Black Internationalism and Cosmopolitan London in the 1930s–40s

Black Internationalism and Cosmopolitan London in the 1930s and 1940s
Marc Matera
Abstract
A global city and the capital of a far-flung empire, 1930s London was the frontline in the black struggle against British imperialism and racism. Caribbean and African intellectuals, university students, artists, and activists in London formed organizations that became homes away from home, centers of cultural and intellectual exchange, and new means of voicing social commentary and political dissent. These intellectuals are best remembered for influencing major fluctuations in colonial policy during the final decades of imperial rule. However, while having an important impact on the course of empire, life in the metropole also had an equally important affect on them.
    While living within the city’s cosmopolitan environs that many African and West Indian men and women articulated alternative visions of community, including a trans-Atlantic model of black cooperation and regional political imaginaries like a United States of West Africa and a West Indian Federation. From the West African Students Union in Camden Town to cramped apartments in Euston and Hampstead, to university seminar rooms or Soho’s nightclubs, London played a central role in the development of black internationalism through the conversations, alliances, and boundary crossings which only the imperial capital made possible. Although many black intellectuals were merely sojourners, soon to move on elsewhere or return home to the Caribbean or Africa, their experiences often left a lasting impression and a disproportionate impact on their ideas and subsequent careers. Through personal papers and unpublished manuscripts, this paper examines their lives and activities in the city, transforming our understanding of both the cultural landscape of late imperial London and the development of anticolonialism around the Atlantic.