In November 1923, the Spanish king Alfonso XIII suggested that the emerging fascist movement would serve as the cement between the Catholic Church and a new kind of anti-liberal and anti-socialist politics, thus spurring the rebirth of decadent nations – such as Spain and Italy – and their empires. Fascism, predicated on an organic, hierarchically ordered society, seemed to be a promising institutional and political solution to the problems that plagued European parliamentary democracies (among others) after the First World War. For many inspired by the fascist movement, imperial expansion was central to national rebirth. How was pursuing an empire integral to creating a stable, hierarchical society in this new post-Versailles order?
This event invites early career scholars to discuss trans-imperial history as an approach to examining cooperation, competition and connections among people who identified with or were inspired by the early fascist movement. It aims to pursue three lines of inquiry: (1) Why was fascism inspiring, even when the fascists had no philosophically coherent political agenda? (2) What kind of empire did these people imagine, and what would it do for the nation-state? (3) What did their imaginaries share?
By asking these questions, we aim to understand how self-identified fascists and sympathisers strategised empire formation through fascism as a transnational movement, solidifying nation-states and imagining an alternative world order. This discussion will address the centrality of imperial formation in recasting a hierarchical order in Europe, focusing on the common threads and allegiances that made fascism a global movement.
To structure our discussion, we are proposing the following readings (not essential for participation):
- Andrew Denning, ‘Unscrambling Africa: From Eurafrican Technopolitics to the Fascist New Order’, The Journal of Modern History 95, no. 3 (1 September 2023): 627–67
- Satoshi Mizutani, ‘Introduction to "Beyond Comparison: Japan and Its Colonial Empire in Transimperial Relations", Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 1, no. 32 (2019): 1–21.
- Daniel Hedinger, 'Fascism', in Andrew Denning and Heidi J.S. Tworek, eds., The Interwar World (London?; New York: Routledge, 2023): 497-513.
If you are interested in the readings, please email us at Interwar Histories Working Group or Julia Gomez Reig. Please register to get a seat or to receive the ZOOM link.