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AVILA Isabelle
Les relations anglo-américaines chez les géographes au tournant du 20ème siècle
A la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, les congrès internationaux de géographie se
développent et deviennent le symbole de la coopération internationale des géographes. Mais si
la géographie est une œuvre internationale où l’enjeu est de remplir les derniers blancs de la
carte du monde, les géographes se servent de leur discipline pour affirmer la gloire de leur
nation. Au cœur de la géographie du tournant du 20ème siècle se joue ainsi une tension entre
coopération internationale et affirmation nationale dans le cadre de ce qui peut être appelé une
« diplomatie de la science ».
Dans le contexte de cette tension, au moment de la guerre hispano-américaine de
1898, du congrès international de géographie de Washington de 1904 ou des explorations
polaires, que disent les géographes anglais et américains des relations anglo-américaines dans
les revues des sociétés de géographie ? Comment les géographes américains se positionnentils face à la notoriété de la Royal Geographical Society de Londres qui est la plus grande
société de géographie du monde ? Quels sont les phénomènes d’imitation et d’émulation qui
se développent entre géographes anglais et américains à un moment clé qui correspond à une
passation de relais entre la Grande-Bretagne et les Etats-Unis, sur fond de peur du déclin pour
les Britanniques ? Par ailleurs, les liens anglo-américains sont-ils visibles sur les cartes des
atlas ?
S’il est intéressant d’observer de l’intérieur les relations anglo-américaines chez les
géographes, un regard extérieur fournit d’autres clés de lecture. A ce titre, cette présentation
cherchera également à montrer comment les géographes français perçoivent cet anglosaxonisme victorieux au moment de Fachoda ou de l’Entente cordiale, à la fois dans leurs
discours et sur leurs cartes.
BELL Duncan
Before the Democratic Peace: Racial Utopianism and the Elimination of War
During the final quarter of the twentieth century, the democratic peace thesis - the idea that
democracies do not fight each other - moved to the centre of scholarly and political debate
throughout the Western world. Much of this work traces its origins to the European
Enlightenment, focusing especially on Immanuel Kant.
Whatever the merits of this historical claim, it is intriguing that earlier twentieth century
debates about the possibilities of global peace, and the role of democracy within them, are
downplayed or ignored. In this essay I focus on some prominent, but now largely forgotten,
strands of political thinking in the United States and Britain in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.
The period witnessed a flourishing of utopian arguments that the racial unification of the
Anglo-Saxon world could eliminate war - this was a call for the racial pacification of the
globe. Democracy played a highly ambiguous role in this discourse, seen by some as playing
a positive role, by others (including, for example, H. G. Wells) as generating war not peace.
I finish the paper by tracing the echoes of this idea into the 'world state' literature that
flourished on both sides of the Atlantic in the middle decades of the century.
BOWMAN Stephen
Anglo-Saxon Rapprochement:
Transatlantic Liberty and the Pilgrims Society in the 1900s
For much of the nineteenth century, diplomatic relations between Britain and the United
States of America were marked by distrust and suspicion as both states came to terms with
their colonial past. But with the growing strength of the US, and the relative decline of
Britain, the last years of the nineteenth century witnessed a rapprochement between the two
states. While historians differ as to how marked this rapprochement was, little work has been
done to consider what role elite transatlantic networking played.
This paper examines the activities of the Pilgrims Society, an elite dining club with branches
established in London in 1902 and New York in 1903. The society’s aim was promote good
British-American relations and its membership included prominent politicians, diplomats,
statesmen, press barons and businessmen from both sides of the Atlantic. Anglo-Saxon
rhetoric was particularly evident and appeals were made to the solidarity of the ‘Englishspeaking peoples’. Notions of liberalism were also important, with some in the US
increasingly perceiving the medieval English roots of American liberty. This was best
demonstrated by the establishment of the International Magna Charta Day Association in
1907, an organisation with ideological and personal connections to the Pilgrims.
This paper partly utilises neo-Gramscian theories of cultural hegemony and state-spiritedness
to examine the extent to which the Pilgrims provided an unofficial network that served to
underpin diplomatic relations between Britain and America in this period. Whilst illuminating
the elite club cultures of London and New York, this paper will also seek to explain how some
Pilgrims could reconcile their advocacy of British-American friendship with membership of
traditionally anti-British societies, like the Sons of the Revolution and the Society of the
Cincinnati. As such, this paper presents a ‘pre-history’ of the special relationship and traces
the beginnings of ‘Anglobalisation’.
COURNIL Mélanie
William Lloyd Garrison et la Glasgow Emancipation Society :
coopération transatlantique dans la lutte pour l’abolition de l’esclavage aux Etats-Unis
Cette communication s’intéresse à la campagne idéologique menée aux États-Unis,
dès 1833, par William Lloyd Garrison et la Glasgow Emancipation Society (GES), afin de
promouvoir l’émancipation des esclaves américains. Cette société fut créée au lendemain de
l’adoption de la loi qui mettait un terme, de façon graduelle, au système esclavagiste dans
l’Empire britannique. La GES afficha, dès les prémices, une ambition abolitionniste à visée
internationale, démontrant ainsi un certain désintérêt pour la question britannique, pourtant
loin d’être résolue. Cette collaboration internationale put se concrétiser, en partie, grâce à
l’amitié indéfectible de George Thompson, fondateur de la GES, et William Lloyd Garrison,
fervent abolitionniste américain. La GES avait ainsi pour but de financer la mission de
Thompson, destinée à sensibiliser la population américaine aux vertus de l’abolitionnisme.
Garrison, quant à lui, souhaitait s’inspirer de la structure des réseaux anti-esclavagistes
britanniques afin de les reproduire aux États-Unis.
Lors de la World Anti-Slavery Convention, organisée à Londres en 1840, les frictions
entre les différentes factions abolitionnistes américaines provoquèrent une scission au sein de
l’American Anti-Slavery Society. Le schisme donna naissance à deux clans adverses, l’un,
radical, mené par Garrison, l’autre par les frères Tappan. Une autre conséquence directe fut la
rupture de la GES avec la société-mère à Londres, la British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society,
plus proche de la mouvance conservatrice des Tappan. A la suite de cet épisode houleux, la
GES resta fidèle pendant plus de vingt ans à l’idéologie de Garrison.
Cette communication se concentre sur l’échange intellectuel et idéologique entre les
abolitionnistes écossais de Glasgow et ceux menés par Garrison aux États-Unis. L’ambition
affichée par la GES était d’imprimer de sa marque le mouvement abolitionniste américain.
Dans les faits, cependant, les dissensions des anti-esclavagistes aux États-Unis eurent des
répercussions majeures sur la politique de la GES. La finalité de cette communication est donc
d’analyser la portée des échanges idéologiques entre la GES et les Garrisoniens, et de
déterminer si leur relation relevait plus du domaine du symbolique ou de l’action concrète. Ce
travail s’appuiera principalement sur des sources primaires, notamment les Glasgow
Emancipation Society Minutes, les correspondances entre activistes, et des articles de presses
américaine et écossaise.
HEAVENS John Edmund
Beyond Anglobalization, Towards a Supranational Kingdom:
The Edinburgh World Missionary Conference, 1910
Protestant missionaries made great efforts to evangelize the world throughout the long
nineteenth century. Concomitant with the growth of North American economic and political
power during this period, the British and the Americans became partners in the transnational
proliferation of Protestantism, an important strand of the apologetic for the “anglobalization”
of the nineteenth century. However, their success was limited; fragmented by denominational
sectarianism and hamstrung by cultural supremacism, the Anglo-American missionary project
was increasingly more challenged by the growth of materialism and nationalism around the
world. A more dynamic and progressive missionary strategy was required to maintain the
relevance of Protestantism to social organization at the dawn of the twentieth century.
The World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910 was organized to take stock of what
had been achieved and to plan the way forward; it proved to be an unprecedented triumph in
the history of Protestant ecumenism. John R. Mott, the charismatic leader of the North
American YMCA’s foreign work, and Joseph H. Oldham, the unassuming Secretary of the
British Student Christian Movement, developed a highly effective Anglo-American
partnership while preparing for the Conference. The Continuation Committee authorized at
Edinburgh would work thereafter to coordinate and direct missionary efforts towards the
building of a more inclusive, global, supranational Kingdom.
This paper examines the role played by the Mott-Oldham partnership in guiding the hitherto
fractious Anglo-American Protestant missionary constituency towards agreement on this
fundamental shift in its strategy. Convened just as the long nineteenth-century world was
drawing towards its tragic and violent climax, Edinburgh was Protestantism’s last, best hope
of formulating a more appropriately pragmatic approach to religious ministry in anticipation
of the new and disenchanted world that would emerge from the ruins of the First World War.
LADERMAN Charlie
The American Solution to the Eastern Question
and the Americanization of the World, 1895-1902
My paper looks at an Anglo-American project to share the burden of global governance at the
turn of the twentieth century. This project originated in the mid 1890's in response to the
Armenian massacres in the Ottoman Empire.
The consensus among previous studies that consider the American response to these
massacres is that, despite widespread public sympathy, there was no meaningful diplomatic or
military intervention to stop them. They are directed towards an indictment of American
diplomacy, based on a normative approach, outlining actions which could, and should, have
been taken to stop the massacres.
However, these studies consider the American response in isolation and without reference to
the development of the international system from the 1890s onwards. There has been no
attempt to relate the solution to the Armenian Question, and the larger Eastern Question, to
the larger project of constructing a new global order, centred on an Anglo-American alliance,
at the outset of the twentieth century. The British and American responses must be considered
in tandem, and set in their broader intellectual and international context, in order to
understand either nation's policies. It is no coincidence that the most prominent Armenophiles
were also the most determined advocates of a reformed international system, based on a
progressive, Hobsonian critique of imperialism and centred on an Anglo-American alliance.
The American solution to the Eastern Question is an essential but neglected window into the
American rise to world power. It was the culmination of the American, and wider
international, debate over the role of the United States within the context of a world of
competing empires. It encapsulated America’s internal conflict over its world role and forced
the nation to consider making a commitment to assuming the burden of global governance,
outside the Western Hemisphere, for the first time.
O’CONNOR Emmet
The Plough and the Stars and Stripes: Irish socialists and the United States, 1900-1914
During the 1850s, the United States replaced France as the third country of greatest interest to
Irish revolutionaries. The re-orientation was reinforced by chronic and massive emigration to
the US from the 1840s, and by the major advances of Anglicization in Ireland in the late 19th
century.
One can detect a similar trend on the Irish left in the early 20th century, notably in the
examples of Ireland’s two most famous Labour leaders, James Connolly and Jim Larkin.
Connolly arrived in Dublin from Scotland in 1896 and established the Irish Socialist
Republican Party, the first party to propose an Irish road to socialism. Within a few years,
Connolly had become more interested in the US than in Europe. In 1902 he espoused the
American syndicalism of Daniel De Leon, and helped to found the Scottish-based Socialist
Labour Party as a De Leonist party. In 1903 he emigrated to the US to work with the
syndicalist left. Returning to Ireland in 1910, he advocated American industrial unionism as a
model for Irish trade unions.
Born in Liverpool in 1874, Larkin came to Ireland as an agent of the Liverpool-based
National Union of Dock Labourers in 1907, before leading the breakaway Irish Transport and
General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) from 1909. The defeat of the ITGWU in the 1913 lockout
set Larkin thinking about an alternative career as a roving agitator. In 1914 he proposed to go
‘right round’, to the US, Canada, Australia, and South Africa: an indication of the way his
thinking had become globalized, but within an Anglophone context. In the event, he got no
further than the US, where he stayed until deported to England in 1923.
This paper will examine how Connolly and Larkin acquired an American sensibility and how
influential American industrial unionism was in Ireland.
PAYEN-VARIERAS Evelyne
Anglo-Saxonism among international experts.
British and American accountants in transnational finance in the late 19th century
The development of transnational accounting firms in the 1880s and 1890s spurred a debate
on international professional standards, which focused on the relations between American and
British accountants. This paper examines the terms and the context of this debate, and
highlights their cultural dimension. It is based on a study of British and American professional
journals like The Accountant, as well as on the archives of the American branch of Price
Waterhouse, one of the early international accounting firms.
The growth of transnational business enterprise revealed the existence of conflicting demands
on the profession. The discourse of scientific expertise, which defined accounting problems in
universalistic terms, remained relatively marginal. It coexisted with the celebration of the
national and regional roots of accounting standards. When the leaders of professional
associations invoked an “Anglo-Saxon” accounting tradition, they did not only point to a
“friendly rivalry” between British and American “cousins”. They also invented a diplomatic
language replete with useful ambiguities, which both acknowledged and contained the
disputes over professional practices.
PREVOST Stéphanie
Anglo-American Relief for Armenia in the Context of the Venezuela Crisis:
Collaboration on the Fringes of Diplomacy (1895-1896)?
In 1999, in his British-American Diplomacy, historian David H. Burton considered the period
1895-1917 the ‘early years of the special relationship’. Interestingly, the opening of this
period is deeply marked by the Venezuela crisis, which brought Britain and the United States
on the brink of war when the latter sided with Venezuela which reclaimed territory from
Britain.
It is in this context that Edward Atkin, treasurer of the British Armenian Relief Fund, wrote a
letter to The New York Times on 8 February, 1896 on behalf of the Duke of Westminster, who
had shown an enduring commitment to the improvement of the fate of Ottoman Christians,
stating that: ‘There has not been (…) any occasion during the present century when the duty
of the two English-speaking nations has been more clearly defined for them than by the
terrible series of brutal murders organised by the infamous gang of courtiers at the palace of
the Sultan; and the need for an immediate understanding on the question of the Armenian
massacres is called for alike by the voice of Christendom and humanity on both sides of the
Atlantic. Joint action by your Government and ours should redound to their everlasting
credit.’
Such call for a common, Anglo-Saxon governmental response to Ottoman events, which had
retained the attention of both Britain and the USA since the advent of ‘the Bulgarian
atrocities’ of June 1876, which had then been documented by the American General Consul in
Constantinople, Edward Schuyler, has failed to receive adequate attention.
Although it failed, only resulting in non-governmental relief cooperation, this call needs to be
envisaged as an attempt of a long-lasting rapprochement – despite the tense Anglo-American
context – initiated by British Americanophiles mostly subscribing to the non-governmental
Anglo-American Association (formed in 1871), as well as needs to be set against the failure of
the European Concert, which, it was hoped, could justify America’s infringement of the
Monroe Doctrine in favour of suffering Armenians.
SASSI Asma
La Société Théosophique :
fraternité universelle et concurrences américano-britanniques, 1875-1891
La Société Théosophique est créée en 1875 à New-York par la medium russoaméricaine Helena P. Blavatsky et le colonel Henry S. Olcott. La doctrine de cette association
néospiritualiste prône l’unité de toutes les religions, l’institution d’une communauté humaine
fraternelle et le rapprochement entre Orient et Occident. Considérée comme la terre-mère des
spiritualités, l’Inde, alors sous domination britannique, est choisie pour l’installation des
quartiers généraux de l’association quelques années après sa formation. Cette extension,
suivie d’une rapide diffusion en Europe, notamment à Londres, est ponctuée de tensions qui
opposent le leadership américain aux tentatives de récupération du pouvoir par des aspirants
britanniques.
Certes, les membres de l’association, anglais ou américains, présentent des idéaux
communs d’anti-colonialisme et d’anti-matérialisme qui les rendent solidaires sur un nombre
conséquent de projets et de charges portées contre Mme Blavatsky. Mais que ce soit en Inde
ou en Europe, la question de l’autorité des fondateurs américains sur les sections et les
membres d’autres nationalités se pose régulièrement et la Loge britannique, la première
fondée en Europe en 1878, largement influencée par les écrits de Mr Sinnett qui, depuis
l’Inde, lui fait découvrir la théosophie, met un point d’honneur à obtenir son indépendance
vis-à-vis de l’autorité exercée par Henry S. Olcott.
Très peu envisagée dans l’histoire et la sociologie des mouvements spiritualistes, la
question des relations et des concurrences à l’intérieur d’une association internationale permet
d’éclairer la complexité et l’ambivalence des réseaux spirituels. Alors que la doctrine
universaliste de la Société Théosophique tente d’effacer les disparités régionales au profit
d’une expression anti-colonialiste et anti-cléricale commune, l’institutionnalisation du
mouvement fait surgir à la surface des conflits d’autorité qui puisent à la source des origines
nationales. Dans cette communication, je tenterai de démêler les fils des relations américanobritanniques au sein de ce mouvement et de montrer comment cet exemple peut permettre de
renouveler l’approche socio-historique des mouvements spirituels, en particulier dans leur
relation avec des problématiques politico-religieuses plus globales.