A NIGHT AT 'THE COSMOPOLITAN' Axes of Transnational Encounter in the 1930s and 1940s

Abstract

This essay explores the transnational character of the work of anticolonial nationalists in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s. With recourse to recent theories of transnationalism, it explores Ras Makonnen's memoir Pan-Africanism from Within (1973) in order to disclose important encounters between Pan-African and other nationalist groups in Britain. The essay begins by making reference to Makonnen's restaurant in wartime Manchester, 'the Cosmopolitan', as indexing particular kinds of hybridizing interaction and encounter in which anticolonial nationalists indulged. It proceeds to consider the problematic ways in which anticolonial nationalism is accounted for in contemporary scholarship and explores recent theories of transnationalism as enabling useful kinds of cultural critique. It attends next to Makonnen's Pan-African pursuits in the 1930s and 1940s as a form of transnationalism. As epitomized by a night at the Cosmopolitan, Makonnen's work depended upon collaborations, conflicts and connections with others considered to share a common purpose, if different goals. The essay considers the ad hoc and adversarial links he forged between Pan-African radicals and Indian nationalists, and also Jewish groups fighting against anti-Semitism and fascism. These links nurtured several enabling strategies of anticolonial action but also contributed to a series of fascinating contradictions at the heart of Makonnen's 'Pan-African' politics. Transnational optics perhaps afford us an important opportunity to judge carefully the particular qualities of these valuable encounters.