Exploring how modern internationalism emerged as a negotiated process through international conferences, this edited collection studies the spaces and networks through which states, civil society institutions and anti-colonial political networks used these events to realise their visions of the international.Taking an interdisciplinary approach, contributors explore the spatial paradox of two fundamental features of modern internationalism. First, internationalism demanded the overcoming of space, transcending the nation-state in search of the shared interests of humankind. Second, internationalism was geographically contingent on the places in which people came together to conceive and enact their internationalist ideas. From Paris 1919 to Bandung 1955 and beyond, this book explores international conferences as the sites in which different forms of internationalism assumed material and social form. While international 'permanent institutions' such as the League of Nations, UN and Institute of Pacific Relations constantly negotiated national and imperial politics, lesser-resourced political networks also used international conferences to forward their more radical demands.Taken together these conferences radically expand our conception of where and how modern internationalism emerged, and make the case for focusing on internationalism in a contemporary moment when its merits are being called into question.

Introduction, Mike Heffernan, Jake Hodder, Stephen Legg and Benjamin Thorpe (University of Nottingham, UK) 1. Toward a Historical Geography of International Conferencing, Mike Heffernan, Jake Hodder, Stephen Legg and Benjamin Thorpe (University of Nottingham, UK) Part I: State Internationalism2. Ambassadors, Activists and Experts: Conferencing and the Internationalization of International Relations in the Nineteenth Century, Brian Vick (Emory University, USA) 3. Contesting Representations of Indigeneity at the First Inter-American Indigenista Congress, 1940, Joanna Crow (University of Bristol, UK) 4. Awe and Espionage at Lancaster House: the African Decolonisation Conferences of the Early 1960s, Peter Docking (King's College, London, UK) Part II: Science, Civil Society and the State5. Conferencing the Aerial Future, Martin Mahony (University of East Anglia, UK) 6. Scientific Internationalism in a Time of Crisis: The Month of Intellectual Cooperation at the 1937 Paris World Fair, Jonathan Voges (Leibniz University, Hanover, Germany) 7. Between Camaraderie and Rivalry: Geopolitics at the 18th International Geographical Congress, Rio de Janeiro, 1956, Mariana Lamego (State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) Part III: Permanent Institutions8. Spectacular Peace-Building in the Shadow of War? The League of Nations and the Built Environment of World's Fairs, Wendy Asquith (University of Nottingham, UK) 9. Re-Situating Bretton Woods: Site and Venue in Relation to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, June 1944, Giles Scott-Smith (Leiden University, Netherlands) 10. Countenancing and Conferencing Japan at the Institute of Pacific Relations, 1945-1954, Daniel Clayton (St Andrews University, UK) and Hannah Fitzpatrick (University of Edinburgh, UK) Part IV: Political Networks11. Alternative internationalisms in East Asia: The Conferences of the Asian Peoples, Japanese-Chinese Rivalry, and Japanese Imperialism 1924-1943, Torsten Weber (German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo, Japan) 12. Partnership In/Against Empire: Pan-African and Imperial Conferencing after World War II, Marc Matera (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA)13. Skies That Bind: Air Travel in the Bandung Era, Su Lin Lewis (University of Bristol, UK)