Diplomatic Training and Spaces of Anticolonial Worldmaking

TY - JOUR

T1 - Diplomatic Training and Spaces of Anticolonial Worldmaking

AU - Craggs, Ruth

AU - Harris, Jonathan

AU - McConnell, Fiona

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). Antipode published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Antipode Foundation Ltd.

PY - 2025/4/7

Y1 - 2025/4/7

N2 - Focusing on training for African diplomats from newly independent countries in Cameroon, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, this paper makes the case for spaces of diplomatic training as sites for anticolonial “worldmaking” (Getachew 2019; Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination). Recent scholarship has highlighted the value of African leaders’ visions but largely overlooked the actors, spaces, and practices through which these visions were to be enacted. Drawing on archival evidence from Africa, Europe, and North America, and oral history interviews, we argue that worldmaking projects were grounded, learnt, and transformed in places such as the classrooms and study tours we explore. Whilst many accounts of anticolonial and subaltern geopolitical projects focus on grassroots activism beyond and against the state, we argue we also need to attend to the contributions of those—like African diplomats in training—who critiqued Eurocentric and colonial international relations from subaltern positions whilst remaining privileged within the context of the postcolonial state.

AB - Focusing on training for African diplomats from newly independent countries in Cameroon, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, this paper makes the case for spaces of diplomatic training as sites for anticolonial “worldmaking” (Getachew 2019; Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination). Recent scholarship has highlighted the value of African leaders’ visions but largely overlooked the actors, spaces, and practices through which these visions were to be enacted. Drawing on archival evidence from Africa, Europe, and North America, and oral history interviews, we argue that worldmaking projects were grounded, learnt, and transformed in places such as the classrooms and study tours we explore. Whilst many accounts of anticolonial and subaltern geopolitical projects focus on grassroots activism beyond and against the state, we argue we also need to attend to the contributions of those—like African diplomats in training—who critiqued Eurocentric and colonial international relations from subaltern positions whilst remaining privileged within the context of the postcolonial state.

KW - worldmaking

KW - anticolonial

KW - diplomatic training

KW - decolonisation

KW - geopolitics

KW - Africa

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85217739781

U2 - 10.1111/anti.70001

DO - 10.1111/anti.70001

M3 - Article

SN - 0066-4812

VL - 57

SP - 862

EP - 885

JO - Antipode: a radical journal of geography

JF - Antipode: a radical journal of geography

IS - 3

ER -