH-HIS/5176/2012 and IF/01628/2012). It is a revised, expanded and modified version of a volume that was published in Portuguese, entitled Os Passados do Presente (Almedina, 2015). We are grateful for the critical comments made by the reviewers of this volume. They helped us improve many of the arguments advanced in this introduction. We also thank Jessica Pearson and Jason Parker for their critical remarks and David Tucker for his final revision.