Internationalists in European History by Jessica Reinisch David Brydan

Author:Jessica Reinisch, David Brydan [Jessica Reinisch, David Brydan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780198834595
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

Part III

Internationalism as activism

9

Student activists and international cooperation in a changing world, 1919–60

Daniel Laqua

Mentions of student activism inevitably conjure up images of 1968 – a year in which protests on university campuses across the world were often framed in internationalist terms.1 This chapter, by contrast, draws attention to earlier varieties of student internationalism: it focuses on a period that predated both the growing appeal of New Left currents and a substantial expansion in access to higher education. Many student organizations that operated internationally before the 1960s engaged in knowledge exchange and cooperation with international institutions to further the interests of their constituency. Revolving around associational work and expert collaboration, their brand of internationalism resembled other varieties that are being explored in this volume.

Prior to the 1960s, university students were but a small subsection of their age cohort. Notwithstanding national variations, the participation rate in interwar Europe barely surpassed 2 per cent.2 By the late 1950s, this share had increased – but not in a way that drastically changed the overall picture.3 In Japan, student numbers were proportionally higher than in Europe: 4 per cent in 1940 and 7.5 per cent in 1952.4 The United States were an outlier, with around 8 per cent of young people attending college or university by 1940 as well as substantial expansion resulting from the G. I. Bill of 1944.5 In many other parts of the world, higher education remained even more of a minority experience than it was in Europe. The dynamics of empire were one major factor that shaped patterns of exclusion as well as scholarly mobility.6 Limited college or university provision in regions under colonial control subsequently informed debates about colonialism and international development.7

As a select band of people, university students were subject to major expectations regarding their potential contributions to society. In this respect, perceptions of students as future leaders intersected with broader ideas about youth. In his study of post-1945 France, Richard Ivan Jobs has noted that ‘young people as a group became the object of countless debates and innumerable government policies as they represented the hope of a future unburdened by the devastation of the recent past’.8 Visions of youth as a force for the ‘rejuvenation’ of society can also be applied to the specific constituency of university students and to the international activities that they engaged in. League of Nations officials during the 1920s, communist leaders during the 1930s as well as Cold Warriors from both power blocs during the 1940s and 1950s supported student organizations or sought to influence their work. Such forms of engagement anticipated that university youth might play an important role in the future.

University students were not a cohesive group. There were significant national differences with regard to their social profile, even though the low number of working-class students was a widely shared feature across different education systems.9 Women’s participation in higher education tended to vary, too. Even within individual countries, the growth in the number of women students from the 1920s to the 1950s was by no means a linear process.

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