The Diplomatic/International History Working Group hosts its second session of 2022 with a lecture by Dr Sean Phillips (University of Oxford).
In this lecture, Sean Phillips will be talking about his research on the Pan-Pacific idea in comparative perspective. From the nineteenth century, a panoply of pan movements emerged, complimenting and challenging the shifting global landscape of empires, nations and regions. The idea of the Pan-Pacific emerged at a time many were forecasting that the world’s centre of political and economic gravity was shifting to the Pacific. His paper will consider how the Pan-Pacific both relates to and proves distinctive to similar movements over the course of the first half of the twentieth century through its exploration as an idea and geo-paradigm. The paper will consider the forms of organisation it inspired, such as the Institute of Pacific Relations and Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, which were predicated upon an identical cartographic template, but defined by rather different internationalist ideologies. The event will be chaired by Emma Kluge (European University Institute).
Sean Phillips was recently awarded a DPhil in Global and Imperial History from the University of Oxford. His thesis was entitled Examining the 'Eye of the Earth': The Pan-Pacific Idea and the British Dominions, c. 1910-1940.
Emma Kluge is a historian of decolonisation and anticolonial thinking and holds a Max Weber postdoctoral fellowship at the European University Institute. Her research investigates the intersection between anticolonial activism and institutions of global governance in the Pacific.
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