Keeping the Transnational Moment: The Wartime Endeavours of European Municipal Reformers

In 1913, a group of advocates of municipal reform assembled at the fringes of the World Exhibition in the city of Ghent. They agreed upon the establishment of a network of politicians, officials and professionals engaged in the troublesome practice of municipal administration. Though multifarious and contextually differing, the urban question encompassed a series of generic issues which were of interest to cities all over industrialized Europe. A Brussels based organization, the Union Internationale des Villes et Pouvoirs Locaux – better known as the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA) – would ensure the collection of data and texts, stimulate intellectual exchanges and host conferences and workshops. 

In the historiography this brief moment of transnational municipalism is mostly followed by a short reference to a period of enforced idleness, until bonds were gradually restored from the early 1920s onwards. However, scrutinizing the papers of some of the main actors in this transnational network allows for another reading of wartime transnationalism. Some of the earliest protagonists of European intermunicipalism were not immediately discouraged by the outbreak of war, and sought to perpetuate the momentum of 1913.  This paper will probe into these wartime endeavours, by means of adopting a decentred approach to transnational networking during the First World War – i.e. moving away from organizational and institutional history of transnational networks, and instead focusing on individual actions and orientations.