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

Emily Hobhouse (1860-1926) is celebrated in South Africa as a heroine of the South African War (1899-1902), but her wider involvement in South African affairs and international campaigning are largely unknown. Meanwhile in Britain she has been disregarded, her controversial attempts at relief work and international reconciliation during the First World War never properly accounted for. The Emily Hobhouse Letters project is an international research project centrally concerned with recovering Hobhouse's transnational epistolary network of activists, writers, journalists and politicians, in doing so offering a necessary re-internationalisation of early twentieth-century imperial and South African history and correcting her neglect in Britain.

It will be led by a UK-based Principal Investigator, who will work alongside Co-Investigators in the UK and South Africa, and in partnership with archivists and museum professionals in the UK and South Africa, to renew scholarly and public engagement with Hobhouse's legacy and to ask why, for Hobhouse and her circle, South Africa became the test-case of early twentieth-century liberal imperialism and liberal internationalism. The project will produce a joint-authored monograph and journal articles, and an international exhibition (touring to the Bodleian, Hull History Centre, the Liskeard Museum, the War Museum, and Smuts House Museum), which will focus on Hobhouse's mobilisation of an influential and interlocking transnational epistolary network of Quakers, international suffrage campaigners, anti-slavery activists, colonial politicians, reformers and writers, members of the Indian and African National Congresses, New Liberals and socialists in Britain. These will highlight the formative experience of Hobhouse and her circle's work for reconciliation in South Africa during an era of war, reconstruction, labour disputes, and arguments over national self-determination and will explore the legacy of this involvement - particularly their attitudes to race - for their approach to the politics of peace, relief and international oversight in Europe and South Africa after the First World War.

The exhibition will showcase material from the newly-deposited Emily Hobhouse papers at the Bodleian, which will for the first time be placed alongside her voluminous correspondence in archives in Britain, Geneva and South Africa in order to evaluate her strategic use of letter-writing and the behind-the-scenes influence of women's politicking. The project will employ two Research Assistants: one employed full-time to carry out research in South African archives and libraries; the other, employed on a 0.5 post for 18 months, to carry out research in the archives of international organisations such as Save the Children in Geneva. Both will be fully engaged in the project's outputs and its wider dissemination. The research team will also guide the cataloguing and selective digitisation of the Hobhouse Papers by trainee archivists and report on this to the SCOLMA conference for researchers and archivists of African history, and in its bulletin.

A workshop in South Africa with the Bodleian archivist, school teachers and heritage professionals will explore the optimum ways to present this new research to multiple audiences, including secondary-school pupils, in preparation for the exhibition, associated public lectures and website launch. The project website will include dedicated 'Gateways to Learning' which will use digitised Hobhouse material as gateways to structured teaching and learning material and include downloadable museum audio-guides to items in the collections of the War Museum and Smuts House (to accompany the exhibition or for use remotely). A conference at the University of the Free State on the re-internationalisation of South Africa's imperial history will extend this commitment to engaging with the ongoing post-apartheid revisioning and rethinking of the South African past.

Key beneficiaries:
- Museum professionals and archivists
- Visitors to the project's touring exhibition and related events in South Africa and the UK
- Bodleian Library researchers, and online users
- Trainee archivists at Bodleian Library (on placement from University of Aberystwyth)
- SCOLMA members (UK archivists and researchers in African history)
- Local historians and local history societies (particularly in Cornwall, Hobhouse's birthplace)
- Secondary school pupils, teachers and heritage users
- Academic researchers across a range of disciplines (see academic beneficiaries)
Emily Hobhouse, and those prominent among her circle such as Gandhi and Smuts, generate significant public interest in South Africa, and have played a key part in the politics of its history and heritage. But whether rendered as heroes or hypocrites, they are often viewed in isolation, with little acknowledgement of the transnational networks of which they were part. The major impact of this project rests in its ability to capitalise on this interest while promoting public engagement with long overlooked aspects of South African history. A touring exhibition showcasing newly-deposited Hobhouse papers and the project's international research, public lectures, schools events, and a project website with dedicated 'Gateways to Learning' and museum audio-guides, will all raise the profile of Hobhouse and her circle's contribution to making South Africa a crucible of twentieth-century internationalism, imperial reformism, and humanitarianism, and stimulate re-engagement with South Africa's international heritage.

The project team are in conversation with project partners at the Bodleian, War Museum, Smuts House, Heritage Portal, Hull History Centre and Liskeard Museum in order to maximise the potential impact of this research in museum, educational, and archivist circles. Early in the project, members of the project team will share their experience of working on the new Hobhouse papers with the SCOLMA network, followed by a publication in their bulletin. A workshop in South Africa with Lucy McCann (of the Bodleian and SCOLMA), our South African project partners, members of the South African Heritage Resources Agency, and school teachers, will explore the optimal way to present our research for multiple audiences. All project partners bring considerable expertise in public engagement to the project, and will extend its reach by updating their own contacts and social media regarding the project's findings and potential for future research. In turn we will create new networks from which researchers, heritage professionals and archivists will benefit.

The touring exhibition will be of interest to academic and local researchers, school pupils and teachers, museum visitors and tourists, and the audio-guides accompanying the exhibition will extend this impact through reinterpretations of items in the War Museum and Smuts House collections. Audio-guides will be downloadable for use in the museums or remotely (for example in a class room setting), and will form part of the project's website, which will also update on findings, invite responses from project partners, and promote forthcoming events. It will include dedicated 'Gateway to Learning' which use digitised items in the Hobhouse collection alongside further resources and teaching materials for secondary schools. The website will ultimately be hosted by Heritage Portal and will thus benefit from its remit of promoting South African history and heritage.

The partnership with the Bodleian offers particularly fruitful scope for multiple impacts: the UK launch of the exhibition and accompanying public engagement activities; the influence of Lucy McCann's expertise and contacts through SCOLMA; the enhancement of the trainee archivists' learning and professional development; and the opportunity for the project team to guide the cataloguing and selective digitisation of Hobhouse's papers.