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GEORGE PADMORE AND THE SOVIET MODEL OF THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2018

THEO WILLIAMS
THEO WILLIAMS*
Affiliation:
Department of History, King's College London E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article argues for an appreciation of the permeability of the Western socialist and black radical traditions and a recognition of their codevelopment. This relationship is illustrated through an analysis of George Padmore's intellectual history, particularly focusing on How Russia Transformed Her Colonial Empire (1946), in which Padmore applied Marxist ideas to his project of colonial liberation. The book functions as Padmore's manifesto for the transformation of the British Empire into a socialist federation following the model of the Soviet Union. Through comparisons with the manifestos of British socialist F. A. Ridley and American pan-Africanist W. E. B. Du Bois, this article contextualizes this manifesto within a moment of postwar internationalist optimism. This approach also facilitates a discussion of the meaning of “pan-Africanism” to Padmore, concluding that pan-Africanism was, for him, a methodology through which colonial liberation, and eventually world socialism, could be achieved.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , August 2019 , pp. 531 - 559
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

I thank Richard Drayton, Daniel Matlin and the editors (especially Tracie M. Matysik) and anonymous reviewers at Modern Intellectual History for their detailed comments and suggestions on various draft versions of this article. Elements of this article were presented at the UNC-KCL Transatlantic Historical Approaches Workshop in Chapel Hill, NC in September 2017; I thank those in attendance for their comments and questions. I am also grateful for funding from the London Arts and Humanities Partnership, which has made this research possible.

References

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