The Emily Hobhouse Letters: South Africa in International Context, 1899-1926

The Approach

The project focuses on Hobhouse’s epistolary networks and her practical contribution to projects for international peace, relief and reconstruction.

• How can the recovery of Emily Hobhouse's transnational epistolary networks generate a more nuanced account of South African politics and imperial relations in the period 1899 to 1926?
• What do these networks reveal about unofficial political brokerage, letter writing, and the role of women’s activism, in the transnational circulation of ideas and influence?
• How and why did Hobhouse and her transnational network prioritise peace, democracy and reconciliation between whites in South Africa? How did this encompass a vision of a new global order?
• What was the ongoing role and influence of Hobhouse and her circle? What continuities existed between their projects of peace and reconstruction following the South African War, and their contribution to the work of new international organisations and their South African counterparts following the First World War?
• How did Hobhouse and her circle’s vision of liberal internationalism and imperial trusteeship influence the (racial) politics of these new international organisations?
• And how was their ‘South Africanism’ performed and endorsed in this new international context?
• What does this refreshing of Emily Hobhouse’s international legacy contribute to the politics of public history in South Africa?

The Impact

In 2019 the project launched a landmark touring exhibition in South Africa and the UK, accompanied by public lectures and schools events related to the project’s key research findings:

• The UK exhibition, War Without Glamour: Emily Hobhouse's Peace Activism 1899-1926, was displayed at the University of Huddersfield, Hull History Centre, the Alfred Gillett Trust, Leeds Beckett University, and Liskeard Museum in Cornwall, near Hobhouse's birthplace.
• Leeds Cultural Conversation talk entitled 'Set in Stone? The Politics of Curating the Life of Emily Hobhouse in South Africa'.
• Curated a display of Hobhouse's newly-donated papers at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
• In South Africa the project exhibition was entitled War Without Glamour: The Life and Legacy of Emily Hobhouse. Displayed at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein and hosted by the Free State Arts Festival in July 2019, it was supplemented by satellite panels at the War Museum and the National Museum, also in Bloemfontein.
• The exhibition in South Africa was launched with an 'In Conversation' event, 'Writing War without Glamour: Does Emily Hobhouse's humanitarianism have relevance today? Hosted as part of the Free State Arts Festival, the event brought together members of the project team with Savo Heleta, academic and author of Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia and Borrie LaGrange, head of communications at Médecins Sans Frontières Southern Africa, to discuss the legacy of Hobhouse's work for humanitarian agencies and journalists today. 
• The exhibition appeared in South Africa's national Business Day newspaper and in South Africa's oldest Afrikaans-language newspaper, Die Volksblad. 
• Advised on the cataloguing of Hobhouse's papers at the Bodleian Library.