Workshop: Internal Enemies and the State in the Interwar period

In the wake of the first socialist revolution and the post-WWI crisis of empire, the interwar period witnessed particularly high levels of distrust in the population’s loyalty and manageability. Both new nationalizing states in Europe and colonial regimes in other parts of the world felt threatened by a variety of population groups, whether defined by ethnicity, social class, confession, political orientation, or sexuality. In this workshop, we will discuss a variety of case studies - ranging from Central and Eastern Europe to the Middle East and East Asia - of how interwar states policed, prosecuted, and managed groups framed as hostile elements or even existential threats. We will discuss how different states marked and monitored internal enemies, how they securitized political, social, and moral questions, and how they excluded certain population groups from the body politic while co-opting others. A special focus will be on the ambivalences inherent to hostile relations between states and their populations as well as on global entanglements and divergences between different regimes of governance. The workshop will conclude with a keynote lecture by Prof. David Petruccelli on his new book A Scourge of Humanity: The Origins of Interpol and the End of Empire in Central and Eastern Europe.