European Reform Movements and the Making of the International Congress, 1840–1860

In historical research on internationalism and the international sphere, the rise of the international congress during the nineteenth century has long played a prominent role. This article investigates the making of the international congress as a phenomenon by comparing three early series of meetings – anti-slavery conventions, peace congresses and philanthropic congresses during the 1840s and 1850s – as communicative events. The analysis shows that their staging was influenced by the fact that these meetings were organised to mobilise reform movements, and that they relied on a public sphere where elite groups, gathered in the metropoles of Europe, could expect that their speeches would reach geographically dispersed audiences through print media. A general conclusion is that these meetings pioneered a new way of being international – called ‘representative internationality’ in the article – through how they were arranged as independent actors beyond local contexts that could both ‘speak for’ and ‘speak to’ different collectives.