Antiliberal Internationalism in the Twentieth Century

This book shows how antiliberal discourse, thought, and mobilization have, in defiance of nationalist aims, been significantly shaped and determined in the international sphere, as new collaborations position themselves against the liberal order established after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Despite often drawing inspiration from nationalist movements and ideologies, antiliberalism is a phenomenon that transcends domestic contexts and settings in important ways. This collection of essays charts the many-sided aspects of twentieth-century internationalism and its contemporary developments across the globe. Without excluding well-known European sources of antiliberal internationalism, it decentres the European experience by exploring specific case studies from South and East Asia, the Middle East, the Americas, Africa, and Oceania. Moreover, the volume abundantly demonstrates that “liberalism” and “anti-liberalism” cannot be considered as fixed entities as (anti)liberalism was, and is, as much defined by its enemies as by its advocates.

This book is intended for scholars and students of International Studies, Intellectual History, Political History, Political Science, European Studies, and Global Studies, as well as for journalists and policymakers interested in contemporary Europe, cosmopolitanism, political polarization, and the traditions of the right and far right.

Matthijs Lok is senior lecturer in European History in the Department of History and European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He has published extensively on transnational antiliberalism, conservatism, and counter-Enlightenment, including Cosmopolitan Conservatisms (2021) and Europe against Revolution (2023).

Marjet Brolsma is senior lecturer in European Intellectual, Cultural, and Literary History in the European Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam. She works on critiques of modernity, transnational history, propaganda in the First and Second World Wars, national identity discourses, and ideas of Europe.

Robin de Bruin is senior lecturer in the Political History of European Integration in the European Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam. He has published on topics such as Euroscepticism, political exemplarity, and the entanglement of processes of decolonization and European integration.

Stefan Couperus is Associate Professor of European Politics and Society at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He has published widely on the modern history of political representation and public administration in Western Europe and on contemporary populism and illiberalism.

Rachel McElroy White is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Groningen. She is a specialist on the history of France and the French empire, Christianity and politics, war, and human rights, as well as the uses of photographs as historical sources.